Normal

 One of the "bright spots" of the flurry of indictments for our former game show host/twice impeached felon of an ex-president is the way that we haven't had to pay as much attention to the carnage taking place on our streets. But, just in case you were thinking there was some sort of moratorium on mass shootings while we try to find a cell big enough for Little Donnie and his ego, you should know that the pace of Americans killing one another with guns hasn't slowed appreciably over the past few months. 

Gun violence in America is a lot like the weather. We have weather most every day, but it takes some sort of hurricane or hail the size of canned hams to get us to notice while our democracy continues to teeter on the cliffs of insanity. Like when a white supremacist takes his hate for black folks off the Internet and out onto the streets of Jacksonville, Florida. 

On Saturday, twenty-one year old Ryan Christopher Palmeter fired eleven rounds at one woman sitting in her car in Jacksonville, before entering a shop and murdering another two people. All three of his victims were African-American. Then, as is the habit with murderers of this stripe, he turned his gun on himself. Mister Palmeter left behind a series of hate-filled manifestos, as is the habit of murderers of this stripe. Sheriff TK Waters told the media, "He knew what he was doing. He was one hundred percent lucid. He knew what he was doing and again, it's disappointing that anyone would go to these lengths to hurt someone else." As is the habit of murderers of this stripe, he bought his weapons legally, and then picked his targets with no particular agenda beyond the color of his victim's skin. He had the time to decorate the stock of his AR-15 rifle with swastikas. 

Again, a bright spot: He was turned away from the campus of the historically black Edward Waters University, when a security guard asked him for identification. He left in his car and headed back downtown where he killed  Angela Michelle Carr; Anolt Joseph “AJ” Laguerre Jr., and Jerrald Gallion. Because they were black. 

These killings took place on the sixtieth anniversary of the March On Washington. 

In 2017, Palmeter was held under Florida's Baker Act, which allows a person to be involuntarily detained and subject to an examination for up to seventy-two hours during a mental health crisis. "Normally" a person held under the Baker Act is restricted from purchasing firearms. 

I guess this wasn't normal. 

Or was it?

See you at the next indictment/hurricane/mass shooting.