Do you agree with me yet that politics makes people stupid? And that by inserting politics into anything, you make that thing political and stupid and anti-science? Or do you need even more evidence? How much evidence will it take if you don't believe me by now?

Things that don't help

Yesterday I wrote about when and why I started carrying concealed and the job that encouraged it. Today I'll tell you about a co-worker from that job who probably wouldn't have been helped by concealed carry.

I had worked with this girl for a couple of years and really liked her. She had nearly died in a car wreck a few years previously, and her face had been completely reconstructed. You'd never know, except for a few insignificant scars. And her jokes about the metal plates in her head.

But she was a bit of a free spirit and got fired when she decided to go to a Grateful Dead concert a state away instead of coming to work after her request for time off had been denied. (This boss was bad about that, even though the store had plenty of employees and one being off for a couple of days wouldn't be a hardship on anyone-- turns out he was in the early stages of Alzheimer's.)

She immediately got hired at another pet shop in town, and later, when that shop decided to start selling aquarium supplies, she asked me if I would be interested. Since they were offering me 50% more pay than I was getting, and my current boss said he couldn't pay me more, I took the job.

After that job kind of fizzled I moved out of state. A year later a co-worker wrote to tell me my friend was dead. Murdered.

After I left she had been hired by a law firm and she started dating a guy who it turned out was a "resident" at the state mental hospital-- with a history of violence against girlfriends-- who would walk away whenever he felt like it. When she discovered this she broke up with him, but he refused to let her go. He was jealous. He said if he couldn't have her, no one could. He stalked her. After he painted threatening messages about her in the parking garage where she worked-- messages including "Lucifer wants your soul"-- her boss helped her get a restraining order. You know how useful those are.

Then one day, only a few blocks from the pet store we had first worked at together, this evil loser pulled up beside her at a red light and shot her in the side of the head.

This is a case where being armed probably wouldn't have saved her life. Yes, you can say she should have been more situationally aware, but who among us is that aware all the time? Even with a known threat lurking it would probably be impossible.

It still hurts to think about what happened to her, after all she'd gone through (which was a lot), to end like that. I still have newspaper clippings and magazine articles that were written in the wake of her death, but I haven't looked at them in years. She's one of the three friends of mine who were shot, and one of the two to die as a result. It's why I have so little sympathy for those who blame guns for innocent deaths, rather than blaming the evil losers who murder, and it's one reason I have no patience for jealousy. 

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