Ammo Grrrll titles this column KATY, BAR THE DOOR! She writes:
When I was a child living in a small town in rural Minnesota, we rarely locked our doors, certainly never when we were in the house.
My husband grew up in suburban Chicago where they locked the doors at all times, which I found irritating and downright rude. How can the neighbors walk in unannounced to borrow sugar or shoot the breeze if the doors are locked?
The first home we owned as young marrieds didn’t even HAVE a lock on the back door for seven years. We had almost nothing worth stealing. Not to mention the three cat boxes which acted as nasal tasers.
Times change; eventually we bought a decent core door with a deadbolt lock. To Mr. Ammo Grrrll’s annoyance, I often still forgot to lock it when I was home alone. To my much greater annoyance, he locked it when it was twenty below zero outside and I had groceries to bring in. Oh, the fun of biting off frozen mittens to grasp a metal key while your husband reads an article in the warm, cozy bathroom! Who’s out doing home invasions at twenty below?
Now we live in our Dusty Little Village (DLV) in Arizona, recently rated 7th safest in the state. Our home is in a Gated Community of Geezer-Americans. So, our first line of defense is a corps of laughably unfit, unarmed security guards. The main job of this crack security team, besides discouraging the most inept of adolescent miscreants, seems to be patrolling the neighborhood to make sure we don’t put our garbage cans out too early.
More usefully, we have expensive security doors on all entrances, doors that my shooting instructor, himself a sheriff’s deputy, has assured me are – and I’m quoting here — “a bitch to breach with a battering ram.” Mr. Ammo Grrrll and his tag-team nagging partner, the Paranoid Texan next door, insist that I lock the door, even when I go out to water the flowers.
So, you can imagine my astonishment that Mr. Omar Gonzalez, alleged White House intruder (or “undocumented badge-less visitant”), just sprinted right in the front door to the White House carrying a puny little knife.
Yes, by now everyone knows: THE DOOR WAS NOT LOCKED!! Que? It’s a darn good thing no Paranoid Texan lived at 1602 Pennsylvania Avenue! That would never have passed muster, boy howdy!
Since the First Family was away, maybe the Secret Service wanted to make it easier for the hookers to get in. But, no one shot Mr. Gonzalez or even shot at him. No dogs were let loose, not even Bo, who was probably at Camp David with the family.
Mr. Gonzalez was under indictment in Virginia for possessing a sawed-off shotgun and a tomahawk. In his car, he had a machete and two hatchets. He had a map of the White House and also -– why not? –- of the Masonic Temple. Plus 800 rounds of some kind of ammo.
He is very lucky that his name is Gonzalez and he is not the dreaded “white Hispanic.” He looks just like Obama’s son, if Obama had had a son when he was around 9 years old. Mr. Gonzalez is allegedly an Army vet, possibly with PTSD. His family says he “meant no harm”. We will hear very little more about him, except sympathetic stories mentioning racism, poverty, George W. Bush, the hell of war, and other exculpatory information.
But, can you imagine the endless uproar had his name been Bubba Joe Jasper, just a garden-variety “craven hillbilly” veteran who – God forbid! – had once been to a Tea Party rally? MSNBC and CNN would have had to treat their seven viewers to a special logo — a teabag in a KKK hood? –- featured on the hourly updates from now until the election. Of 2016.
Mr. Gonzalez will disappear into the ether with the Mohammads and Hasans and various other inconvenient offenders who committed “man-caused disasters” or “workplace violence.” (Who knew “Allah Akhbar” was Arabic for “Take this job and shove it.”?). Remember that Muslim soldier who threw grenades into the tents of his fellow soldiers? No? Neither do I.
If Mr. Gonzalez is a disturbed vet, he will probably get treatment in a facility where, presumably, they will lock the door. Maybe the White House will too.
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