The Anti-Obama Paranoia

It took barely 24 hours for the media to forget the news about the shooting on August 13 which cost the lives of three people in College Station, Texas. It does make sense in a country where there are more weapons than people. It was just another day. There are 300 million weapons hidden in American homes, although this does not mean that all Americans are armed. On the contrary, the number of people purchasing a weapon for the first time has not risen in awhile. However, the overall number of citizens buying more weapons in order to own a real arsenal is rising. Therefore, it was not unusual. I would not have paid much attention either if it were not for the fact that the shooting took place an hour away by car from Houston, close to Texas A&M University which I know and where I have friends.

Thus, in that small town exclusively populated by students, in the heart of the Texan countryside, constable and bailiff Brian Bachmann, 41, had the unpleasant task of delivering by hand, as required by law, an eviction notice to Thomas Caffall, 35, who had no criminal record and — inasmuch as is now known— had unspecified health problems. “Tres” Caffall, as he was nicknamed, did not take it well and grabbed a semi-automatic weapon (his Facebook page is full of admiration for the designers of semi-automatic rifles) and started shooting.

The first man to fall was Brian Bachmann, who was not armed. At that point, Caffall locked himself in his home and waited. When a flying squad arrived, he began a real battle that lasted more than half an hour. He killed a 43-year-old passerby and injured three policemen and a woman before he was eventually shot by the police.

Case closed. Incidentally, Brian Bachmann is the sixth police officer (even if a constable is not exactly a police officer) executed in Texas this year. Those sentenced to death with an IQ of 61 are not the only ones to die, as was the case last week at the prison in Huntsville (even if the death sentence of a mentally disabled person has been repeatedly declared unconstitutional); everyone dies.

So where does the problem lie? It is in the comments that people leave on the Internet. Contrary to the American principle which believes that the police are sacred, this time there was not even a word of sympathy for the bailiff. It is not that he does not deserve it, it simply does not exist. The commentators who fall on these news items are only concerned with one thing: that an event of this type, be it a massacre in a cinema or in a temple, on the street or from the window of an apartment, does not aid the liberals, smart and evil as they are, in taking away the commentators’ right to bear arms, as many as they want, the most powerful ones in circulation, and preventing them from stocking up on ammunition, as much as they can lay their hands on.

I have been studying the sub-bloggers’ reactions to the weekly massacres in the U.S for awhile. Besides the justification given for the absolute right of being armed at all times, what is most striking is the determination, the ferocity and complete hysteria of these people who are obsessed and terrified with the idea that Obama will come one day with his death squad dressed in black, to knock on their door.

One of the recent conspiracy theories believes that these massacres are secretly organized by a squad created by Obama who sends lunatics to shoot people so that when he is re-elected, he will have an excuse to take arms away from honest people. The main point behind this theory, however, is that arms are necessary for people to defend themselves in case the government turns into a tyranny. This was indeed the declaration of the Founding Fathers, although they were referring to the English and their potential return after the Revolution, who did in fact return in 1812, and even burned the White House.

However, in the current context of these crazy individuals, the only real enemy is the federal government. It is with the objective of defending themselves against their own government that they are storing arms. The only problem is that no one ever cares to explain at what point the government will become tyrannical, when it becomes a catastrophe and who will decide that the time has come to rebel.

Following their logic, Thomas Caffall was perfectly right to shoot the officer who wanted to evict him, and maybe that is why the silence around the constable’s case is so revealing.