This story gets more and more bizarre as we learn more. We started following it last week and now Above the Law have updated it.
It really is worth a read for a good shake of the head
Claud “Tex” McIver shot his 63-year-old wife in the back last week, resulting in her death — of this there is no argument. The Atlanta-based partner of labor and employment giant Fisher & Phillips says his .38 snub-nose went off accidentally after the car both were riding in hit a speed bump. The resulting wound — a gunshot to his wife’s back — resulted in her death after hours of surgery attempted to save her life.
We grieve for Diane McIver. And Tex McIver too, who a family spokesman describes, understandably, as traumatized by an accident that took the life of his wife. Yet we are compelled to ask, whenever someone is shot and killed in America, how did this senseless death take place? Tex McIver’s gun was out and ready to fire while riding in a moving car because, at least according to sources close to Tex McIver speaking to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution… of Black Lives Matter?
McIver says he and his wife were being driven home by Diane’s best friend when their Ford Explorer was approached by several individuals during a week in which there were many Black Lives Matter protests in the area, according to Bill Crane, a McIver family friend, who spoke to the The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Friday.
Yes, according to this logic, those unruly ragamuffins who think police brutality should be subject to basic standards of accountability had spoken out earlier in the week in the general area where he was and this was such a concern that McIver pulled out a loaded firearm.
As they came close to the intersection of Peachtree and Pine, near the homeless shelter, the spokesman says they were approached by several individuals and they were afraid they were going to get carjacked so the McIvers retrieved a pistol out of the center console. The gun was still wrapped in a Publix grocery bag.
A Publix grocery bag.
This might be a good time to note that McIver is on the American Bar Association’s Standing Committee on Gun Violence.
And, yes, even if we were to consider McIver an activist lawyer who donated tremendous sums to candidates endorsed by the NRA, if there’s any lawyer — any person — who should recognize and respect the awesome power of a firearm, one would assume it would be someone on the ABA Standing Committee on Gun Violence, regardless of personal politics.
Yet, he was rolling around Atlanta with a loaded firearm, wrapped in a frigging grocery bag, in his lap while falling asleep. Oh, yeah, it turned out those black people didn’t carjack them (quelle surprise!), so McIver’s spokesman-relayed story is that he then fell asleep in the backseat with the gun in his lap. All this, according to this story, because protesters evoked apprehension.
That’s the broader tragedy here. This is how racism doesn’t just hurt its intended victims, but everyone, albeit in vastly disparate ways (this is no “All Lives Matter” screed… there’s no equivalency drawn here). The irrational fear and stereotyping that could lead someone to pull a firearm because of “Black Lives Matter” only feeds a cycle of disturbing thoughts and actions that end in tragedy. It doesn’t even have to be direct. If someone gets freaked out by “carjacking” whenever they hear about civil rights protesters or drive past a homeless shelter, even if they never had a gun (or ever lent their money to advocating for lax laws to let more jumpy, unprofessional white folks arm themselves with weapons they don’t understand), it’s this kind of fear-mongering that only ruins another generation of kids soaking up these retrograde prejudices. That trans-generational bulldink is what keeps America turning a blind eye when a black kid gets gunned down for owning a toy gun while suburban kids play G.I. Joe or whatever the f**k equivalent we have now.
Probably something involving PokéNinja Shopkins.
This is your legacy, 20-Teens America. It’s not going to be a black president, or a woman president, or even an orange president. It’s going to be the persistent kernel of Americans who keep embracing this irrational, perhaps even unconscious, fear. And this is a bipartisan call — because every self-satisfied liberal decrying Trump’s overtly racist claptrap should take a real serious look at how happy they really should be with Hillary “superpredator” Clinton. Because you don’t get to stoke the flames of racial terror to win over white suburbanites and claim the resulting monster isn’t your shared responsibility.
America needs to be a lot more somber about where it actually is, instead of patting itself on the back about where it isn’t… yet.
I’d be remiss to end this story without noting that McIver has not been arrested, though law enforcement claims the incident is still under investigation. One wonders if the black protesters who McIver’s friends say he claims prompted this incident would have gotten the same benefit of the doubt as a responsible gun owner beset by a freak accident if they showed up at the emergency room having shot a spouse in the back because they were scared.
I’m guessing not.
