I am sitting at the TradeWinds in St. Petersburg Florida. I am always in awe of the beauty that is Florida. There are many problems in Florida but a lack of beauty is not one of them. It is 63 degrees at 8am and when you are born and raised in Wisconsin that is perfect weather to start your day. I am sitting at a table just off the beach and I can see people walking, enjoying the same scenery that I am. Who would think that the people of Florida would elect people that want to spoil this beauty with violence and destruction whether it is by violent storms, ecological disasters, or just plan street violence.

There is always things wrong wherever you live and like Wisconsin, Florida does have a few problems. I can talk about Wisconsin’s high taxes and the fact that Florida has no State income tax but in all honesty it cost more for gas and groceries here and, if you have to pay for all their services that you were used to be getting included with your taxes are you really better off. Everything seems to be more expensive here whether you eat at home or eat out. We even have to pay to park our car in the Lee County Parks. In some ways in Florida you are always pulling your wallet out of your pocket for

something. I won’t even get into the property insurance issue because lord knows what it will be like when the dust settles from Hurricane Ian. You see “help wanted” signs everywhere and with the wages they pay finding workers is going to be a problem. You read about drugs pouring into Florida but all the talk here is the drugs supposedly is coming across the southern border.  We have a State Government that doesn’t want to fix the problems. It is way easier to blame other people than try and fix them yourselves. Wages are low and the cost of living is high. A great combination for future crime. 

I was lucky to grow up in a community that had great schools that not only stressed academics but also arts. Back then it was considered a well rounded education. My grandchildren are in the same school district in Wisconsin that I was in and they appear to be prospering. I look at the schools in Florida and I am glad that my children are back in Wisconsin and not getting educated in the Florida Schools. When Florida became a State over 40% of the State was Black slaves. Anyone who doesn’t think that Blacks played a huge role in the building of Florida is delusional. These are things that must be taught in the schools if we are ever going to be the nation that we claim to be. I was reading an article about History Students that DeSantis had for the one year that he taught school. One of his former students stated that DeSantis claimed that the Civil Was was not fought over slavery, it was fought over competing economic systems. Well, Mr. Governor, I think that the war was fought over an economic system based on slavery and an economic system not based on slavery. You can play with the words all you want but the common thread is slavery.  To harass Black studies and Black history from our educational system is just turning our system into a grooming system that will create atrocities down the road. The racial divide is very apparent in Florida which I don’t think bodes well for it’s future. 

Now, before the legislature in Florida is a conceal and carry law that would make it so anyone can carry a concealed weapon in Florida. They call it a Constitutional Carry law. Republicans sure like to play with words. Someone has to tell me where that is in the Constitution. It sure as hell isn’t in the Constitution that I have read. Go ahead and look for it. You won’t find it in the U. S. Constitution. There is the 2nd Amendment that reads “A Well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” That is it. That is all that it says. To me it is the most twisted sentence in the entire Constitution. It was never intended to be used the way it is being used today. If we keep going the way that we are going we will soon be making drive by shootings common place and legal. You can say that is an overreaction. My answer is really? Maybe it is time for an overreaction. We needed an overreaction after Columbine and the overreaction was just more guns. We needed and overreaction after Sandy Hook and the overreaction was more guns. Maybe we need an overreaction in the other direction. According to the Palm Beach Post 11 percent of mass shootings in 2023 have been in the State of Florida. I guess DeSantis and the Republican Legislators thought that number was too low so they are working to make it higher. More guns have never translated into safer streets. Our children and teachers are not safer because there are more guns. Our children have to go schools that are locked down like prisons and they have to perform active shooter drills for their safety from those so called Constitutional carry advocates. I know that there are a lot of people that would love to go back to the 50s where people think it was a more gentler time. Do you know what they had fewer of? Guns!

I would really hate to see a race war break out because all the races are armed and the loser will be all of us because, there can never be a winner in a race war. Charles Manson’s goal was a race war. Would you follow Manson? Hitler wanted to extinguish an entire race. Too many followed Hitler and millions died. Guns don’t know about color or race. They don’t know about right or wrong. The only thing in this scenario is the person that is holding the gun. How do you regulate that. I think if you ponder that for a while you will realize you can’t. 

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