It’s my understanding that August is an unpleasant time to visit Florida, something the RNC might have recognized before they scheduled this year’s convention. Under other circumstances such scheduling might only serve to perpetuate certain negative stereotypes of conservative men. The location of this year’s Republican convention is more notable, unfortunately, for reasons other than the weather: that of the ongoing trial of George Zimmerman and the heightened awareness of Stand Your Ground laws, which Florida has had the inglorious distinction of introducing to the national debate.
Perhaps with the Stand Your Ground laws in mind, Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn recently requested that Governor Rick Scott temporarily ban concealed weapons in the area surrounding the upcoming Republican National Convention. He was, in no uncertain terms, denied. Scott’s response to the request — “it is unclear how disarming law-abiding citizens would better protect them from the dangers and threats posed by those who would flout the law” — is categorized by undying fealty to the theory that more guns means more safety.
While that strain of thought is apparent in his remarks, Governor Scott’s statement is more remarkable for the fusion of two other ideas — one old and one new. The old trope is the villainization of American citizens who elect to utilize their right to free speech in public space; the new idea, which has been subject to both scrutiny and support in the wake of Trayvon Martin, is that because you are not currently breaking it, you are entitled to take the law into your own hands when others are, in your opinion, flouting it.
While Governor Scott refrains from advocating violence, he neatly turns the nature of Buckhorn’s request on its head. The idea is not how to better protect non-protesting citizens from protesting citizens, but to stop non-violent, or at least non-fatal conflicts, from escalating into future tragedies. Instead, by adding “it is at just such times that the constitutional right to self-defense is most precious and must be protected from government overreach,” the governor has made the situation more dangerous by creating a mindset where people are fearful and expect violence.
American politics have always been contentious, are usually vitriolic, and not uncommonly peppered with the rhetoric of (metaphorical) violence. This condition allows the punditry and twenty-four-hour news cycle to declare, week in and week out, a new heightened state of impending apocalyptic doom that, more often sizzles, peters, and pans into another issue rather than exploding into an acute crisis of its own. The end of August is — relative to the life of a given news story — years from now, and this year’s conventions will probably go off with no more than the usual, acceptable amount of unpleasantness.
With that said, there is such thing as a powder-keg situation, and something to be said for taking prudent measures to prevent them without restricting free speech. Especially when peace, to a sizeable chunk of the population, continues to be thought of as synonymous with a Mexican-standoff.
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