There’s an old bit from the 1986 standup special “Robin Williams: An Evening at the Met” in which Williams discusses the crazy gun culture in the United States (because, yes, it’s been a problem for a long time).
“It’s in the Constitution! You have the right to bear arms or the right to arm bears. Whatever you want to do!” Williams quips.
I have never been able to delete that from my brain, and whenever I hear or read the phrase “the right to bear arms,” my mind immediately fills in “or the right to arm bears.”
Because although Amurikkkah loves her guns and you will have to pry them from her cold, dead hands, “Americans” would rather arm a bear than a Black person.
The rights given to gun owners apply to everyone on paper, but their application to Black people is always subjective, and we are seeing that play out right now in the case of the Black woman who shot and killed a white man in a Florida Walmart parking lot.
Video: Black woman shoots and kills white man repeatedly advancing on her
A Black woman in Broward County, Florida, stood her ground in the parking lot of a Walmart shopping center on Tuesday. She was involved in a verbal dispute with a white man over the parking space she had just pulled into.
As the woman, who has not been identified by authorities, backs away from who authorities identify as 62-year-old Bart Diguglielmo, the video shows he continues to move toward her, even as she points a gun at him as she backs away.
ABC News reports that witnesses say the woman told Diguglielmo repeatedly that she would shoot him if he continued walking toward her. Diguglielmo reportedly walked away, then quickly returned to walk toward the woman again. That is when she shot him.
Diguglielmo later died from his wounds.
The woman told law enforcement that she acted in self-defense, and according to ABC News, witness accounts seem to corroborate her story.
Anyone who watches the video can see she defended herself against a white man who can be clearly seen advancing toward her even as she raises a gun and asks him to back off, warning him of what will happen if he does.
It sounds like a pretty cut-and-dry case of Florida’s Stand Your Ground law, right?
She was backing away. He followed her around a car. She kept backing up. He kept advancing at her, even as she pointed a gun at him and told him she would shoot him if he kept advancing.
He kept advancing, so she shot him.
She then stayed at the scene and waited for the police to arrive. She had nothing to hide. The point at which he continued to walk up on her, after she had repeatedly warned him, was the point at which she no longer had a duty to retreat.
She protected herself.
That should be the story. The framing and the narrative are just as important as the outcome.
White media always needs a non-white villain
As I was looking at stories about this incident, I noticed a pattern.
Headline after headline, both local and legacy media are doing the job of whiteness: finding a way to paint the Black woman who defended herself as the villain.
They boldly proclaim that this poor veteran, who also happened to be a nurse, was shot by this angry Black woman over a parking spot.
The headline tells a tale as old as America itself.
Shocking video shows the moment an Army veteran was gunned down, seemingly in a petty argument over a parking spot in a Florida Walmart.
The horrific cellphone footage begins with the 62-year-old victim, Bart Diguglielmo, seemingly exchanging angry words with an unidentified woman in the parking lot of the North Lauderdale store around 12:30 p.m. Tuesday, according to Local 10 News.
Diguglielmo slowly walks toward the woman as she backs away, with a vehicle pulling out from where they were arguing.
Suddenly, the woman pulled out a gun and shot Diguglielmo while he was still several feet away from her, with the footage showing him clutching his stomach before falling to the ground.
Suddenly? Suddenly, she pulled out a gun? You can plainly see in the video that she gets out of her car with the gun, and she gets out of her car with the gun because Diguglielmo had already been yelling at her, blocking her car with his and making other threatening actions that caused her to fear for her safety.
Accountability is like kryptonite to whiteness, and when whiteness is called into question, the answer is always to deflect and reframe the narrative.
Bart Diguglielmo and perfect white “victims”
Bart Diguglielmo kept advancing on a woman who was not only pointing a gun at him but repeatedly asking him to back off. She was backing away from him. He followed her around cars, continuing to try to get in her face.
In an interview with Local 10, Diguglielmo’s daughter, Amanda, said her father was a “good man” who had previously served in the Army.
Amanda told Local 10 that nobody “deserves to lose their life over a parking spot.”
Amanda also said that she wanted her dad “to be remembered for who he was and not who the media is portraying him to be.”
“I heard one news site say it was over a parking spot,” Amanda told Local 10. “Another says it was because my dad was making some type of advance towards the woman, which I will completely debunk because my dad is not that person. He’s not perfect, but not someone that would do this to this extreme.”
