I don’t go to the Texas Fair every year, you know, because it’s so expensive. But I was looking forward to attending this year for a concert on the Main Stage, the singer pretty much a hometown gal with a cool music style. So I thought I’d hang out a couple hours, ride some rides, eat the latest faire, then catch the evening show.
I’d been looking forward to this evening out for months, even wrote it on my calendar. Then I heard about the sudden and bizarre interference by the State of Texas. They took Texas State Fair to court over its official gun ban. That’s right: Only Texas would ban a gun ban. Or try to. The Texas State Fair, which is a nonprofit business and not an operating entity of state or city government, announced an official gun ban. This was due to the shooting last year. And wasn’t it around the last day of the fair? And didn’t the shooting happen in the overcrowded food court, a place under one roof? That scared off fair goers and made Texas out to be the Wild West of state fairs. Yee-hah!
Fair officials no doubt were mortified by the shooting (not to mention the liability). And all the rest of us wondered how did anybody sneak a gun into the fairgrounds. Well, if you just think about it, you can figure it out. Criminals know how to sneak in guns using only the bodies God gave them.
A shooting at the fair—a vibrant community unto itself which for people watchers had always been an entertaining and lively scene with the occasional risqué—was bound to happen given decades of unchecked gun proliferation. And bang! Bang, bang, bang! It happened—right among the baby strollers and diapered toddlers, their older siblings, parents, kinfolk and neighbors who ventured into Fair Park for just one day after traveling the metroplex and from all the little towns and cities across this state ironically named for being friendly.
The shooting, not at all shocking—I mean, come on—managed to kinda shut down our beloved state Fair. More than one generation of Texans, whether at the Fair or not, are traumatized for life, never to go to our state fair again.
Texas, we gotta problem
Poor Texas State Fair officials. Surely, they thought the most reasonable thing to do was implement and proudly announce a gun ban on fair premises.
Not in this state, buster. Try it, and you’ll be saw-ree. Our state government sues over such bans, dontcha know?
Poor Fair officials. Thought Texas allows businesses to decide for themselves if’n they’ll permit people with guns to enter their premises.
Sounds like some Yankee suits were a-tinkering with the great State Fair of Texas by implementing some sort of ‘gun control.’ In these parts, those fightin’ words.
What’s crystal clear among the blatant hypocrisy, bully tactics and fat-headedness that aptly describes our state’s top elected officials nowadays is they don’t give a bloody ’dillo about ensuring safety for tens of millions of Texas fairgoers—and instead come across as highly encouraging everybody and anybody to bring a gun to the Texas State Fair this year.
That’s the clear and dangerous message courtesy of the State of Texas. Confused young people with access to guns along with others whose delusions of grandeur are out of control (Texas doesn’t care about the mentally ill either, preferring the old 1870s adage: Pull yourself up by your bootstraps) have received the very loud and public call to show up at the Texas State Fair armed. Like it’s a mighty proud longstanding Texas tradition to carry guns everywhere.
Ironically, Texas shot itself in the foot taking the State Fair’s gun ban to court—because the latest ruling sides with Fair officials: No guns allowed.
For now.
Guess we’ll just have to dare go to the Texas State Fair … and hope for the best. Eh, it’s the 21st century. Aren’t we used to living this way already … everywhere we go?