I'M NOT GOING TO CRITICIZE CALEB KEETER

One of the musicians at the Las Vegas massacre has had a change of heart on guns:

“Enough is enough,” guitarist Caleb Keeter wrote on Twitter the day after a gunman opened fire at the Las Vegas festival where he’d performed hours earlier with the Josh Abbott Band.

Although Keeter had been a lifelong proponent of gun rights, witnessing Sunday’s horrific act of gun violence changed his mind....

Keeter wrote:

I’ve been a proponent of the 2nd amendment my entire life. Until the events of last night. I cannot express how wrong I was. We actually have members of our crew with CHL [Concealed Handgun Licenses], and legal firearms on the bus.

They were useless.

We couldn’t touch them for fear police might think we were part of the massacre and shoot us....

We need gun control RIGHT. NOW. My biggest regret is that I stubbornly didn’t realize it until my brothers on the road and myself were threatened by it.

I'm seeing some comments like this in the replies to Keeter's tweet and at the Josh Abbott Band's Facebook page:

Sucks your guitarist changed his values because he a fucking moron you can’t just go out and buy an assault rifle and no amount of gun control could have stopped this guy so yeah nice try dumbasses

****

You guys will be on all of the cnn and msnbc shows now that y’all are Clinton supporters

But at the band's page I'm mostly seeing this:



Is it possible that it's not 2003 anymore? Is the band not going to become the Dixie Chicks? That would help renew my faith in America. I imagine fans of this band (and most country acts) skew conservative, but maybe not, and even if they do, it would be great if they don't reject the band outright just because one of the members doesn't toe the NRA line.

Keeter is getting a lot of support from gun control advocates -- but there are quite a few responses like this:

While I'm glad you and yours are alive, it took a personal assault to change your mind? It's called empathy. You had none until today.

— Paul (@mondosalvo) October 2, 2017

I mean...really? CHILDREN were mowed down in their classroom. Six year olds. SIX YEAR OLDS. THAT didn't convince you? You had to

— t (@dopaminediscord) October 2, 2017

I don't feel that anger, mostly because, as far as I know, Keeter wasn't one of the people lecturing us to stop talking about gun control. I don't believe he was talking politics at all. For many years on this blog, I've called out right-wing politicians and pundits who deviated from the conservative line only after an issue affected them personally. Whether it's the right-wing columnist who suddenly began advocating for medical marijuana when he got cancer or the senator who became an advocate of same-sex marriage when his son came out of the closet, I've criticized them

I could put Keeter in the same category -- but he's not a pol or a pundit, he's a guitar player. To the best of my knowledge, he hasn't been publicly political. I don't really know how much serious thought he's given to the subject until today.

If you're publicly political and you don't understand the negative consequences of your positions until those consequences hit home, then I have no sympathy for you. If you're just an ordinary person who doesn't spend a lot of time thinking about politics, much less expressing your opinions, then I'm not going to give you a hard time.

So I appreciate the fact that Keeter said this. I hope some people outside my bubble listen to him.