Guns and Chicken Parmesan

By BARRY FRIEDMAN

I was in the booth that Lt. Brandon Watkins and fellow armed officers sat in two days after the medical complex shooting in Tulsa back in June.

But this time I was with Roberto Aloisio, the owner of Mondo’s, my friend.

His gun sat in a knapsack in another part of the restaurant.

I’ll get back to that.

Rob is a conservative, a Republican, a Trump supporter, but also makes the best chicken parmesan in town.

There are a lot of Trump supporters in Tulsa, Oklahoma, but not a lot of good chicken parmesan.

You pick your battles.

Rob, all joking aside, is not sheep-like in his devotion to all things Trumpian. Years back, he once told me after a rash of insane texts by the former president that he wished “Trump would just shut up,” which I found more encouraging than I should have. I don’t know what the difference is anymore between those who support Trump blindly and those who support him conditionally; their votes count the same. What they tell you they think of him privately, or how they’d prefer someone besides Trump is interesting, not dispositive.

Worse — and with apologies to Godwin (and his law) — in 1932, 13,418,517 Germans voted for Hitler and all of them didn’t hate Jews and some of them were great neighbors, and in 2020, 74,223,369 Americans voted for Trump and all of them didn’t support overthrowing the United States and stealing an election and some of them are friends who own your favorite restaurant.

I know what you’re thinking, and you’re right. Trump isn’t Hitler.

But Hitler wasn’t Hitler until he was Hitler.

If Trump was an existential threat in his first go-round, he’ll be the dark lord in his second.

And millions of good people will vote for him.

But this isn’t about that — not totally, anyway.

I was telling Rob about my columns of late on the shooting in Tulsa; Brandon and the cops who sat in this very booth; gun control; and how, according to Brandon, there’s little they could do to prevent a mass shooting at Mondo’s.

“I worry about that all the time,” Rob said. “I sometimes have over 200 people in here.” That’s when he told me about the 9mm Beretta.

“Make sure you let them know it is an Italian-made 9mm. I am very particular about buying Italian.”

Here’s what else he said.

“By the time I get it out, though, by the time … that scenario keeps me awake at night.”

“Yet you support Republicans,” I said, “all of whom are against every piece of legislation that might prevent one fewer nut who shouldn’t be within an area code of an automatic weapon from walking into your restaurant with one.”

“I want background checks, training, waiting periods. It is too easy getting a gun. I have an automatic weapon. I know how easy it is to get one. It shouldn’t be.”

“Wait — what?”

And this is where Oklahoma senatorial candidate T.W. Shannon comes into the story. He is in a runoff with MarkWayne Mullin, presently Oklahoma’s 2nd District congressman. The two are currently vying for the seat of recently retired Sen. Jim Inhofe, who has been Oklahoma’s senator since Nebuchadnezzar was in swaddling clothes. Shannon, a former speaker of the Oklahoma House of Representatives — and he was singularly awful in a state where singularly awful representatives are de rigeur — is going to lose to Mullin, and lose badly, in the Aug. 23 runoff election, but Rob decided to attend a fundraising event for Shannon a few weeks back.

“He makes his presentation,” Rob told me, “about taxes, the border, defense, immigrants, et cetera, and I said to him afterward that I agreed with him on everything he represents.”

“That’s another problem for another day,” I said.

He laughed.

“Anyway, when it was all over, I asked, ‘What about guns? What are we going to do about that?’”

“And?”

“I told him I believe in the 2nd Amendment, but ask him what could we do to fix this? And he had no answers.”

“You and I disagree on everything — everything, surprisingly, except guns and, not surprisingly, about your chicken parm — but that’s the thing. What good does it do if you vote for him anyway? What good does it do if fellow Republicans, like you, who feel this way about guns and who also want answers, vote for these guys anyway?”

“What do you mean?”

“This issue scares the fuck out of you, right?”

“It does.”

“I am probably one of the most liberal guys in Tulsa — that you still talk to — but what would you do if I were running against Shannon? I’d get 11 votes statewide, but would you vote for someone like me because of this one issue — this one issue that means so much to you — or do you ultimately go with a Republican candidate anyway?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “But I know this insanity has to stop.”

Barry Friedman is an essayist, political columnist, petroleum geology reporter and comedian living in Tulsa, Okla. In addition to “Funny You Should Mention It,” “Road Comic,” “Four Days and a Year Later” and “The Joke Was On Me,” his first novel, “Jacob Fishman’s Marriages,” a book about the worst love story ever, was published by Balkan Press in February. See barrysfriedman.com and friedmanoftheplains.com.

From The Progressive Populist, September 1, 2022

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