I’ve been thinking about James Shaw Jr., the brave young man in the Tennessee Waffle House who wrestled an AR-15 from a deranged killer who was in the process of shooting everyone in sight. What Shaw did was such a beautiful act of heroism.
But then I can’t help but also think about the recent incident in a Starbucks, where two businessmen were arrested and hauled away, solely for the crime of WFAFBOWB. What if Shaw had been arrested for the same crime?
The news reports say that at the time of the shooting, he was having breakfast with a friend. But suppose that friend had been late, and Shaw had decided not to order right away, but rather to wait for his friend before ordering, so the two of them could enjoy their breakfast together?
He would then, of course, have been guilty of WFAFBOWB. The next thing you know, the management would have called the cops to haul him off to jail for his crime, to be duly arrested and fingerprinted and locked up for the next nine hours or so.
But then when the deranged killer burst into the Waffle House with that AR-15, every last person in the joint would have been brutally shot to death, including the manager who had helpfully called the cops. It would have been absolute carnage.
I am wondering now if I need to spell out what WFAFBOWB stands for.