Gary Long Dislikes the 2nd Amendment and Listening to Constituents

Lee County Commissioner for District 3 Gary Long addressed the Smiths Station Republican Club meeting during the evening of Monday, October 16th of 2023. Running for his re-election, Long making one of his rare public appearances outside the Opelika courthouse was truly akin to that of the legendary Punxsutawney Phil popping out of his dirt hole on Groundhog Day. So did Gary see his own shadow and doom Lee County to several more years of his terrible leadership?

Seeking the answer to that question may prove an impossible task until the GOP primary results are in this coming March, however, we do have Gary's own words to discern his clouded thinking and divine some of his inner turmoil. Long came out of the gates and hit the ground running, not wasting any time in confronting the 800 lb. gorilla in the room with his words as follows;

"I am fixin' to start my sixteenth year with the county, on the commission. Most of it has been pretty fun. It has gotten a little bit rougher lately. I will start by talking about one of the things that I guess I have come under so much fire for and that is this curbside pickup and explain what led us to make that decision to go to curbside. When I first got on the commission our open top containers were pretty well, I guess, in order."

Gary's idea of fun must be spending taxpayer money like it is going out of style without any oversight or having to listen to his constituents' concerns over his freewheeling ways. So now we are getting an idea of what he considers to be a good time. As opposed to the current day when there are a handful of concerned citizens who are diligent enough to show up at Lee County Commission meetings and insist on some degree of accountability and transparency from him. Like, what a draggg mannn.

Gary did indicate that the county dumpsters, or open top containers as he likes to call them, were functioning quite well in serving the needs of Lee County citizens when he was first elected as commissioner. So what happened since you got there, huh Gary? According to his incoherent ramblings, snarly Gary spun a convoluted conspiratorial yarn about surrounding counties and nearby cities using Lee County for their dumping grounds free of charge. He went on to claim that Lee County simply did not possess the resources or knowhow to figure out a way to fence in the dumpsters and finally threw in the towel because solid waste employees couldn't get Thanksgiving or Christmas off. Not sure how he is connecting those dots but that is just how he rolls, it's Gary's world and we are just living in it.

Seeking to justify his dubious decision to shut down the dumpsters, Gary went on to continue;

"I will tell you, I know that people miss the open top containers. It was tough, so we had to make a decision and we made that decision. Obviously it wasn't a popular one, but I tell you, I stand by the decision I made. If it gets me beat, so be it."

Here is a Gary to human translation of that last verbal diarrhea stream from his mouth;

"I don't care if you liked the dumpsters and miss them. I know that my decision made my constituents unhappy and I don't care if they vote me out of office."

Wow, that is a lot of cantankerous contention to consider. Here is some more of Gary's ponderous bluster;

"We haven't quite been in a full year, so I don't know how exactly the numbers are going to stand up to the last year where we took garbage to the landfill through the open tops to the first year of curbside."

"I stand behind my decision, I won't pretend to tell you that I questioned it. There were some things that we could have done different, but, they happened. The billing was an issue, I am hoping that we are finally starting to get through some of that."

Ah yes, the billing issues. As in those six thousand plus Lee County residents who have never paid for garbage service that they did not contract for or are "delinquent" by several months, as the commission likes to call them, who have caused a million dollar shortfall in the budget. Almost forgot about that little nugget.

Here is another Gary to human translation;

"I make hasty decisions without ever reflecting upon them and I don't care if that looks bad to my constituents because I am unapologetically uncouth. Bad things happened to Lee County because of my careless governance, but hey, stuff happens. It is what it is, deal with it."

Confident in his stunning display of bravado, Gary fielded questions from the audience. Opelika resident Lance Farrar just happened to be in the room to ask Gary why he had voted to remove citizen comments from the live stream and minutes of commission meetings, essentially silencing the voices of his constituents so that only the people who were in the room at that time could possibly know what they had said. Long's reply came quickly;

"One night we had a gentleman get upset, lost his temper, got arrested, had a gun on him in our chambers. At that point, we said 'this is too much'. It went out over the air, it was bad, it was real bad."

Reading the tea leaves in Gary's complicated mind, we can see that he definitely does not like the 2nd Amendment or the 1st Amendment for that matter. In Gary's world, only the government would have guns and citizens would agree with everything he says or be silenced. Anything else would be bad, real bad. Especially if citizens find out their neighbors are equally unhappy with Gary's decisions. The right to bear arms and free speech are just "too much". Too much liberty and freedom in Alabama for Gary's tastes? Maybe he would be more comfortable in an authoritarian state like California where the First and Second Amendment are so severely restricted.

On November 8th, 2021 Gary Long voted for a resolution that effectively eviscerated the 2nd Amendment. Unaware to most Lee County Citizens, Gary Long pushed this resolution upon the people. Gary again showed his contempt for the 2nd Amendment when he stood before the Smiths Station Republican Club and outright lied by claiming that a citizen exercising his constitutional right to carry a firearm on his person inside the commission chamber during a meeting was the cause for citizen comments to be removed from the Lee County Commission's regular meetings so as to exclude them from being recorded in the live streams and minutes.

The fact of the matter is that the gentleman Gary spoke of that was arrested on that evening was only one of many citizens in that same very commission chamber during that same exact meeting who were carrying firearms on their person. Furthermore, that gentleman in question was not arrested until well after the meeting and it was not until the time of his arrest that it was discovered that he was carrying a firearm on his person. Another example of Gary cravenly twisting the facts to fit his own anti-freedom agenda.