The castle doctrine - or how we regress to lower forms of life

So this is among the priorities being debated in Madison right now, championed by, well, who else? the NRA-loving Republicans!

'Assembly to Take Up Castle Doctrine'

I swear, there must be people out there chomping at the bit to shoot somebody. The new laws just keep making it easier and easier, almost begging for it.

So somebody comes into your house uninvited, you blow 'em away, and then ask them what they're doing there. Presumably it will then be safe for you to do so.

I remember back in my childhood when a lawyer in my Tosa neighborhood accidentally shot the boy delivering his newspaper.  Folks were pretty traumatized.

But I fear we are losing the ability to be traumatized by our own cruelty or stupidity. Something is really wrong with us, with this culture, when we value the use of guns and the right to do violence more than then right to have decent work, a roof over our heads, decent education for all our kids, to be free of discrimination, to breathe clean air, drink clean water, and have good healthy food to eat.

Interestingly, a lot of these gun rights extremists are also among those who oppose things like climate science, the E.P.A., civil rights, voting rights for the poor and non-white people, quality education for all, a concern for the common good and the good of the commons. Who has taken over my culture? Give me back the one I'm losing, the one where we care about each other, where we are outraged by vast inequities and cruel discrimination, where violence is not the first response to our often unwarranted fears. You are making this world ugly and harsh!

Evolution of the human species does not necessarily mean progress in human compassion, social conscience, or a commitment to the common good and the good of the commons. Right now it feels like this culture is regressing to lower forms of life, as if we learned nothing from generations of war and hatred and discrimination and injustice and indifference to human rights. Something that began to knit us - in the advances in respect for human and civil rights over the past several decades - is now coming undone in the face of fierce resistance from those who feel threatened by those advances in human dignity and integrity.

Friends, we need a new culture. The one that creates concealed carry and the castle doctrine takes us in a terrifying direction. It must be dismantled and a new one created, one more appropriate for the real world challenges of this generation.

Guns in Wisconsin

Guns - open carry and now concealed carry. I have started to wonder what the real agenda is of the National Rifle Association (NRA) as it has managed now to push more guns into the hands of millions and millions of us, nearly unlimited rights to arm ourselves everywhere.

Playing on fear of things that almost never happen (the guy who invades my house and shows up in a dark shadow hovering over my bed in the night, but then I reach under my pillow, pull out my Glock and blow him away), we are now actually having intense arguments about whether or not even houses of worship ought to have the right to prohibit guns on their premises.

What do they want? Armed protection from the changes that are coming? Armed protection from the hungry masses, from the dispossessed? Armed protection from government authorities protecting rights of 'minorities' and the common good - you know, like the Environmental Protection Authority or National Park Rangers?

What are we arming ourselves for? Because we all know that concealed carry is not making us safer, it is making the human community more frightening. We know that most gun violence occurs in the home. We know that most of our guns, except for the sport of hunting, either go unused or get turned on one another.

And I wonder about a culture so bent on arming itself, so bent on seeing threats everywhere, so afraid and insecure that it thinks purchasing a gun can keep a bad thing from happening.

What I know it has done (and the NRA has proved brilliant in spreading this darkness, this social mental illness) is create more chasms of suspicion and rage among us; it has further divided the human community; it has enhanced the very alienation that we must heal if this state, this culture, is going to find a way through multiple economic and ecological crises with our humanity intact.

Oh good, now comes the Wild West to a neighborhood near you!

Really, Wisconsin Repubs are nothing if not nervy.  While trampling the rights of citizens to vote, to decent wages and benefits, to a good education for our kids, to public transportation, to natural beauty and healthy air, water, and food, to collective bargaining, and more - they are about to unleash the gun whirlwind, a concealed carry law that, in the form promoted by real gun crazies, Jeff Mursau (R-Crivitz) and Pam Galloway (R-Wausau), would allow people to obtain guns with no mandated training in how to use the bloody things, and potentially without having to obtain permits.

Good thinking!  We sure wouldn't want to know who exactly is carrying these guns, or whether or not they have the basic competency we insist on for things like driving a car!

Some rights matter more to these Repubs than others.  How much N.R.A. support did these people get back when they were running for office? [This site is sick and very disturbing.]  This website states flatly that the National Rifle Association wrote this bill, another sign of outside groups writing legislation for us. I will search for another source for this info.

Well, why not? As life gets harder and harder in this state, in the philosophical universe of Ayn Rand where some of our politicians live (Ron Johnson being among them), the superior and the powerful get to look out for their own interests and the rest of us and the common good be damned!  Those concerns are only for the weak.  I wait for more scared people falling into insecurity, more anti-immigrant or racist fearmongers, to put themselves in the class of the superior, go into a gun and ammo store, and come out loaded for bear.

The O.K. Corral come to Wisconsin, to our beautiful Wisconsin.

As the JS article notes, hunters must show competence with their weapons. We do have in this state a hunter culture, even a gun culture, but in the case of hunters, with some care and consideration for the power of these weapons and the damage they can do. We saw what handguns can do in a shopping mall in Tucson last January. We saw what lax rules and regulations about handguns can do.

I am particularly entertained by the comments of gun-fan Galloway: "People who carry concealed as private citizens are responsible people." Ha ha! that's a good one!  Only very responsible people buy guns with the intention of concealing them.  Right!

This is what the Repubs want to bring to our state.  I don't want it.  Let them know you don't want this either.