Someone Explain These People to Me

As a public service, I'd like to keep you updated on what our vaunted Wisconsin state legislature, populated overwhelmingly with Republicans, has been doing.

I do it for two reasons: To elicit your outrage, and to ask for someone to please explain these people to me, because I do not understand them. If these are good things they're doing, I want to know why. Doesn't seem to be a heavy lift.

But then: Read this stuff. You'll see why I'm wondering.

First: All these bills were passed by the assembly by voice vote. That means that there is no accountability--no name attached to support. We don't know exactly who approved of it. What incredible courage! The machos of the Republican Party want to give off their manliness, but don't want to stand up to whomever calls them out on it. It means that they're trying to get away with something, plain and simple, hiding in plain sight.

So let's take a look at what they shouted into the legislative process: (my thanks to the Capitol Times)

• AB 495--It would allow a person who is licensed to carry a concealed weapon to possess a firearm, in a vehicle, on school grounds. Right now, that's prohibited.

The people who support it say that parents with concealed carry licenses have to unload, remove and lock up their guns before leaving their kids at school and picking them up. How incredibly inconvenient!

Of course, they have to be ready in case there's a drive-by by someone else, right? Thing is, the law would allow that someone else to actually have that weapon to start a drive-by shooting. Aren't you causing a bigger problem by trying to end another one?

Don't dismiss this out of hand. I looked up how many people believe they have to have concealed carry licenses in this state: Just under 400,000--about seven or eight percent of our population (as of last year). While that sounds bonkers, get online and look at states like Texas, Pennsylvania, and Florida. There are a hell of a lot of Americans walking around 'packed', ready to shoot it out with real or (mostly) imagined enemies. You'll notice that the crime rate hasn't exactly subsided.

So it's asking more than you think for a significant number of people to unload before they come get their kids. So let's go with the next question: Do schools need concealed carry people to surreptitiously patrol their grounds during the five minutes that they're waiting in line for their kids?

Poor wretches. No doubt they feel picked on. It's an easy transfer to claim victimitis. All they want to do is pick up their kids! Do they have to check in with the safety people to boot?

Yes, there are school shootings, tragically. But the sick individuals who perform them aren't that worried about the concealed carriers, because their work is done within five minutes or less, and to the best of my knowledge, ends with their deaths, usually self-inflicted, if not arrest (as in the latest tragedy in Michigan). The odds that they would run into a concealed carrier just at the moment they're likely to wreak their greatest havoc is something only a rational person would consider--in which case, they most likely would have their wits about them and not go through with it. Plus, I have not heard of such a situation so far so the odds of having that kind of confrontation are even more remote than having the shooting in the first place.

Which is to say: Is this a vital function of the state legislature? Will this prevent what it purports to do?

No. It won't. So why is it happening?

Because someone called a legislator or two and complained that their daily pick-up excursions take longer and are more awkward than the rest of us who won't be bothered with needing their weapons close by, if they have any. In some parts of the state, this is a big deal, I guess. But I need someone to explain it to me.

Sigh. Let's move on:

• AB 498: Lowering the age requirement to obtain a conceal carry permit from 21 to 18.

The rationale behind this is a yawner: If you're old enough to vote--and we know how eager 18-year-olds are to do that--you're old enough to pack without notice. In fact, the author tried to introduce the idea of "ageism" to challenge the opponents of this proposal.

Another twisting of another phrase that isn't meant for that whatsoever. If you've been turned down for jobs as often as I was, you get to read between the lines and know damn well that you're considered too old to do what you've applied for. That's "ageism" in spades, and nothing's so aggravating as being unable to get into the room and get an interview and at least have a fighting chance to work again.

For the more elderly to judge someone else too young to take on the responsibilities of toting a weapon around is, well, more than appropriate. It's having the advantage of life experience to tell someone, kind of like sex, that something else is worth waiting for, that there's no reason to be in a hurry to get it. This is especially true in a circumstance in which, unlike sex where you can create human life without responsibility, here you can take it away, including your own if you make a horrible mistake.

And you're not even having fun while doing it.

• SB 843--Would require the superintendent of public instruction to develop and "comprehensive firearm education course" for high school students. She would be aided by the state DNR, a "law enforcement agency" and "an organization that specializes in firearm safety or certifies firearm instructors." If a school districts refuses, it would have go out of its way to pass a resolution to that effect.

Of course you have to involve the schools in this obsession. Never mind that our brilliant state senators didn't bother to pass funding for it. Never mind that they could sit down and figure out whether or not to include this in the required curriculum or in the electives. Nah. Just put it in there.

The Wisconsin Gun Owners are in favor of this. Among those against: The Wisconsin Association of School Boards; the Association of Wisconsin School Administrators; the Wisconsin Association of School Business Officials; the Wisconsin Association of School District Administrators; and--watch this--the Wisconsin Rural Schools Alliance.

I suppose it's enough that the gun owners like it. Never mind that there are plenty of privately-run clinics where kids can learn about how to operate weapons. Never mind that lots of parents take on that training themselves.

I guess everybody needs to know how to operate a gun, huh? Somehow, the rest of us have missed all this fun. What, it's not only our right, but it's our responsibility to be armed and dangerous, if only to ourselves?

Do we need this hair-splitting? No. But someone needs to pass something, apparently, for Tony Evers to veto--as he surely will--so we can create campaign ads that vilify him to areas where gun ownership is paramount, as if he already hasn't been, as if these will tip the scales to determine whether or not he gets re-elected.

Which is another way of saying how wedded, perhaps captive, the Republican Party is to the NRA and the gun owners lobby. Is that it? Is that all there is? Is it that ridiculous? Is it that obsessive?

No, I guess you don't have to explain it to me. I'd fooled myself, however briefly, in believing there must be something deeper, more meaningful. I'll have to look somewhere else.

Be well. Be careful. Get a booster. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark