Too young to die but not to young to be taught to kill in Wisconsin

Two seeming unrelated events:

A 14 year old student shoots a school busdriver in Tennessee.

The Supreme Court decides executing those under 18 is cruel because they do not have the internal control of adults and are not finished developing cognitively.

The logical question is, if children are not mentally and emotionally in control of themselves under the age of 18, why are we handing out guns to them and teaching them to kill?

In Wisconsin, they take children hunting as soon as they are big enough not to be a bother to their fathers.

A wonderful representative of the Wisconsin Dept. of Natural Resources (DNR), a conservation warden, tried to explain Wisconsin's messy laws concerning buying, possession and controlling a long gun. I will explain what I understood. Any errors are mine alone.

You must be 18 to buy a long gun, and 21 to buy a hand gun in Wisconsin. These are federal laws which control purchase of firearms.

But you can possess and control (have and shoot) a weapon alone and without adult supervision at age 14 as long as you have taken the Hunter Education Course from the DNR. Possession and control means shooting.

A 14 year old kid can carry a gun and shoot in Wisconsin without adult supervision. You have to be 16 to drive a car without adult supervision. There are 35 states less restrictive than Wisconsin in terms of allowing children to posess and control guns.

Possession and control of firearms in Wisconsin is controlled both by Chapter 29, of the WI Statutes, Wild Animals and Plants, and the Children's Code in Chapter 48 of the Wisconsin Statutes. But they are different and conflicting.

The Children's Code states that a child of any age may shoot with a parent's supervision.

But Chapter 29, (the hunting statutes) restricts a parent's right to allow a child to shoot a gun. This chapter's laws state that under 12, a child may shoot only at Hunter Education Courses under the supervision of a hunter education teacher.

At 12 and 13 years of age, children can hunt with an adult.

At 14, they can roam the rural areas alone with a gun, their undeveloped minds and their overly emotional hearts.

Firearms are defined as projectiles which use gun powder. BB guns and air guns, since they are not fueled by gun powder ARE TOTALLY UNREGULATED. A toddler can own and roam the neighborhood with a BB gun shooting at our cats, dogs and birds.

The more restrictive Chapter controls in Wisc. when statutes conflict, so Ch.29 is now controlling. The DNR is trying to liberalize the law to allow the Children's Code to control, giving children of any age the right to shoot a gun if they are with an adult. This is the more liberal law as set forth in the Children's Code. This is the law that the DNR wants as controlling in Wisconsin. They have been attempting to accomplish this for the last two legislative sessions.

The DNR is getting an endorsement for this position from their powerful Conservation Congress which meets to vote on hunting regulations every year. The CC is basically a hunter's lobby group organized and staffed by the DNR.

No such DNR organized group exists for non-hunting users of the state parks and resources. The DNR would say that all residents are free to attend these meeting of hunters who come in their camouflaged outfits and aggressive attitudes straight from the taverns which are their homes away from home. Non-hunters are intimidated if they dare speak in opposition at these Congresses.

We tried to attend the CC meetings which are held in every county, when they voted to allow killing of the state symbol, the mourning dove, but we were verbally abused at the meetings and intimidated in the parking lots outside. You think they only shoot song birds in uncivilized places in the south, but no, wherever hunters have powerful lobbies, depravity is institutionalized.

Even I am personally too afraid of the killers to attend these meetings. So they are able to intimidate even sensible legislators with their hunter's lobby and the phony surveys they pass out at these meetings. They give the surveys to hunters, take them back to the legislature and tell the politicians that the survey results reflect the will of "the people". If challenged they say they will mail them to anyone who calls and asks for one. Yeah, that sounds fair. This is what they are doing this year so seven year old children can be trained to kill with their dads in Wisconsin.

These are the strategies used by the DNR to become more than just an agency of the state. Strategies typical of all state agencies which were set up to protect natural resources but which have devolved into state tax supported hunter lobby agencies.

They are organized to become a power as great as the state and they are turning this state into a killing ground which destroys the minds and hearts of our children. They have multi-million dollar budgets which tripled every year after they "discovered" CWD amongst the deer herd.

Every year it becomes more dangerous to attempt to live in the rural areas of Wisconsin as the killers are given more rights while the non-killers and their animals are persecuted; their land is used without their permission for killing, trapping and terrorizing and the DNR refuses to reign in the terrorists.

Last year they passed an amendment to the state constitution making hunting, trapping and fishing a constitutional right in Wisconsin.

The DNR is like most Churches in that they believe in breeding their future constituents. The only way men bond with their children in rural Wisconsin is around killing. They tear up crying when they talk about the sacred times they had killing with their dads when they were young. But when asked, they cannot remember any other experiences except sports when they won the approval ( if not the companionship) of their fathers. Respect from your father is a powerful thing.

Bonding through killing and competing against others. The right team against the wrong team. Man against animal. Power over others sentimentalized and sexualized and substituted for authentic feeling. I am glad I was not born a male. And it sickens me that they are starting to do the same thing to their daughters for it will have the same results.

I oppose the liberalization of the gun laws to permit children to be desensitized to killing for the same reasons the Supreme Court used to prevent their executions.

My resentment of the unfair and discriminatory use of tax money to organize hunters into a Congress/lobby organization will never be mollified until the DNR organizes non-hunter Congresses to also vote on the use of the resources.

And the non-hunter lobby group is not viable unless it meets separate from the meetings of thugs, killers and normal hunters and the DNR provides protection of ourselves and our cars in the lot outside the meeting halls.