STAND YOUR GROUND, KILL AT WILL, CASTLE DOCTRINE, READY AIM SHOOT!

STAND YOUR GROUND, KILL AT WILL, CASTLE DOCTRINE, READY AIM SHOOT!

(Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel/Frazer Chronicle)

Seems as if people in the age of Aquarius, in this time of insight and enlightenment, receptiveness, understanding and a general caring for your brother and viewing the world as a global community is being challenged by some down-right "cowboyish" attitudes about space, personal property and a man's castle.

The shooting death of Trayvon Martin seems to have triggered a nation-wide buzz about exactly where our country is going with regards to a whole plethora of issues and concerns as well as the rights of people.

Some would call the situation confusing, or complicated, or even a test of wills and the letter of the law. Others however have a different view all together, I call it the "if you crap on my porch" rule, if a fella does his business on my back porch, and I have the right to take whatever action I deem necessary to eradicate the situation.

This "porch" rule might seem a bit much, a little server.....but many people throughout our fair nation have the itchy trigger finger to back up their conviction about the condition of their porch surface. Our space, our grill area, our castle has become pretty important to us, not that these things haven't always been important to us, but for many in our country, shooting first has become acceptable.

With few exceptions however, one very important issue is not being addressed by either the shooter or the shoo-tee, "the guy getting shot," bullets cause great bodily harm, and of course can take a human life. If you shoot and kill somebody, take their life, you open up an entirely new chapter in your life as well as the guy laying on the ground with a bullet hole in him.

The shooter will never be the same; he will wrestle with the burden of taking another life for the rest of his life. There will always be a stigma connected with this person, an unwritten rule that, "hey, this guy is capable of shooting you to absolute death."

For me.....I can't get over how we continue not to contain ourselves and discipline our behavior.....to do what is right, not by "gut reaction," rather by using our thinking power, you know, reasoning power, the thing that puts us apart from the rest of the creatures on earth.

Just because some idiot organization or crazed politician thinks it's okay for people to shoot somebody because they "enter your bubble area" simply isn't right, haven't we as a people traveled this road before, haven't we came a further piece in our life’s travels then to pull out a weapon and shoot somebody?

There are 27 states with a Castle "no duty to retreat in your own home" law, which I tend to agree with. I might not shoot somebody who enters my house at 3:00 A.M. I'd like to feel that if I cooperate, they would leave with whatever they want. Of course the down side of this attitude is a bullet in the head.

I don't think very many thieves are in a home to hurt anybody and if confronted, are more scared then the home owner. Given the choice between a confrontation and running, most wood-be- robbers would turn tail and run like hell.

Invasion of space, of a person’s property, is just wrong, walk across the street, get out of a person's way, move out right now.....and I'm not kidding. Today there seems to be an attitude of "mine," don't touch mine and seems to include "space." But how much space is really yours, that is the question and the space question seems to be the hardest to answer.

I'll give two illustrations.....and let you be the judge. First, Trayvon Martin, walking down a deserted street on a rainy Sanford, Florida night in late February, wears a hoodie, clutching a packet of Skittles. Up walks George Zimmerman, a self appointed neighborhood watch commander, complete with a loaded hand gun. There are two differences between these two right away, Martin is black, and is armed with a packet of Skittles, while Zimmerman is armed with a loaded pistol and is of mixed race.

I mention the race thing because probably to Martin, the race issue was almost a non-issue, while for Zimmerman, race was an issue. Anyways one thing leads to another and before you knew it, a gun was whipped out and a young person was left bleeding in the street, dying.

We now move to Slinger, Wisconsin less than 10 days after the Martin shooting, again at night, this time after 1:00 A.M. and a young "20 years old" black man, Bo Morrison, who is attending a kid’s party next door to Adam Kind house. Of course the party is loud, there's a bunch of underage drinking going on. Adam Kind had called local police, but the cops failed to break up the drinking party, according to reports, "the young people barricaded the garage door,” so the cops parked in front of the party house and were waiting, for what, I'm not sure.

Kind returned to bed, but heard a "banging noise" in his back porch around 1:50 A.M. grabbed his gun to investigate what was going on. In the darkness, Kind made out the image of a man hiding between a refrigerator and a dresser and opened fire. Bo Morrison was dead, his crime, invading Adam Kind's back porch while hiding from being busted at an underage drinking party.

Both deaths are tragic, both unnecessary, yet neither may be against the law. Now I ask you.....which of these young people, taken well before the prime of their lives, is less dead?