U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
By Bill Stokes
Kickass, the doorstop dog, is aware, along with the keeper, that on this day—the opening of the deer season, the state is virtually awash with guns–thousands of high-powered weapons designed to kill large mammals, with–in many cases, the killing design aimed specifically at people as former military arms have flooded into the hunting-gun market.
So on this morning of Nov. 20, 2021, more than half a million men, women and children sit in the Wisconsin woods and along field edges with guns across their knees or cradled in their arms; and between thoughts of trophy bucks wandering by, they may consider their relationship to the killing devices they hold. Once one like it killed a president on the eve of the hunt, more recently one was used during the season to slaughter members of the keeper’s childhood community in a trespassing dispute, currently there are the fresh images and information of a people-killing machine used by a dumb kid to kill and maim as part of political demonstrations over a previous gun killing, and then there is the travesty of the man shot in the back by the racist “citizens” in a pickup truck.
Things to think about on the deer stands this morning as the rifle safeties are clicked on and off; and across the country the average daily human gunshot toll of 100 begins its inevitable climb.
