Admittedly, this is more of a message for my friends and family that find themselves on the other side of this thing. So, those of you that are regulars around here can excuse my ranting for the time being. I just have to vent.

I’ve grown to understand that gun culture is going to be a thing. I’ll never condone it but I understand it exists. I’ll never understand the point of view that someone can bring a gun into a situation, openly carry it, wave it around, and then claim self-defense when something bad happens. I’m not a lawyer or a legal scholar, so I’ll just have to argue that from a purely logical/philosophical point of view.

So, the legal justifications for what happened in Wisconsin are what they are. I wasn’t in the court room. I don’t know what the full slate of evidence looked like. Maybe the jury had no other choice given what was presented to them. What I will never get is the beating of the chests after the fact.

If you are justifying the deaths of two people based on mistakes they made previously in their life then you are a despicable human being. No one deserves to die like that. It doesn’t matter what they had previously done. The kid couldn’t have known their criminal history and didn’t even know if they had looted, rioted, or burned anything down. Even if they had they didn’t deserve to die anymore than this kid.

How anyone can be happy about anyone losing their life and then call themselves pro life is beyond me. That road is a bottomless pit of human depravity. It is the last bastions of any kind of tenous hold on a smidgeon of moral authority. Whether anyone thinks this kid is legally responsible, he is morally responsible. We are responsible for everything we do in this world.

I’m told he wants to become a nurse. My sincerest hope is that he can make the most of this opportunity he doesn’t deserve. Maybe, just maybe he can save enough people to come somewhat close to making up for the two lives he took. I’m not sure how that is even possible, but I don’t wish anything bad or nefarious happen to him. This isn’t about him anymore. It’s about the rest of us and whether we can gain some perspective of things. I’m really trying hard to do it right now.