Stu Levitan is a renaissance man, an often-intelligent fellow, although, in this case, you'll just have to take my word for it. This is Stu on TheDailyPage Forum:

I think it would be fun to have 2 or 3 dangerous-looking black guys testify next week in support of concealed carry. The more gang-banger the better. Let the committee know EXACTLY who they'll be letting carry guns.

What fun, indeed!

I can just see Stu now, in Dick Tuck/Merry Trickster mode, dipping his big white toe into Allied Drive, timidly knocking on an apartment door from wherein comes a response in the best Eddie Murphy impersonation of Big Bad LeRoy Brown, "WHA'CHOO-WAN?"

Stu, admitted entrance, earnestly offers a soul shake, which is ignored. Uninvited, he explains his service in this or that civil rights march in the 1960s, the recounting of which leaves the resident bored if not stupefied.

"Um, coming to the point, I'm looking for a dangerous-looking, um, brother such as yourself to attend a legislative hearing Thursday, May 12. Do you have any friends?"

"You mean," says the resident, "May we dance wif yo dates?"

Stu, earnest librul, is then sent head-first down the staircase in another setback for American race relations. Turns out the bro' was a tea partier.

Blaska comes out firing

As I promised in my response to Stu's posting, I'm not going to go "all Madison" on Stu, which, in the usual form, is to loudly proclaim that one has been most sorely offended and that the only remedy is to banish the miscreant to the gulag's re-education camps.

But I got to ask: Stu, Does it bother you when people say they think you're a racist? (Dip into the musty archives if you don't get the reference.)

Stu's painful betise exposes three stereotypes formed, most likely, in the pre-Cambrian summer of love, born of youthful ignorance and one too many bong hits. It is a worldview reinforced ever since by the tenured academy and its accomplice, the mainstream news media.

The first is this: scratch a conservative and David Duke hollers. It is the same comforting fairy tale that held that the tea party must be racist, otherwise why would anyone oppose the redistributionist policies of a newly elected president?

The second is that liberals own a get-out-of-jail-free card that is license to update the Birth of a Nation if it advances the liberal agenda. Think Stu is an outlier? Need we mention what the Sly-mer said about Condoleeza Rice?

The third stereotype is that gang bangers and other lawbreakers don't already carry guns because, gosh darn-it, they're illegal.

Stu threw long because the Left is desperate to stop enactment of a concealed carry law in Wisconsin. Liberals hate guns and the people who own them.

That pesky Constitution!

Twice the legislature voted for concealed carry and twice Gov. Jim E. Doyle vetoed, leaving Wisconsin one of only two states in the union to do so. (Illinois is the other.) In 1998, the Wisconsin citizenry enacted a constitutional amendment (Article I, Section 25) to protect the right to keep and bear (carry) arms for any lawful purpose.

"You're going to see a concealed carry bill pass the Legislature, I have no doubt," Chris Danou, a Democratic assemblyman, told the La Crosse Tribune. "The question is what kind of bill it's going to be."

As with open carry, the bill introduced by Sen. Pam Galloway (R-Wausau), a physician and surgeon, requires no training before being permitted to carry concealed. The senator says "People who carry concealed as private citizens are responsible people."

I should not have used the word "permitted" because no permit would be required and thus, no fee. That is known as "constitutional carry," which is the law in Vermont and a few other states.

Another bill does require training and the issuance of a permit. That's known as "shall issue." The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel details both.

Ironically, open carry is perfectly legal here -- no training, no permit.

Under both concealed carry bills, guns and other weapons would be banned from police stations, jails, courthouses, schools, airports beyond security checkpoints, and government buildings equipped with electronic screening. Felons are already prohibited by law from carrying weapons.

The Libertarians say dialing 911 is like "Dial-a-Prayer." I asked Bill Lueders Friday morning on Wisconsin Public Radio's Week in Review program if Brittany Zimmerman might still be alive if she had a handgun instead of a cell phone. Bill is still hemming and hawing for an answer.

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I hope we get someone like Suzanna Gratia-Hupp to testify in Madison next Thursday. The look on U.S. Sen. Chuck Shumer's face at the end of the video is priceless!

Still, I can't do better than "evansvillehousewife" who responded to Stu's post:

Yeah, remind Walker that NEGROES will also use concealed carry! That'll teach him!

So go ahead, Stu, recruit your reverse Willie Hortons. My Walter Mitty side fancies that I'm one mean-looking dude, myself. But the Mistress of the Stately Manor looks not so mean. Maybe a few men look a little on the Nancy side. Should they carry?

A good day at the range

The latest addition to the Stately Manor's defense systems is a nine-round .22 caliber LR Taurus revolver -- affordable and functional -- that I picked up at the Bob and Rocco gun show April 23 at the Middleton Marriott after the statutory 48-hour background check. For you nervous nellies, there's your precautionary measure. (Even though your nemesis somehow passed muster.)

An experienced shootist, the Divine Miss Vicki guided my purchase. With a five-inch barrel, it's not a concealed carry. Friday was time to try it out.

The Squire and his chatelaine took a road trip of 49.9 miles one-way to the firing range on the west end of Yellowstone Lake State Park in Lafayette County. My two-seater grabbed the twisty roads up and down the greening hills south to Mt. Vernon then west to Blanchardville and the park on County Road F. The range is operated by the Fayette Gun Club and the DNR. It's free and open to the public, although we dropped a few quid into the donation box and cleaned up after ourselves as requested by the signage.

We passed over a strong-running stream into a wooded setting that accommodates three separate ranges: one for high-powered rifle and shotgun, another for smaller calibers, the third for archery.

The only other fellow using the range welcomed our company. Recently unemployed at the age of 58, he was camping at the state park with his wife and daughter and found the range a welcome diversion. Employing the etiquette of the range, he advised the two newcomers that he was about to fire his AR-15 assault rife. "The same one that took out Osama bin Laden." Or similar, anyway.

Even with ample ear protection in place, we got an auditory lesson why the President is reluctant to share his photographs of what that weapon can do.

The Lake Geneva-area resident vowed he would leave the country rather than give up his guns, although I'm not aware of any nation with more gun rights -- certainly none with the right embedded into its very Constitution. It was Thomas Jefferson who said, "No free man shall ever be debarred the use of arms."

Our new friend, a former range master, laid down his armaments, which included a 12-gauge shotgun, to give the visitors from Madison a few tips. The Squire is new to target shooting and his bride was shooting for virtually the first time, ever. We listened eagerly to his instructions, heavy on safety.

Lisa was uncertain she could fire our small-caliber revolver but was gleeful when, using the single-action mode, she cocked and then fired - engraving an orange-ringed hole into the black-ink target. She reloaded and was even more proud when she took my challenge and squeezed off all nine rounds in rapid succession.

We capped off a husband-wife bonding afternoon with Spotted Cows and a Friday fish fry in the lovely village of Blanchardville. It was a memorable start to the Mother's Day weekend.