Mediaboss Marketing

"North DakotaLegendarily Easy for Legally Killing People."

I can see Josh Duhamel in the slick YouTube video now, speeding along a rural highway and picking off walkers and joggers with Rep. Keith Kempenich riding shotgun.

"Shouldn't have been obstructing me on this public road, right Keith? I think that first one was a hippie, judging by the long hair. That's 15 points!"

Speaking of shotguns, in the next scene Josh and Republican Sen. David Clemens of West Fargo are firing their 12-gauges at fleeing teenagers in downtown Fargo.

"I think they were about to key my car, Dave. We winged one of 'em. Let's go have a beer and maybe we can pick up the blood trail later."

And if Duhamel's half-million price tag is out of reach considering all the budget woes the state is having, maybe the governor could slap a tax on kids in the cancer ward to cover the shortfall.

"North Dakota," Josh could say, looking into the camera with that goofy bomber's hat framing his dreamy mug. "Where Teddy Roosevelt came to hunt buffalo, and you can come to hunt people. Legendary."

And y'all thought the "pornographic vending machine" bill was going to be the bill by which all others were measured this session.

The hits just keep on coming.

First there was the bill introduced by Kempenich, an oil-country lawmaker from Bowman who wanted a way to keep the roadways clear of First Amendment rights. He came up with the idea of removing liability from a driver who "negligently causes injury or death to an individual obstructing traffic on a public road, street or highway."

Kempenich's purpose was to make it legal to run over Dakota Access Pipeline protesters"They're intentionally putting themselves in danger," he told the Bismarck Tribunebut the bill was so broadly written it applies to every road and a million situations. If a group of kids are standing in the middle of Elm Street playing catch, "obstructing vehicular traffic," and a driver turns them into speed bumpsthat driver "is not guilty of an offense."

It's a get-out-of-jail-free card. Except they'll never go to jail in the first place. No word on whether the victims' families will have to pay for fender damage caused by thumping somebody in the road.

Then there's the bill authored by Clemens, a rookie legislator from West Fargo. Clemens wants to protect you from bad guys real and imagined, so he's proposing to expand the justifiable use of deadly force (i.e., shooting somebody dead like in a John Wayne movie) to, well, just about everything.

Under Clemens' bill, if you even think somebody is about to vandalize your car you can come out guns a-blazin'!

The use of deadly force is justified, in the bill, "to prevent the other individual's imminent commission of arson, burglary, robbery, aggravated robbery, theft, or criminal mischief."

Imminent means about to happen. Criminal mischief means vandalism, perhaps doing as little as $100 in damage.

You see a kid about to throw a rock through your picture window ... it's open season, baby.

The best part is, no closed seasons and no limits. In North Dakota, you can legally shoot ducks from September into December and you're limited to six ducks a day. Clemens didn't include any such pesky restrictions in his deadly force bill, so North Dakotans can kill potential arsonists and cellphone thieves all day, every day.

We're probably making too much of this. Even though the actual words in Clemens' bill make it legal to shoot someone in the back if they're running away after stealing a box of doughnuts, he says he wants North Dakotans to exercise good judgment in using deadly force.

So plugging somebody for swiping doughnuts might be a stretch. But a Carson Wentz jersey? Fire away. Those suckers cost $100. Just make sure it's a head shot so the jersey doesn't get holes in it. Blood washes out.

Clemens says his bill isn't a reaction to any specific incident, but he wants to send a message to "the unlawful public" that entering someone's home illegally could have consequences. As if they didn't know that already, which is why homes aren't broken into at 8 o'clock on Saturday mornings.

The way the bill is written, he also wants to send a message to kids who are about to spray-paint graffiti on a wall. Details, details.

If Clemens' bill passes, North Dakota can return to its Wild West roots. It'll be the rootin'-est, tootin'-est show west of the Mighty Mississippi. Come to think of it, maybe Josh Duhamel wouldn't be the best choice for the tourism ads. Wonder what George Zimmerman is doing? He has experience at this sort of thing.

See the original post:
McFeely: 'North Dakota 'Legendarily Easy for Killing People' - Grand Forks Herald