OMG: Wisconsin Man Shoots Lawn Boy.

Keith Walendowski, of Milwaukee, got a teensy weensy over wrought, and was perhaps a bit over served, when his lawn mower failed to perform. Setting aside all rationale and conventional solutions to the problem, Keith dragged out his gun and gave his trusty … oh! make that rusty … Lawn Boy a coup d grace. Briggs and Stratton was no match for Smith and Wesson. An alarmed tenant called the police. Keith was arrested on a series of charges.

In his defense, Walendowski claims to have done nothing wrong. “My mower, my gun, my yard,” is his line of thought. While there is no specific law banning the cold blooded shooting of a lawn mower, there are a bunch of ordinances covering the use of a gun in an urban environment.

This is where the story gets scary. Like most folks, I figured the landscape vigilante would have been in store for a civil citation and $250 fine. If the gun was illegal, of course he forfeits it. But nooooooooo! If convicted, Walendowski faces up to $11,000 in fines and six and one half years in prison. Let me repeat that incase you think you misread it. SIX AND ONE HALF YEARS IN PRISON!!!

I dare say … people have shot the human lawn boy and gotten less punishment. Of course, most of those shootings were perpetrated by husbands arriving home early only to find the kid in the master bedroom with his weed whacker in his hand.

While there is something terribly funny about a half-in-the-bag guy gunning down his unfaithful grass cutter, there is nothing funny about a society that prosecutes minor infractions as if they are serious crimes.

Maybe "my mower, my gun, my yard" lacks the patriotic imperitive of "Don't tread on me!," but it still has a certain John Wayne/Ronald Reagan appeal. Now that the Supreme Court has affirmed our right to bear arms, maybe ... just maybe ... we DO have a right to use them when confronted by an unresponsive machine.


NOTE: In the interest of full disclosure, no, the mower pictured above is not the one plugged by Walendowski. It is a stock photo from another mower shooting. Apparently, attacks on mowers are more common than I ever suspected.