I’m not sure where to even start this article, my friends.

If you watch old movies, you’ll often see the police roaming a park at night, rousting sleeping hobos from the park benches with a “Move along, bub!”

Then, years later, we began to see in real life a phenomenon called “hostile architecture.” Initially it was spikes on a roof to keep birds from landing there and making a mess of a building’s facade. Then some genius said, “What if we do this on park benches, make it so there’s only room to sit, never to lie down?”

Then they expanded it even to the concrete half-walls along a sidewalk outside a bank, because who wants to see the homeless outside their bank while they stop to pay their mortgage?

Now the state of Kentucky has taken this to its logical conclusion, and they’re trying to pass a bill — and already have enough sponsors to do so — that would allow people to use force, even deadly force, against homeless campers they find on their property.

Now, the property owner would have to have reasonable suspicion of some pretty specific things in order to have the right to kill the homeless: The force would be justified ONLY if the person believes that criminal trespass, robbery, or, um, “unlawful camping” are happening there.

That’s right, they can’t just shoot the homeless for sport, they have to give them time to find a warm place to sleep first, and then they can gun them down.

From the original article covering this bill in Vice:

“Republican politicians in Kentucky are rallying behind a new bill that would authorize the use of force—and potentially deadly force—against unhoused people who are found to be camping on private property. The bill would also criminalize unsanctioned homeless encampments and restrict cities and towns from preempting state laws.

The bill, known as the “Safer Kentucky Act,” or HB5, would target homelessness, drug possession and mental illness by drastically increasing criminal penalties for a range of offenses. Introduced last week by Republican state representative Jared Bauman, it already has 52 sponsors in Kentucky’s House of Representatives. A vote is scheduled for this week.”

Did you catch that part where the Party of states’ rights doesn’t much give a crap about cities’ rights?

Anyway, this should be fun. Or not. Honestly, it’s not a whole lot different than when mayors just take bulldozers to city encampments, destroying everything the homeless there have in their desperate existence, including their food and what few memories they may have in pictures or trinkets.

I mean, there’s the whole death thing. But America already makes the homeless wish they were dead anyway.