We’ve got a state flower, and a state bird, and even an official state soil. So why not an official state “weapon of choice?”

As usual, Utah is setting the pace:

In one of the most controversial state symbol designations since Alabama in 2006 attempted to name the peach the state fruit (amid protests from its neighbor Georgia, the Peach State), the Utah House voted on Wednesday to honor Utah-born John Browning, the M1911′s inventor, by naming the semiautomatic hand gun America’s first state gun.

There is, of course, controversy, supposedly stemming from the recent Tuscon shootings. How can we be idolizing an innocent-person-killing firearm when just such an innocent-person-killing firearm helped kill innocent people in Tuscon!

Yeah, feh. We all know if Tuscon hadn’t happened, gun-haters would find some other reason to kvetch. So. Fer cry-eye. Ask me, Wisconsin should follow suit. What gun would we pick, I wonder? Is there any famous gunmaker from Wisconsin? Something like that?

Hm. Dunno. So how about this, then:

The House was engaged that day (February 8, 1858) in a heated debate over sectional issues. Northern representatives outnumbered those from the South and they pressed their parliamentary advantage, infuriating the few Southerners present. A fistfight between two members quickly turned into a general brawl, and during the fray Wisconsin Congressman John Fox Potter pulled the wig off a Southern opponent’s head. At this, a cry went up in the gallery that Potter had “taken a scalp.” After things settled down, Potter was covered in blood and forever marked by Southerners as an enemy.

Two years later, on April 5, 1860, tensions were mounting as the nation approached civil war. During a heated exchange on the House floor about slavery, Virginia congressman Roger Pryor felt so offended that he challenged Potter to a duel. The Wisconsin lawmaker accepted, and, as the person challenged, had the right to name the weapons and conditions. He specified bowie knives in a closed room. He later explained, “I felt it was a national matter — not any private quarrel — and I was willing to make sacrifices.”

Pryor’s second, however, refused the selection of weapons as “vulgar, barbarous, and inhuman.” Potter’s second replied that the custom of dueling itself was “barbarous and inhuman.” The District of Columbia police arrested both men to keep the peace, and the duel never occurred.

I hereby nominate the bowie knife for the Official Wisconsin State Weapon of Choice.

UPDATE - a better picture at Grandpa Steve’s.