Excellent ruling. Hats off to Wisconsin Carry for seeing this through.
After the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that Madison can’t prohibit passengers from carrying guns on Metro buses, Mayor Paul Soglin said he plans to appeal to the state legislature to change the law.
The 5-2 decision overturned an Appeals Court ruling and said that local government cannot enforce rules that contradict Wisconsin’s concealed-carry law.
Soglin said he plans to ask the Legislature to amend an existing statute to allow the city to prohibit firearms on public buses, just as it can ban weapons from city buildings.
“We see no reason why it should not be permissible under the Constitution for us to do something incredibly reasonable,” Soglin said.
Simple, Mayor. The government should not prohibit people from exercising their natural rights without a reasonable cause. The fact that the mayor is an anti-2nd Amendment zealot is not a reasonable cause.
While at least 22 states have similar laws that say people can use force — even deadly force — to defend themselves from threats, Florida could soon be alone shifting the burden of proof to prosecutors.
Republican Sen. Rob Bradley says his bill “isn’t a novel concept.”
“We have a tradition in our criminal justice system that the burden of proof is with the government from the beginning of the case to the end,” he said.
Florida’s Supreme Court has ruled that the burden of proof is on defendants during self-defense immunity hearings. That’s the practice around the country. According to a legislative staff analysis of Bradley’s bill, only four states mention burden of proof in their “stand your ground” laws — Alabama, Colorado, Georgia and South Carolina — and all place the burden on defendants.
On the one hand, Bradley is correct. Our entire criminal legal structure is founded upon the notion that people are innocent until proven guilty by the government. The burden of proof is on the government to prove that someone broke the law. Why should it be any different in the case of self defense?
On the other hand, the government usually doesn’t have to prove intent. If I shoot someone, the government’s responsibility is to prove that I did it. Assuming that I did, then it would then be my responsibility to prove that the shooting was justified by self-defense. If the presumption if that every shooting is in self-defense unless the government proves otherwise, then it would be asking the government to enter the mind of the shooter to prove – beyond a reasonable doubt – intent. That would seem impossible in many cases. Then again, right now it is impossible for the shooter to prove his or her intent either.
Tough call… in the end, I would lean on the side on placing the burden of proof on the government.
Feb. 27, 2017 – West Bend, WI – State Representative Bob Gannon (R-West Bend) will be speaking to the West Bend Sunrise Rotary on Tuesday about a directive from the Rotary International Board that forbids local clubs from participating in events that relate to guns.
Some of the suggested events include gun shows, shooting events, gun raffles, etc.
During a one-on-one interview Monday morning Gannon said he learned about the decision by Rotary International last week.
“All I can assume is the Rotary International Board probably, as part of the debate to pass something this broad, somebody brought up that this wasn’t going to go over well in America and all I can assume is the people around the table said ‘tough,’” said Gannon.
“Rotary International has every right to act like a mini United Nations, but I also have the right to no longer support them.”
(CNN)After a long and much-criticized search, the US Army has chosen Sig Sauer to produce its next generation of handgun, eventually replacing the current standard issue sidearm, the Beretta M9 pistol.
“Following a thorough operational test, fielding of the modular handgun is expected to begin in 2017,” the Army said in a statement announcing the decision Thursday.
[…]
“The Army’s effort to buy a new handgun has already taken 10 years and produced nothing but a more than 350-page requirements document micromanaging extremely small unimportant details,” Senate Armed Services committee chairman John McCain wrote in a 2015 report on the program’s problems.
“A decade for a pistol?” Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina asked at the same Mattis confirmation hearing. “They’re relatively simple devices … This is a great testament to what’s wrong with defense acquisition.”
Amen to that. We need to fund a powerful military, but wasting money on bloated processes like this is inexcusable.
Senators Alberta Darling (RRiver Hills) and LaTonya Johnson (DMilwaukee) and Representatives Joe Sanfelippo (RNew Berlin) and David Bowen (DMilwaukee) are introducing a bipartisan bill to help curb gun crimes in the city. Darling says the bill will help take guns out of the hands of criminals who aren’t allowed to have them in the first place.
“This bill gives prosecutors more opportunities to take criminals off the street,” Darling said, “We’ve worked together with local officials for months to find a bipartisan solution that will make Milwaukee safer.”
Senator Darling’s bill will:
Prohibit an individual from possessing a firearm if they have been convicted of a misdemeanor on three separate occasions within five years. The criminal penalty would be a Class G felony. (fines up to $25,000, up to 10 years in prison or both)
Prohibit an individual from buying a firearm intending to give it to a person who is banned from possessing a firearm. The criminal penalty would be a Class G felony.
Prohibit an individual from giving or possessing a firearm for someone who is banned from possessing a firearm. The criminal penalty would be a Class G felony.
Add a question to the state notification form about straw purchasers. Lying about being a straw purchaser on the state form would be a Class H felony. (fines up to $10,000, imprisonment up to 6 years or both)
At first glance, I like all of these measures. I’d like to see some more details on the first one. For example, if someone is convicted of three misdemeanors for non-violent crimes, multiple non-violent crimes from the same incident (like a car accident), etc., the the bar is not high enough to deny someone their civil right to own a firearm. But if it’s three violent misdemeanor crimes, drug trafficking, etc., then I’m all for it.
Of course, none of this matters if the DA and judges don’t enforce the laws. One of the biggest problems right now is that the DAs routinely bargain down or away gun charges and judges routinely give light sentences for gun crimes that make it into their courtrooms.
(CNN)The shooting Friday at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport may test the bounds of something that is entirely legal and commonplace in the United States: Flying with a gun and ammunition.
The incident highlights the peculiarities and seeming contradictions of local, state and federal gun laws inside the nation’s airports: It is legal for a passenger to travel with a firearm and ammunition in checked baggage, but inside baggage claim or at a ticketing counter, that person might otherwise be breaking the law if the weapon is out in the open or carried on their person.
I fly with a gun fairly often – at least 12 or 15 times a year. The process is pretty straightforward and secure. When I check a bag, I declare to the agent that there is a firearm in my bag. The firearm must be in a locked case and unloaded. One can also include ammunition, but only in the original box. I sign an orange form verifying all of that and place the form on top of the case in my bag. I also have my cell number taped to my case in case the TSA has any questions. Long guns are a bit different because they are in their own case, but the process is basically the same.
The Indianapolis airport has an extra step where you have to take a form and give it to the TSA supervisor after security, then the supervisor calls down to make sure the bag has been checked before letting you move on. That’s the only airport I’ve been to that has that extra step, but it’s not a big deal and the TSA is usually pretty friendly about it.
That’s it. When I get to my destination, I get my bag like usual and go on my way. The firearm is never within my reach in the secure area of the airport or on the airplane.
As far as the weapon being available in the baggage area, that is true. But someone with evil intent could just as easily park outside and walk in with a gun. It is an unsecured area of the airport and even though firearms are prohibited in most airports even in the unsecured area, a sign does not prevent evil people from doing evil acts. By the way, the same is true in schools, malls, sporting venues, and other places that prohibit firearms.
The only way to possibly have prevented this would be to move the secure area to the exterior walls. This would require people to check and retrieve bags outside of the building and have TSA checks at every entrance. Not only would it be a huge additional expense and hassle, it would only move the unsecured area further out. The killer would then just attack people outside waiting for their bags.
In other words, unless we want to live in a totalitarian police state, it is impossible to prevent a determined single killer from attacking innocents. What we can do is be vigilant about the people around us and mitigate the damage by responding quickly and harshly.
Assembly Speaker Robin Vos said supporters of controversial proposals like allowing concealed carry on college campuses need to build broad public support for such measures before drafting legislation.
“I think it’s incumbent upon the legislators who have an idea to spread across the state, find people to support it, get groundswells of support to bring an idea here not just convince a bunch of people in our caucus to pass a bill without making sure the public is where we are,” said Vos on Tuesday. “So that’s what I’m going to try to a better job of this session.”
We implement government for ourselves in order to preserve our rights. It is our right to keep and bear arms. Period. Anywhere. Anytime. That right, like all rights, can and should be curtailed when there is a vital public interest to do so, but it is incumbent on the people who want to restrict our rights to make the argument to do so.
The fact is that our right to keep and bear arms on campus has been unjustifiably restricted for far too long. Passing campus carry is about returning government to its intended, restricted, state.
It’s like watching someone opposing integrated schools in 1965. So far behind the times… So rooted in irrational bigotry…
“We remain absolutely opposed to any changes that would weaken the current prohibition on concealed weapons in campus buildings,” Blank said in a statement.
“Many parents would have concerns about sending their children to a campus that may have guns in dorm rooms or at football games,”
I love how in the same story about Blank’s concerns that parents “would have” concerns about sending their kids to UW if there was campus carry, there is narry a word about sending kids to a campus where this is celebrated:
Student activists plan to pass out plastic dildos on campus, emulating the University of Texas at Austin’s “Cocks Not Glocks” campaign.
My column for the West Bend Daily News is online. Here you go:
“An active response by potential victims affects the outcome.”
That is one conclusions in an extensive article for Concealed Carry Magazine by Michael Martin after he studied school shootings in the United States. It seems like an obvious conclusion, but it is one that is ignored in our schools.
An active response to an active shooter in a school may include running away, throwing things at the shooter, or barricading a door. One thing that it cannot include in most schools under current law is shooting back. That is one of the issues that folks discussed at a recent forum sponsored by the USCCA at Kettle Moraine Lutheran High School.
Rep. Jesse Kremer (R-Kewaskum) plans to reintroduce a bill in the next legislative session that would allow private schools to decide for themselves whether or not to allow firearms on school grounds. Kremer expects a sister bill to be introduced to allow the same thing for public schools, but his bill would only deal with private schools. A panel of eight members from law enforcement and education answered questions from the audience for two hours regarding the prospect of allowing firearms into schools and school safety in general.
One issue that Kremer’s bill would address would be to allow teachers and school staff to be armed in school. It would be left up to the school to determine the parameters, training requirements, etc. and to integrate an armed response into their overall school safety protocols.
Michael Mass, a teacher on the panel who is a licensed concealed carry permit holder and has completed some tactical training, shared that he takes his responsibility to care for the safety and wellbeing of the children in his charge very seriously. He said the baseball bat he armed himself during a lock down drill was insufficient if there was an actual active shooter.
Washington County Sheriff Dale Schmidt, who was on the panel, admitted that even if the police can respond quickly, they are faced with an unknown threat in a large building with several entrances. He said that the reality is that the most effective protection must come from inside the school.
It is clear that there is an evolving consensus regarding the most effective way to respond to an active shooter in a school. The old “lock down” drill is no longer considered adequate in most situations. For several of the most horrific school shootings in our history, all a lock down did was to congregate a lot of defenseless kids into one location for the killer to find. Instead of just a lock down, many modern school responses include fleeing the school, barricading, shouting, throwing, and, in some cases, an armed response. Anything that disrupts the fantasy playing out in a killer’s head is more effective than just crouching and waiting. The most effective response is going to vary by the physical layout of the school and other factors.
A second issue that Kremer’s bill seeks to address is the parents and other school visitors who are licensed to carry a concealed weapon in Wisconsin. Federal law does not outright prohibit firearms on school grounds, but state law does. Kremer’s bill would allow private schools to decide if they would allow people who are licensed to carry a concealed weapon to carry that weapon on school grounds.
There is no rational justification for continuing banning guns on school grounds. More than 300,000 Wisconsinites are licensed to carry a concealed weapon. Tens of thousands carry a weapon every day. Despite the dire warnings of opponents of the Second Amendment, Wisconsin has not turned into the Wild West and neither has any other state that permits concealed carry. In fact, many states saw a decrease in crime after concealed carry went into effect. The arguments are old and the evidence is overwhelming on the side of proponents of concealed carry that good Americans carrying firearms are a net benefit to society as a whole.
Banning the same people who safely carry a concealed weapon into grocery stores, banks, restaurants, parks and many other places from carrying that same weapon into a school is nonsensical. The ban is based on an irrational fear of guns that has been debunked everywhere else in society. And for many CCW parents, like me, it is ludicrous to disarm parents precisely at the time when they are with the people they most want to defend — their children.
Furthermore, as several people at the forum highlighted, it is actually less safe to require a person to unholster their weapon and store it before going to a school than it is for that same person to just carry it. Most firearm accidents occur during administrative handling of the weapon — not during the carrying or active use of it.
A child has not died in a fire at school in more than 50 years, yet we still do regular fire drills and evolve our responses to ensure that a child never does again die in a fire. We need to see the same vigilance and common sense responses to the threat of an active shooter in a school. Passing Kremer’s bill is a step in the right direction.
Yesterday the USCCA hosted a forum at Kettle Moraine Lutheran High School regarding the prospect of allowing people to carry firearms in private schools. It was an exceedingly interesting discussion that covered a lot of angles.
The impetus for the forum is that Representative Jesse Kremer (R-Kewaskum) will be reintroducing a bill next session to allow private schools to permit firearms in their schools. The panel was moderated by Katrina Cravy, former TV reporter. On the panel were KML Superintendent David Bartelt, teacher Michael Maas, Grafton Police Sargent Sean Fuerstenberg, Washington County Sheriff Dale Schmidt, USCCA firearms trainer Kevin Michalowski, Delta Defense Director of Marketing Matt Fehlhaber, parent Laura Ganshow, and parent Scott Scriver.
The subject of the forum was specific to allowing firearms into private schools, but the subject of public schools was also addressed. According to Kremer, a companion bill for public schools will likely be offered at the same time as the one for private schools. The reason for separating them is primarily political. There is fairly broad support for allowing private schools to do this, but the public schools have a well-funded and organized opposition in the form of the unions that will oppose Republican bills just because they are written by Republicans. The Republicans in the legislature want to make progress on this issue. Hopefully they will be able to pass both bills, but even if they only pass the one for private schools, it is progress. The issues facing private and public schools are largely the same, however, so the discussion was apropos to both.
The forum was mostly driven by audience questions with people coming up to the microphones to make statements and ask questions. The discussion can be broken down into three major sections. Bear in mind that any of these issues would only be applicable if an individual school decides to permit firearms on campus.
First, there is the issue of allowing CCW on campuses. Federal law does not prohibit this, but state law does. As the law is now, a licensed concealed carry holder commits a crime to even carry their weapon in their cars onto campus – much less into the buildings. Interestingly, this subject area was probably discussed the least. There was broad agreement that the law needs to be corrected to allow licensed CCW parents to carry on campuses. One former and one current police officer even commented that is is more dangerous to have people unholster their weapons to store them rather than just letting them carry as usual. Most accidental discharges happen during the administrative handling of a weapon – not when holstered or in active use. Also discussed was the fact that several other states already allow schools to decide whether or not to allow firearms on campus and those states haven’t had any negative consequences.
The second section was a lively discussion around allowing trained teachers and staff members to be armed. Michael Maas, one of the teachers on the panel, said that when they do a lock down drill, he arms himself with a baseball bat because that is all he is allowed to do. He lamented the fact that he is charged with protecting his students as if they were his own kids and he did not think he could adequately do that with a bat.
The discussion ranged from what kind of training could and would be given to teachers who chose to arm themselves and what the mechanics of an armed classroom would look like. For example, there are very good biometric gun safes that could be bolted into a desk drawer so that a teacher would not have to wear a firearm the entire time. One parent stood up and said that he hated the fact that his kids were not as safe as they could be because Wisconsin mandates that schools remain soft targets. Someone mentioned that police response was great, but never good enough. The statistics of school shooting show that most of the killings happened within the first 10 minutes. Sheriff Schmidt shared that even when the police can be on site within a few minutes, they still have a large building with multiple entrances, hundreds of people, and an unknown threat to contend with. He said that the reality is that the most effective protection must come from within the school.
The third main topic discussion revolved around how schools respond to threats in general and how that response has, and should, evolve. Right now, the prevailing threat response is the lock down. Everything is locked and kids are instructed to stay still and hide. A few schools are starting to use a technique that instructs kids to scatter and run from the school. The good part of that is that it disperses the target opportunities for the killer, but the bad part is that it is difficult to manage everyone and ensure they are safe.
Some people advocated using the Department of Homeland Security’s “Run, Hide, Fight” protocol in schools. Instead of just hiding, staff and kids would be taught to still hunker down in their rooms, but to spread out and arm themselves with whatever is available like books, chairs, whatever, to throw at the killer if they enter the room. Also discussed was ALICE, another active shooter response methodology. There was broad agreement that the simple lock down was not sufficient. Some folks cited the fact that in some cases, all the lock down did was provide a convenient place for the killer to find a lot of people to kill at once.
Also interesting was how school responses have changed over the years and some of the challenges that schools face. For example, in the past, the students and staff were instructed on where to go in an active shooter event just like a fire drill and were issued cryptic, coded messages over the P.A. to tell them what to do. This makes sense if the killer is from outside of the school, but no sense at all if the killer is one of the students who would know the response. That methodology serves to tell student killer exactly where to go find everyone in one place after the attack starts and the killer knows the “code” used over the P.A. The updated methodology is to instruct staff on what to do, but not tell students unless it happens. Also, instructions on the P.A. are to be clear and precise like, “the shooter is in the cafeteria.”
They also discussed how the physical layout of a school greatly impacts the effectiveness of a response. For example, one audience member said that his kids used to go to an open concept school that did not have doors. He told his kids to leave the building and run into the nearby woods if something happened. A teacher said that his school had solid doors and had installed special locks that that shove a steel bar into the floor and can only be unlocked from the outside with a special tool. In some schools, the only way for people to leave the building would be to go through the halls, which might be a bad idea with an active shooter. Some schools have gates than can be easily deployed to block off entire hallways. Essentially, the consensus was that a school’s specific response should be tailored to the specific school, but that a more active response than a simple lock down was required. As one person said, a kids hasn’t died in a school fire in 50 years, but we still have monthly fire drills and teach stop, drop, and roll. We should spend at least as much time and effort teaching kids how to respond to an active shooter threat.
Overall, it was a very good forum that provided a ton of information. I look forward to more sensible laws regarding firearms in schools.
Wisconsin: Wisconsin generally allows carrying an unconcealed firearm in public, but polling place prohibitions depend on local rules. “If the municipality does not designate polling places as gun-free zones, then it is up to the owner of the building where voting takes place,” Reid Magney, Public Information Officer for the Wisconsin Elections Commission, told CNN. “There is no blanket policy for the state of Wisconsin — it’s a local decision. There are 1,854 municipalities in Wisconsin, and each of them may decide whether to set a policy on firearms.”
First, one must note that Feingold is raising money in California. He does seem quite a bit more comfortable out there. Second, I don’t think it is any surprise that Feingold opposes the rights guaranteed in the 2nd Amendment or that he would support the Executive Branch usurping the Legislative branch for the cause of tamping down our civil rights. It is pretty much par for the course for Feingold.
The video from James O’Keefe shows theconservative activist and his Project Veritas team impersonating a liberal donor giving money to Feingold at a Palo Alto fundraiser and asking whether Clinton could issue an executive order to tighten restrictions on firearm sales. In the video, Feingold says Democrats should work to win control of the U.S. Senate and pass legislation to regulate gun sales but also points to a position on Clinton’s website — that like President Barack Obama she could do an end run around Congress and issue an executive order to expand background checks on gun show sales.
Feingold, a former Democratic U.S. senator, is running against Republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson.
“Well, there might be an executive order,” Feingold tells a disguised O’Keefe and other wealthy liberal donors. “…But what we all need is to win the Senate, have (Clinton) there, and then put pressure on the (GOP-controlled) House. And we might even win the House.”
(CNN)The stabbing attack at the Crossroads Center mall in St. Cloud, Minnesota, could have been much worse, if not for the actions of an off-duty police officer.
That officer — identified as Jason Falconer — fatally shot Dahir Adan on Saturday after Adan had already stabbed nine people and threatened other shoppers.
Donald Trump said that Hillary Clinton’s “bodyguards” should disarm themselves because Clinton supports gun control during a rally in Miami on Friday. He has made similar remarks in the past, but this time took it a little further.
“Take their guns away,” Trump said. “She doesn’t want guns. Let’s see what happens to her. Take their guns away. It would be very dangerous.”
Trump told the crowd of supporters that Clinton “wants to destroy your Second Amendment” and that “she goes around with armed bodyguards like you have never seen before.”
This is a pretty common retort that 2nd Amendment supporters have been giving to years. It speaks to the hypocrisy of rich and powerful liberals who want to restrict gun rights while enjoying the protection of armed security. Not all of us can afford, or are provided by the taxpayers, armed security. We have to fend for ourselves. It is not a statement intended to incite violence. It is a statement that we should all be able to keep and bear arms for our personal protection even if we can’t afford to pay someone else to do it.
But it appears that either the lefties haven’t heard this before, which would be indicative of them living in a bubble that doesn’t include 2nd Amendment supporters, or their outrage is falsely amplified for political purposes.
Some Granite City residents are still in shock after police say a man sitting in his car in the 2500 block of Revere’s Route Early Friday morning was approached by an armed robber.
The victim was dropping off a friend after work when the suspect attempted to rob him. He was able to defend himself by firing his concealed weapon at the robber. Detectives say the victim’s action saved his life.
The suspect was stopped in his tracks. The suspect is now hospitalized.
Officials haven’t said what charges the suspect may be facing. The conceal carry permit holder is not currently facing charges.
MADISON, Wis. (AP) — Federal agents lacked proper guidance and experience while conducting undercover sting operations in Milwaukee and several other cities that were aimed at disrupting illegal gun sales, according to a U.S. Justice Department report released Thursday.
The Justice Department’s inspector general’s office report examined shortcomings with U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives’ storefront sting operations in Milwaukee; Pensacola, Florida; St. Louis; Wichita, Kansas; and Boston. The operations were designed to curb illegal gun trafficking by luring people with illegal weapons into the store, where agents could identify them, buy their guns to get the weapons off the street and trace the guns’ histories. According to the report, the ATF established 53 storefront operations throughout the country between 2004 and 2013.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel published an expose in 2013 detailing some of the problems with the storefront operation conducted in that city. It found that agents overpaid for guns with taxpayer money, that guns were stolen from an ATF vehicle and that the storefront was burglarized. What’s more, agents left behind an operational plan at the store when they shut it down. The document included undercover agents’ names, vehicle descriptions, cellphone numbers and secret signals.
Most defendants were charged with low-level offenses and the operation failed to capture any major criminals.
