That’s how I interpret this story from the Washington County Insider.
The West Bend School District sent a note home to parents after a teacher discovered a loaded pistol magazine near McLane Elementary School.
West Bend Police said they received a call from a teacher at the school at 1:30 p.m. Police conducted an extensive search and no firearms were located on school grounds.
It was determined that no students were in danger.
Good!
In a policy reversal, individuals with concealed carry permits are now allowed to carry weapons inside Hartford’s Jack Russell Memorial Library. At the Library Board’s July meeting, a motion to reverse the policy of banning weapons in the building was approved by a 3-2 vote.
Library director Jennifer Einwalter referred all questions on the change to Library Board President Shari Purman. Purman, who voted in favor of lifting the ban, said the Board reached the decision after a thorough discussion.
“It’s an emotional issue,” Purman said. “The concern was about allowing individuals to exercise their right to bear arms. The only governmental building in the city, other than schools, to ban concealed carry is the police department, though there are some limited restrictions at the Rec Center.”
Purman said it’s unfair for people who can legally carry to not be allowed to have their weapon in the library.
“We can’t afford metal detectors,” Purman said. “So how do we know that people without permits aren’t bringing weapons into the library now while people who were granted a permit after a long process were not allowed to carry in the library? We’ll revisit it in six months.”
Mayor Tim Michalak, who was not at the meeting, said Thursday he’s long supported concealed carry.
The West Bend Library allowed it some time ago without any issues – just like virtually everywhere else in the state that allows it.
This is interesting given Christie’s poor record on 2nd Amendment issues.
In a blockbuster announcement today, Governor Christie conditionally vetoed two pieces of anti-gun legislation (A3689 and S816), imposing dramatic conditions that would change them into pro-gun measures establishing shall-issue right-to-carry and repealing New Jersey’s 2002 “smart gun” law mandate with no strings attached.
Copies of the vetoes are available here and here.
The “conditional veto” procedure allows the governor to reject legislation that reaches his desk and propose a re-written version to the legislature. If the legislature concurs in the conditions imposed by the governor, then the measure as re-written becomes law immediately. Otherwise, the legislation dies.
First, good for him and good for the citizens of New Jersey.
Second, he’s laying groundwork for 2020.
I often highlight government programs and policies that are poorly done, but this is not one of those rants. Sometimes, government gets it right and we need to point it out.
A few weeks ago, I got a letter from the Wisconsin Department of Justice with instructions on how to renew my concealed carry permit. I was one of the first 4,000 people in Wisconsin to get a permit when the law went into effect five years ago, so I am also one of the first to renew.
The process was easy and efficient. I went online to https://concealedcarry.doj.wi.gov, entered in my pertinent information, answered the questions, read the requirements, and paid the $22 with a credit card. The entire process took less than 10 minutes and I did it from the comfort of my home. Now the DOJ has 21 days to run a background check on me and then send me my new permit. In the meantime, I printed my confirmation number in case I need it, but it is unnecessary since my current permit won’t expire for a couple of months. But at least there is a measure to address people who wait until the last day to renew to make sure they can continue to exercise their right until the new permit arrives.
Hats off to Attorney General Brad Schimel and the DOJ for making it easy and convenient to renew concealed carry permits and exercise our rights. Of course, I would prefer Constitutional Carry where such a process is unnecessary, but that’s not the AG’s call.
Sad.
RIO DE JANEIRO — American shooter Ginny Thrasher won the first gold medal of the Rio Olympics, then spoke of her sadness at how America’s gun control controversy has affected her sport.
Thrasher, 19, set an Olympic record of 208.0 in the 10-meter air rifle event, clinching victory in a significant upset. China’s Du Li and Yu Siling won silver and bronze respectively.
“Some of the (controversy surrounding) gun laws in America is just distracting from our sport, which is very different,” Thrasher said.
The sport of shooting has become caught up in discussions over gun rights and the associated political debate. Thrasher’s teammate, six-time Olympian Kim Rhode, spoke earlier this week about how new gun measures in her state of California had affected her training because she must complete extensive background checks to buy ammunition for practice. Rhode is an outspoken member of the National Rifle Association and previously spoke on the matter at the 2012 Republican National Convention.
It’s been true for years now, and yet the Democrats want to make gun control an issue again this election cycle. Bring it on.
Gun sales in America are still soaring, pushing Sturm Ruger’s sales and profits sharply higher this quarter.
The company said its sales were driven by several new products, including the American Pistol, the LC9s pistol, the Precision Rifle and the AR-556s modern sporting rifle.
Ruger’s sales for the second quarter jumped 19%, to $168 million, while earnings-per-share climbed 34%.
The company also announced that its CEO Michael Fifer, who’s headed the company for a decade, will retire on May 9, 2017. Replacing him is Christopher Killoy, who currently serves as Ruger’s COO.
The country’s other major gun maker, Smith & Wesson (SWHC), has also seen unprecedented sales volumes. Its stock hit a new all-time high yesterday.
Today is the first day that it’s legal to carry a concealed weapon on college campuses in Texas. I expect the bloodshed to begin in…. never.
After months of meetings, protests and political debates, the time has come: It’s legal to carry handguns into university buildings in Texas. The state’s new campus carry law, passed in 2015, went into effect Monday
This editorial disguised as a news story by the Wisconsin State Journal made me chuckle. Here’s the opening:
The ever-explosive gun issue creates potential pitfalls for both major-party candidates in Wisconsin’s U.S. Senate race.
For Republican Sen. Ron Johnson, the problem is public opinion, which runs counter to his opposition to gun-control measures being debated in Congress.
For Democrat Russ Feingold, it’s his mottled record on guns, which appears out of step with a Democratic Party that’s increasingly unified in favor of new gun restrictions.
So according to the reporter, the problem with both candidates is that they aren’t anti-2nd Amendment enough. If ONLY they would be more anti-civil rights, they would have a better chance of winning.
Whatever.
Good.
Washington (CNN)House Speaker Paul Ryan is facing dissent within his own party on his decision to move a gun bill in the wake of the Orlando massacre, as tensions mount over Democrats’ hardball tactics to force action after commandeering the House floor last month.
Conservatives are raising concerns about the bill GOP leaders unveiled and planned to vote on this week, while others insisted that the House should be more focused on broader anti-terrorism measures rather than a gun bill. And Republicans were forced to delay action on the bill, raising questions over whether Ryan can muster enough support to pass the GOP measure aimed at denying terror suspects the ability to buy guns.
“We’re missing the point,” Rep. Mike Pompeo of Kansas, a GOP member of the House Intelligence Committee, told CNN. “Six attacks in six days? This is not about one more gun law on the books.”
Rep. Dave Brat, R-Virginia, a member of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, called the GOP bill a “disaster.”
[…]
Brat, the member of the House Freedom Caucus, told reporters he and other members of the bloc want changes to the GOP measure, and cited concerns about DOJ still having jurisdiction over who is on the terror watch list.He called the legislation, which includes new Homeland Security provisions “a disaster,” and added: “We are just kind of putting bills together that are talking point — bullet-point oriented that don’t have substance to them.”Asked if the bill could pass as is, Brat said: “I doubt it.”
My column for the West Bend Daily News is online. I’ve spent the past few days in the cradle of American rebellion and walked the path that patriots trod. It was a moving experience – especially when all of us were celebrating Independence Day.
The Fourth of July is a time of reflection and celebration for Americans. As our nation suffers another bout of agitation at the hands of bullies and opportunists to restrict our right to keep and bear arms, a look back at the Declaration of Independence and the events leading up to it serves as a healthy reminder for why our Founders understood the need to protect that right from our new government in the first place.
The Declaration of Independence is one of the most stirring and consequential documents in history. While its official purpose was to list the Americans’ grievances against the British government and inform said government the colonies were breaking off into a new nation, Thomas Jefferson’s beautiful affirmation of individual rights and self-governance is unparalleled.
In three short paragraphs, the Declaration lays out the argument that individual people have unalienable rights and that governments are instituted by the consent of the governed to protect those rights. When a government becomes destructive to those rights, it is both the right and duty of the governed to change or overthrow that government and institute a new one. The truth of this argument is the cornerstone of our Republic and the wellspring of our American Experiment.
But the men who signed the Declaration of Independence knew that the task of actually overthrowing a government was not done with petitions or speeches. It was done with blood and iron. Jefferson conveys this truth in the fourth paragraph of the Declaration when he wrote, “…it is their right [the People’s], it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”
By the time the Declaration was written, much blood had already been spilt trying to cast off the yoke of an oppressive government. Six years prior, in response to continued agitation over heavy taxes imposed by the Townshend Acts, British soldiers who were quartered in Boston gunned down protesting citizens, killing five of them, in what became known as the Boston Massacre.
Conditions continued to deteriorate between the government and the governed. In April 1775, British soldiers marched out of Boston to Concord with the intent of seizing weapons that were being used by the colonists. The battles of Lexington and Concord ensued. After killing eight militiamen in Lexington, the British pushed on to Concord and torched the few remaining weapons that had not already been spirited away. As the British marched back to Boston, the famous Minutemen, called that because they could grab the guns in their homes and respond to a threat at a minute’s notice, swarmed through the woods and harassed the British column until they reached the safety of their Navy.
In retaliation, the British laid siege to Boston. On June 17, 1775, the Americans fought a pitched battle against the occupying force as the British moved to fortify the hills around Boston. During the Battle of Bunker Hill, the British regulars trudged up a bloody hill to force out entrenched American militiamen to win the day. For the price of their victory, the British suffered more than a thousand casualties and came to the realization that the price of continued subjugation would be very high.
The men who wrote and ratified the Declaration of Independence, and later, the Bill of Rights, knew full well that it is a bloody business to battle a tyrannical government, but it is sometimes the only way to preserve the rights of the people. They also knew full well that if it were not for the arms that the Minutemen and thousands of other Americans brought with them to fight the British, the Revolution would have been lost.
The reason that our right to keep and bear arms is preserved in our Bill of Rights is precisely to preserve our ability to “throw off such Government.” An armed citizenry can never be subjugated except by its own consent.
As our politicians debate more gun control laws using arguments about hunting or self-defense, we must remind them that the use of firearms for those purposes is a beneficial byproduct of our right to keep and bear arms. But the reason for preserving that right is far more important than those uses. Our right to keep and bear arms must be preserved as the last bastion of defense of our liberty.
Wisconsin’s Department of Justice has launched a new website for residents to apply for and renew concealed carry weapon licenses.
In a statement, Attorney General Brad Schimel says hundreds of thousands of Wisconsinites hold concealed carry licenses, “making our state a safer place to live, work and raise a family.”
He says the website, concealedcarry.doj.wi.gov, will offer a convenient, streamlined process for applications and renewals.
I was wondering what the renewal process was going to be like. Mine expires in early November. I wonder if people keep the same number.
And people wonder why many of us oppose gun registrations.
Hawaii Governor David Ige signed the bill Thursday, which allows police to enroll firearms applicants and individuals who are registering their firearms into “Rap Back,” a Federal Bureau of Investigation database that monitors criminal activities by people under investigation or in positions of trust, Reuters reported.
The law takes effect immediately. “Rap Back” allows Hawaii police to be notified when a Hawaii firearm owner is arrested anywhere in the U.S. In addition, the law allows Hawaii police to evaluate whether a firearm owner should continue owning a gun after being arrested.
Democrats, led by civil rights icon John Lewis, took control of the chamber Wednesday morning demanding a vote on gun control legislation. Republicans are resisting a vote — saying they don’t want to give in to such tactics — and emerged from a private meeting Wednesday evening with a different plan: trying to hold a vote on stalled funding to combat the Zika virus.“With the threat of the Zika virus — to pregnant women especially — we must pass this bill before we leave town and that’s our drive and our goal and I’m hopeful that we will not see obstructionism by certain members of the House and or the Senate to keep that from happening,” House Appropriations Committee Chairman Hal Rogers told reporters.In an interview with CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, House Speaker Paul Ryan dismissed the sit-in effort as a “publicity stunt.” Behind closed doors, he promised Republicans they would vote on a veto override and take up Zika funding.
Good.
Washington (CNN)Senators couldn’t muster enough bipartisan support to pass a series of gun control measures Monday, the latest in a long string of failed attempts at enacting tighter curbs on firearms in the United States.
Boy, no bias in that sentence by CNN, eh? I’m glad to see the Senate supporting the rights of free Americans who haven’t done anything wrong.
Meanwhile, two of the Assembly’s most conservative Republicans told the AP that they think Wisconsin gun laws should be loosened.
Rep. Bob Gannon, of Slinger, said there’s no way to totally protect people in a free and open society. He said the state should reduce the number of gun-free zones, allow school personnel to carry a concealed weapon on school grounds and allow people to transport weapons in their car while on school grounds, all of which would make it easier for law-abiding citizens to protect their families and themselves.
Rep. Jesse Kremer of Kewaskum said Wisconsin gun laws shouldn’t be changed except to allow people to carry weapons on college campuses in the state. Kremer introduced a bill this past session that would have allowed concealed weapons in college buildings. He introduced the measure after a gunman killed nine people at a community college in Oregon. The bill failed.
A bill about carrying a gun in a car while on school grounds needs to be done just to clean up the law. It is a grey area of the law right now. The rest of it would be a positive change.
I don’t think I’ve listened to Stern in 15 years or more, but he nails this.
Excellent. This is very good to see. Ryan is exactly right on all points.
But Ryan, who’s opposed similar legislation in the past, suggested Thursday that he hasn’t changed his tune following the Orlando tragedy. He cited several reasons for his reluctance to consider the proposal.First, he said the bill, dubbed “No fly, no buy,” could trample on Second Amendment rights if it blocks gun sales to those put on the lists erroneously.“We want to make sure something like this doesn’t happen again. … But as we look at how to proceed, we also want to make sure that we’re not infringing upon people’s legitimate constitutional rights,” Ryan said during his weekly press conference in the Capitol. “That’s important.”Second, Ryan suggested the system currently in place — under which law enforcers are notified when those on the watch lists purchase firearms — is a suitable line of defense. He cited warnings from FBI Director James Comey that the Democrats’ bill could compromise federal investigations by potentially tipping off suspected terrorists to those probes.“If we do this wrong, like the president is proposing, we can actually blow our ongoing terrorist investigations,” he said, paraphrasing Comey. “So we want to get this right so we don’t undermine terrorist investigations.”And third, Ryan said the focus on guns, post-Orlando, is misplaced. Congress instead should be looking at ways to tackle mental illness and rein in homegrown terrorism, he said.“Is going after the Second Amendment how you stop terrorism? No,” Ryan said.“Let’s not take our eye off the ball here. This is a person who was radicalized by Islamic radical terrorists, he claimed it was by ISIS,” he added. “So we need to make sure that we’re focusing on the real issue here, which is terrorism, the fact that people are becoming radicalized and committing these horrible acts of terrorism in our country. … We need to have a better handle on homegrown jihad.”
His ideas are idiotic, but I credit him for actually filibustering. It’s preferable to the when senators just threaten a filibuster to get their way without ever actually taking to the floor.
A US Democratic senator has led a 14-hour filibuster to demand a vote on gun control legislation following the massacre at a gay club in Florida.
Chris Murphy spoke from Wednesday morning into Thursday. The tactic enables senators to block proceedings.
He said he had secured commitments from Republicans to hold a vote but his recommendations are not likely to pass.
One more reason to not vote for Trump.
Republican Donald Trump has said he would like people on terror watch lists to be prevented from buying guns, in the wake of the Orlando shootings.
Do you know how you get on a watch list? Me either. I suspect it happens when someone in some government agency thinks that you might be up to no good, so they put you on a list to keep an eye on you. Do you know how to get off of the list? You can’t. If you believe that you are on a watch list by mistake, you can go through a lengthy and laborious process where you have to prove your own innocence to get a redress number, but the ultimate decision of whether or not you stay on that list is up to the government agency.
In America, we have a long-standing principle that the government is not permitted to curtail a citizen’s Constitutionally protected rights without being afforded due process. We do not permit our rights to be taken away based on the arbitrary decision of an unelected bureaucrat. We must adhere to our principles here, but I do recognize that Trump is devoid of principles.
It’s great to see a great growing business in West Bend!
