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Walker Expands Gun Rights in Wisconsin

Marti Mikkelson

Gov. Walker came to Milwaukee on Wednesday to loosen Wisconsin’s gun laws. One bill he signed eliminates the state’s 48-hour waiting period for handgun purchases. The other allows retired police officers to carry guns on public school property.

Walker selected the Milwaukee Sheriff’s office for his signing ceremony. He defended the timing of the event, happening just a week after mass shootings in South Carolina. He says the wheels were put in motion weeks ago, before a gunman shot and killed nine worshippers at a church in Charleston.

“The sheriff tweeted June 11 that I was going to be here, so this isn’t something that we just did. We planned this in advance. If we had pulled back on this, I think it would have given people the erroneous opinion that what we signed into law today had anything to do with what happened in Charleston,” Walker says.

Regarding the bills Walker signed into law, he says it’s necessary to allow off-duty police officers to carry guns on school property in case they need to respond to shootings. 

As for the other new law, the one that scraps Wisconsin’s 48-hour waiting period for handgun purchases, the governor says it’s outdated. Wisconsin adopted it in the 1970s to give potential buyers a cooling-off period and to give the state time to conduct background checks.

“This allows Wisconsin’s law to catch up to the 21st Century. Today, there is a national instant criminal background check system that enables us to get instant information about whether somebody is eligible to obtain a handgun. The 48 hours was at a time when you didn’t have that,” Walker says.

One person who stood alongside Walker during the signing was Republican state Sen. Van Wanggaard of Racine. He wrote the bill. Wanggaard says the theory that a 48-hour delay on gun purchases will prevent gun violence is not proven.

“We heard from one survey after another that the data wasn’t there to support that. Having worked in law enforcement for 30 years, when you are dealing with a domestic violence issue, it’s happening now, and it’s because of the heat of passion at that point in time. It’s just an erroneous theory,” Wanggaard says.

“It’s especially insulting that he would come to Milwaukee, which has been ravaged by gun violence this year to sign those bills," says Jeri Bonavia, head of the group Wisconsin Anti-Violence Effort.

“We would like to see him show some real leadership when it comes to gun violence prevention,” Bonavia says.

Bonavia says she wants Walker to throw his support behind legislation requiring background checks on all gun sales. Currently, Wisconsin does not require checks for sales between individuals and at gun shows. She believes such a law would dramatically reduce gun violence in Wisconsin.

“In the state of Connecticut, which passed a law requiring a permit to purchase and part of that is requiring a background check on all gun sales. In the years following that law, firearm homicides decreased 40 percent. That’s stunning. That’s real lives that could be saved if we passed a similar law here in Wisconsin,” Bonavia says.

Bonavia says her data shows that overall the states with the loosest gun laws have higher rates of firearm homicides.

Marti was a reporter with WUWM from 1999 to 2021.
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