Despite support, state unlikely to pass gun laws
MONONA - Jeraldin Romero stepped into a Walmart Tuesday carrying only a 12-volt tire inflator to return to the store — but the weight of the weekend was on her mind.
“It was unfair,” Romero said about a shooting three days earlier targeting Latinos at a Walmart hundreds of miles away in Texas that left 22 people dead including nine Mexican nationals.
“We’re all human beings no matter what color we are ... nobody should just be targeted to be killed just because somebody doesn’t like us,” said Romero, who is Hispanic. “I do think about how this event did happen at a Walmart, but I just know how it is here in Madison.”
But it has happened here in Wisconsin. Four were killed two years ago in Marathon County by a man furious about his wife filing for divorce. Six were killed at a Sikh Temple in Oak Creek seven years ago. And 24 teenagers were taken hostage at gunpoint by a classmate in Marinette nine years ago.
There have been more mass shootings nationwide this year than days. The public is desperate for a solution, but in Wisconsin, that likely won’t come in the form of any new laws governing who can have a gun.
Democratic lawmakers for years have introduced measures that would make it more difficult to possess firearms — especially ones that can kill a number of people in just seconds.
But Republican lawmakers who control the state Legislature won’t take up any legislation that places new restrictions on guns and instead have passed bills that beef up security at schools and increase funding for mental health services.
Still, the shootings continue. One step toward keeping guns out of the hands of the dangerous would be to expand background checks to private gun sales — a proposal lawmakers often turn to because of its widespread support.
The vast majority of people in Wisconsin agree on making that policy change, according to 2018 polling by Marquette University Law School. Nationally, 96% of Democrats, 84% of Republicans and 89% of Independents support the measure, according to a recent Marist poll.
Despite overwhelming support, the move won’t be made here anytime soon.
“For any Republican to say ‘I support universal background checks’ would be career suicide,” Clemson University political scientist Steven Miller said.
The National Rifle Association’s political arm likely would help elect a primary opponent of any Republican candidate who seeks or supports such restrictions, Miller said, and support for the added safeguard, while wide, isn’t that intense.
“Most people think that’s a good idea, but most people don’t care too much and the people who oppose that are really serious about that,” he said. “Because the minority is much more mobilized, they are more likely to get what they want.”
To that point, the same Marquette University Law School polling showed that while 81% supported making the change, 43% didn’t think the measure would actually stop any mass shootings like the two in El Paso and Dayton over the weekend.
Expanding background checks to online buyers of firearms would have prevented a Brown Deer man who was barred by a judge from possessing firearms from purchasing online the handgun he used to kill three people at a Brookfield spa in 2012.
But some still fear the policy. “The biggest fear with universal background checks ... the only way to police that is gun registration,” said Brett Fankhauser, manager of Deerfield Pistol and Archery Center in eastern Dane County. “The big fear among the community is ‘OK, first they register them and then they come and get them.’”
Scott Whiting, who has owned the indoor range and shop for 20 years, said new laws aren’t needed, but the ones in place aren’t being enforced properly.
“Of course I’m a supporter of our Second Amendment right but on the other hand I agree there probably needs to be some better monitoring to make sure we’re keeping firearms out of the hands of those who shouldn’t have them,” he said.
Whiting said barring repeat criminal offenders from owning firearms is one law that needs to be better enforced. He also said anyone stopped from buying a gun would find a way to get one anyway.
“They’re buying them on the street somewhere. They’re stealing them somewhere,” he said. “They’re committing a crime to get a gun to commit a crime.”
Connor Betts — a 24-year-old who used a .223-caliber rifle with 100-round magazines to kill nine people in less than 30 seconds in Dayton on Sunday — should never have been allowed to legally buy a firearm, he said.
“He had a hit list,” Whiting said. “Had that been addressed back when they determined (he made the list), perhaps all of this could have been avoided ... the issue wasn’t the gun. The issue was the guy.”
Even so, Fankhauser isn’t convinced Betts wouldn’t have sought to kill another way.
“He would have found another way to do what he did. Whether it be a knife or driving a car into a crowd of people. Everybody has cars,” he said.
Gov. Tony Evers has called on lawmakers to pass a so-called red-flag law, which allows police or family members to petition a court to remove firearms from anyone deemed dangerous to themselves or others. President Donald Trump has said he supports a national version of the measure, too.
Republican leaders of the state Legislature are opposed to the idea, worried the red-flag process would unfairly remove firearms from people who have a constitutional right to them.
“I will not entertain proposals to take away second amendment rights or due process,” Vos said Tuesday on Twitter.
Whiting and Fankhauser suspect such a policy could lead to abuse through retribution — like a jilted spouse seeking to punish their wife or husband — resulting in safe gun owners losing their firearms.
“He’s guilty until proven innocent — that’s the problem with the red-flag law,” Whiting said. “I realize a certain percentage of a time they’re right — and it’s a good thing — but there’s a lot of times when they’re wrong.”
Pardeep Kaleka lost his father when a white supremacist brought a handgun to a Sikh Temple in Oak Creek, which Kaleka’s father founded. Satwant Singh Kaleka was one of six people who were killed in the attack.
Kaleka said assuming attackers will find other ways to carry out the same level of violence is speculative.
“That’s not what’s going on,” Kaleka said. “What’s happening in front of our eyes is innocent people are being killed by firearms.”
Kaleka’s father was killed in 2012 — just four months before another killer walked into an elementary school in Newton, Connecticut, and killed 26 people, including 20 children under the age of 7.
He said momentum to change state and national policies related to guns was high following the two shootings but has since waned.
“We were inspired quite a bit about what we can do and what we can pass — some kind of sane gun legislation,” he said. “But over time, just the habituation of mass violence — mass murder — has dampened that spirit ... the normalization of misery over time.”
Hurdles have been put in place by a vocal few in the face of what feels like enormous support, he said.
“A lot of times the fringes are better at standing in the way of progress, and the other people who are saying yes are saying it in secrecy,” he said. “So that 90% — I will not say they are not speaking at all — but if it’s in silence, it’s not creating enough of a want to (change policy).”
Kaleka wants Wisconsin lawmakers to expand background checks to private gun sales and gun shows and registering all firearms.
Miller, the Clemson professor, said neither policy would really blunt the possibility of more shootings.
“The problem is in part both the easy access to gun supply and the sheer volume of gun supply,” he said. “Universal background checks are nice, but you have to address the scope of the fact that AR15s are not designed for self-defense. They are designed for warfare.”