On Target – Gun Legislation

This article is part of On Target, a three-part series on guns and violence in America. A past article on school safety can be found here or in Peninsula Pulse volume 19, issue 2. A future article will cover the second amendment’s role in our culture.

The shooting at an elementary school in Newton Conn. has again turned national attention to firearm legislation.

Although President Barack Obama has proposed a range of firearm policy reforms, most firearm legislation is currently left to the states. Wisconsin legislation has become more open to firearm possession and use in the last five years – a good or bad shift, depending on whom you ask.

In 2011, Wisconsin passed Act 35, the Concealed Carry Law that allows permitted individuals to carry firearms. Permits require minimal training, something Jeff Nass, president of Wisconsin FORCE (Wisconsin Firearm Owners, Ranges, Clubs & Educators Inc), the state’s National Rifle Association group, said was done on purpose.

“If you make training a requirement, you turn it into a middle aged white man’s club, because they like to get instruction,” Nass said.

Wisconsin FORCE hired a lobbyist to promote the organization’s position in Madison about four years ago.

Training is expensive and requiring a lot of it could keep people from getting a permit. Nass said people in poor, urban areas are in the most need of a firearm, and probably can’t afford extensive training courses.

“Our bill went through with minimal training requirements,” Nass said. “We want people to have basic safety.”

But the idea that people with little training are able to carry firearms doesn’t sound like basic safety to Door County District Attorney Ray Pelrine.

Hunter’s education classes, classes from law enforcement officers or private classes count toward training for Carrying a Concealed Weapon permits. There is no specified amount of time training has to take, and no required firearm practice.

“Wisconsin’s Concealed Carry Law makes a complete mockery of any claim that only people who are properly trained can carry concealed weapons,” Pelrine said.

Hunter’s education classes, classes from law enforcement officers or private classes count toward training for Carrying a Concealed Weapon permits. There is no specified amount of time training has to take, and no required firearm practice.

The Concealed Carry Law also changed the way municipalities can define disorderly conduct. A person can’t be charged with disorderly conduct because he or she is carrying a gun, even if the gun is part of said disorderly conduct.

“It is against the law [to] ever arrest or cite a person for disorderly conduct if the conduct is in any way the product of somehow carrying a gun,” Pelrine said.

Shouting, knocking over a barstool, threatening a punch or waving a pair of spectacles could count as disorderly conduct, Pelrine said. He doesn’t think people with guns should get special legal protection.

Nass sees it differently. Protecting firearm holders from disorderly conduct charges is important, he said. They have a right to carry, even if other people are uncomfortable around armed citizens.

He posed this hypothetical situation: You’re at a hardware store, carrying a gun in a holster under your jacket. You have a Carrying a Concealed Weapons permit. You reach toward the top shelf and your jacket shifts, revealing your gun to the store manager. The store manager calls the police, saying you were causing trouble. Should that constitute disorderly conduct?

Because the legislature specifically protects firearms in that instance it takes decisive power away from the judicial system, according to Jeri Bonavia, Executive Director of the Wisconsin Anti-Violence Effort.

“If we as a society put any weight into the importance of having a separate judiciary, then those cases shouldn’t be decided before the facts are presented,” Bonavia said.

Bonavia said the state’s Castle Doctrine, which allows a person to kill an intruder in his or her home, car or business, does the same thing. It automatically protects the person who kills an intruder, without letting a judge or jury hear the case.

“It was a solution looking for a problem,” Bonavia said. She said there hadn’t been problems with people defending themselves against intruders being sentenced.

That’s not the only problem Pelrine sees with the law. It so blatantly protects homeowners that good investigations can’t be done.

He posed a hypothetical situation, where one criminal enters another criminal’s home during a drug deal gone wrong. The homeowner shoots the intruder and because he was protecting himself in his home he is covered by the Castle Doctrine, even though he’s also a criminal.

“In Wisconsin, the guy who does the shooting there has the right,” Pelrine said. “Unless I can prove beyond all reasonable doubt that he wasn’t defending himself, he can’t even be accused of the crime.”

Nass sees the Castle Doctrine as a means of protecting the innocent and explained it with another hypothetical. If someone breaks into your home, you should be able to shoot. How do you know the guy stealing your TV isn’t going to hurt you?

“We wanted to put the onus on law enforcement and the judicial system, where it should be, so they prove you did something wrong instead of you having to prove that you didn’t,” Nass said.

Nass, Pelrine and Bonavia also relied on hypothetical situations and metaphors to explain their views when talking about background checks, another contentious topic.

Bonavia suggested thinking of background checks for firearm purchases like airport security. If going through security before boarding a plane was optional, would we feel safe? Probably not.

Background checks are required when guns are sold at stores, but not when they are sold privately.

Bonavia suggested thinking of background checks for firearm purchases like airport security. If going through security before boarding a plane was optional, would we feel safe? Probably not.

“The notion that we could keep guns out of the hands of criminals and bad guys when we have such a lax security system is absurd,” Bonavia said.

Nass argued that no firearm sales should require background checks. It’s easy to purchase guns illegally, so background checks on gun sales wouldn’t stop criminals from getting firearms. Background checks wouldn’t stop first-time offenders without criminal records either, and they inconvenience law-abiding citizens who want to purchase guns for sport or self-defense.

He posed another hypothetical: this time, imagine a law-abiding gun owner who wants to legally purchase a handgun. Why should he have to go through another background check and the two-day waiting period required to purchase a second handgun?

“What it does is overburden law-abiding citizens and it does nothing or very little to stop criminals,” Nass said.

It will take discussion and work to get the right laws on the books, especially with such varied opinions on safety and firearm rights. But most of us can come together and agree that abusing firearms is wrong, shooting another person when not defending yourself is wrong, and gun violence is a problem.

“Gun owners aren’t happy about gun violence in our country,” Bonavia said. “They aren’t somehow immune to the pain that all of us felt when 20 little kids were shot down. The vast majority of gun owners are more than willing to support policies that will help prevent gun violence as long as they aren’t meaningless attacks on gun rights.”

Read more: Firearm Legislation You Should Know

Who Has a Permit? Commentary on the confidentiality of gun permits