Mike
Site Co-Founder
imported post
2 typos - my first name is Mike not Mark. Also, our request to Sen. Decker was not repeal the vehicle and school zone carry bans - it was tosuggest he amend SB 222 to make it work as he intended, and let hunters OC in veghicles - as drafted, SB 222 does not overcome the concealed carry ban according to judicial interpretation in State v. Fry.
--
http://www.madison.com/tct/news/stories/455641
Gun toters point to eased regulations as fix for recent violence
Steven Elbow — 6/20/2009 8:28 am
With two area murders in the past two weeks, two officers shot, and a popular candy store owner killed in Milwaukee -- all by gunfire -- it might seem to be an odd time to try to get more guns on the street. But gun advocates say this is the perfect time to build momentum for a movement that is already gaining traction.
"That's just all the more reason why the good guys ought to be able to carry their guns," says Mark Stollenwerk, co-founder of OpenCarry.org, a Virginia-based pro-gun website that has targeted Wisconsin for a media and lobbying campaign to loosen restrictions on guns.
Stollenwerk says of the 44 states that allow citizens to openly carry firearms, Wisconsin has the most obstacles in place to infringe on that right -- in particular, a 1,000-foot ban around schools and a prohibition against driving with a firearm within reach.
Repealing either prohibition is a bad idea, according to Dane County Sheriff Dave Mahoney.
While acknowledging an advisory opinion by state Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen in April that citizens should not be sanctioned for carrying guns in public, Mahoney says, "I think we need to adhere to some exceptions."
He says he doesn't want schools to be put in harm's way, and he doesn't want his officers wondering if every driver they pull over has access to a gun.
And the argument that more guns equals less crime? He fears that deterring crime by citizen gunfire is a recipe for disaster.
"I don't know that we want the streets of Madison to be the OK Corral," he says.
Madison Mayor Dave Cieslewicz -- contending with heightened neighborhood unease in the wake of a 17-year-old high school student being gunned down on the city's southwest side two weeks ago, and the murder last week of a 23-year-old Madison man in nearby Fitchburg -- agrees.
"I don't think the answer to gun violence is more guns," he says.
He says Madison Police Chief Noble Wray will be heading up a task force of law enforcement officials that will focus on reducing gun violence and getting guns off the street. Wray declined comment for this story.
But gun advocates are sticking with their main argument: Criminals already have guns, so why shouldn't law-abiding citizens?
"You make a store or a school or a bank a no-gun zone, you make it a prime target for somebody who wants to shoot the place up," says Sauk City gun advocate Candace Dainty.
Dainty, statewide organizer for the national group Second Amendment Sisters, is outspoken in her belief that guns -- carried in the open or concealed -- should be allowed anywhere: schools, public buildings, hospitals. Earlier this year, she tried to organize a rally to take place on June 16 on the grounds of the State Capitol. She scrubbed the plan, ironically, because she was afraid of who might show up with a gun. Reading an online forum on OpenCarry.org, she came upon discussions among several people who planned to show up with long guns, which would have taken the event in an unintended direction, she says.
"In every whole group, you're going to have a nut case or two," she says. "And my rally drew out the nut cases."
OpenCarry.org had wanted to play a part in the rally, but its main focus is issue involvement. Using donations from Wisconsin, OpenCarry has launched a radio ad campaign to encourage people to visit its website. The group, which boasts 19,000 members nationally, has sent e-mails to lawmakers with its concerns, and it encourages others to do the same.
"Let's talk to the right guy for the right law," Stollenwerk says. "This is one way to tell them. If he gets more than three or four of these e-mails, he's going to investigate what the heck's going on. If he gets 10 or 20, he may introduce a bill."
OpenCarry has posted a petition for the Wisconsin Legislature on its website, which Stollenwerk says has garnered about 1,500 signatures. It has targeted Senate Majority Leader Russ Decker, D-Weston, who has introduced a bill that would eliminate the requirement that hunters encase their guns while inside a vehicle. Stollenwerk says he wants the bill to include the elimination of school zones and to allow citizens to drive with holstered sidearms.
"Although open carry is legal, there are so many obstacles, you almost need a master's degree in statutes to get around the state," he says. "We gotta get this 1,000-foot gun ban around schools repealed, and we've certainly got to fix this problem in vehicles."
According to his spokeswoman, Carrie Lynch, Decker isn't interested.
"It's about hunting," she says of the bill, "and we're not going to be amending it to include any other concerns."
Emboldened by a renewed pro-gun movement -- fueled nationally by the election of President Barack Obama, who many believed was set to enact wide-ranging gun restrictions, and in Wisconsin by Van Hollen's advisory opinion -- the pro-gun movement is on a roll.
Stollenwerk said he's never seen anything like it and that contrary to the expectations of many, the takeover of the U.S. government and many state governments by Democrats has been a boon to the movement.
"Congress is passing more pro-gun legislation than they have in probably 50 years," he says.
Congressional Democrats in Washington, seeing guns as a political third rail, have recently voted to roll back restrictions on firearms in national parks, following the lead of several states that have done the same.
A retired lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army, Stollenwerk is now a third-year law student at Georgetown University and founder of the pro-gun law student group called the Georgetown Law-Militia. As states debate gun laws, his group's website provides legal advice and an organizational forum. It also provides talking points that keep activists focused.
"We're enabling people to communicate and take gun rights to a higher level of discussion," he says.
He points to a meeting in Greenfield, Wis., last week as a case in point.
Greenfield Ald. Linda Lubotsky had wanted to allow police to fine gun-toting citizens who entered stores that posted "no gun" signs.
About 15 gun advocates showed up armed with information, some of which made it apparent that the proposed ordinance was likely to come under a credible legal challenge.
The proposal was tabled pending further research, but Lubotsky still hopes she can pass an ordinance that can hold up to legal scrutiny.
"There were about 15 people there that took their guns off and left them in the car, because this is a public building, and they gave me a lot of information and they were very courteous," she says. "They attend all these different municipal meetings to try to protect their rights, which is certainly their option."
Lubotsky says she's not against open carry of firearms; she just wants store owners to be able to have a say on what weapons are being brought into their stores.
Gun activists also showed up last week at a City Council meeting in South Milwaukee, where a similar ordinance went down on a 4-4 vote, with the mayor refusing to break the tie.
"What's going to happen in Wisconsin, like other states, is you're going to get people who go to these public meetings, and they're going to travel beyond their hometown," Stollenwerk says, adding that eventually, officials will have to accept guns as a matter of course.
"Once you reach a critical mass of people who stand up and start carrying and say, 'If you bother me I'm going to sue you' ... all of a sudden it's like the sky clears, and all of a sudden, basically, they leave you alone."
Law enforcement officials in Madison and Fitchburg, where area gun violence has been especially rife in recent weeks, declined comment on the gun advocates' argument that more guns equals less crime.
But a Google news search for accidental shootings reveals the downside of gun ownership: There's the 3-year-old girl in Bakersfield, Calif., who found a .45-caliber handgun under her parents' bed and shot her 2-year-old brother dead; the Newton County, Texas, man who went to his trailer home to retrieve a .40-caliber Glock pistol to settle a property dispute but instead shot his fiance in the head; the Hiram, Ohio, man who killed his 58-year-old wife while he was cleaning his gun.
But Stollenwerk is quick to provide the positives: the far more rare but less tragic stories of crimes thwarted by plucky armed citizens. There's the son in Biloxi, Miss., who plugged an intruder in his mother's home; the man in a pharmacy drive-up in Tucson, Ariz., who shot a woman whose gun malfunctioned when she tried to fire at him; the Roanoke, Va., family man who, upon hearing a deranged man trying to enter his home, locked his family in a bedroom and then shot the intruder.
Examples like these, which were published in the July 2009 National Rifle Association newsletter, are the meat and potatoes of the pro-gun advocates' arguments in defense of the right to bear arms. The passion such stories engender have Stollenwerk hopeful that someday, Wisconsin will move beyond the current debate about open carry and join the other 48 states that allow citizens to carry concealed weapons.
"A lot of people like to jump right to concealed carry, but first things first," he says. "You've got to get your basic rights to move around the state with a gun openly before you start talking about trying to get a special permit to conceal one."
selbow@madison.com
2 typos - my first name is Mike not Mark. Also, our request to Sen. Decker was not repeal the vehicle and school zone carry bans - it was tosuggest he amend SB 222 to make it work as he intended, and let hunters OC in veghicles - as drafted, SB 222 does not overcome the concealed carry ban according to judicial interpretation in State v. Fry.
--
http://www.madison.com/tct/news/stories/455641
Gun toters point to eased regulations as fix for recent violence
Steven Elbow — 6/20/2009 8:28 am
With two area murders in the past two weeks, two officers shot, and a popular candy store owner killed in Milwaukee -- all by gunfire -- it might seem to be an odd time to try to get more guns on the street. But gun advocates say this is the perfect time to build momentum for a movement that is already gaining traction.
"That's just all the more reason why the good guys ought to be able to carry their guns," says Mark Stollenwerk, co-founder of OpenCarry.org, a Virginia-based pro-gun website that has targeted Wisconsin for a media and lobbying campaign to loosen restrictions on guns.
Stollenwerk says of the 44 states that allow citizens to openly carry firearms, Wisconsin has the most obstacles in place to infringe on that right -- in particular, a 1,000-foot ban around schools and a prohibition against driving with a firearm within reach.
Repealing either prohibition is a bad idea, according to Dane County Sheriff Dave Mahoney.
While acknowledging an advisory opinion by state Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen in April that citizens should not be sanctioned for carrying guns in public, Mahoney says, "I think we need to adhere to some exceptions."
He says he doesn't want schools to be put in harm's way, and he doesn't want his officers wondering if every driver they pull over has access to a gun.
And the argument that more guns equals less crime? He fears that deterring crime by citizen gunfire is a recipe for disaster.
"I don't know that we want the streets of Madison to be the OK Corral," he says.
Madison Mayor Dave Cieslewicz -- contending with heightened neighborhood unease in the wake of a 17-year-old high school student being gunned down on the city's southwest side two weeks ago, and the murder last week of a 23-year-old Madison man in nearby Fitchburg -- agrees.
"I don't think the answer to gun violence is more guns," he says.
He says Madison Police Chief Noble Wray will be heading up a task force of law enforcement officials that will focus on reducing gun violence and getting guns off the street. Wray declined comment for this story.
But gun advocates are sticking with their main argument: Criminals already have guns, so why shouldn't law-abiding citizens?
"You make a store or a school or a bank a no-gun zone, you make it a prime target for somebody who wants to shoot the place up," says Sauk City gun advocate Candace Dainty.
Dainty, statewide organizer for the national group Second Amendment Sisters, is outspoken in her belief that guns -- carried in the open or concealed -- should be allowed anywhere: schools, public buildings, hospitals. Earlier this year, she tried to organize a rally to take place on June 16 on the grounds of the State Capitol. She scrubbed the plan, ironically, because she was afraid of who might show up with a gun. Reading an online forum on OpenCarry.org, she came upon discussions among several people who planned to show up with long guns, which would have taken the event in an unintended direction, she says.
"In every whole group, you're going to have a nut case or two," she says. "And my rally drew out the nut cases."
OpenCarry.org had wanted to play a part in the rally, but its main focus is issue involvement. Using donations from Wisconsin, OpenCarry has launched a radio ad campaign to encourage people to visit its website. The group, which boasts 19,000 members nationally, has sent e-mails to lawmakers with its concerns, and it encourages others to do the same.
"Let's talk to the right guy for the right law," Stollenwerk says. "This is one way to tell them. If he gets more than three or four of these e-mails, he's going to investigate what the heck's going on. If he gets 10 or 20, he may introduce a bill."
OpenCarry has posted a petition for the Wisconsin Legislature on its website, which Stollenwerk says has garnered about 1,500 signatures. It has targeted Senate Majority Leader Russ Decker, D-Weston, who has introduced a bill that would eliminate the requirement that hunters encase their guns while inside a vehicle. Stollenwerk says he wants the bill to include the elimination of school zones and to allow citizens to drive with holstered sidearms.
"Although open carry is legal, there are so many obstacles, you almost need a master's degree in statutes to get around the state," he says. "We gotta get this 1,000-foot gun ban around schools repealed, and we've certainly got to fix this problem in vehicles."
According to his spokeswoman, Carrie Lynch, Decker isn't interested.
"It's about hunting," she says of the bill, "and we're not going to be amending it to include any other concerns."
Emboldened by a renewed pro-gun movement -- fueled nationally by the election of President Barack Obama, who many believed was set to enact wide-ranging gun restrictions, and in Wisconsin by Van Hollen's advisory opinion -- the pro-gun movement is on a roll.
Stollenwerk said he's never seen anything like it and that contrary to the expectations of many, the takeover of the U.S. government and many state governments by Democrats has been a boon to the movement.
"Congress is passing more pro-gun legislation than they have in probably 50 years," he says.
Congressional Democrats in Washington, seeing guns as a political third rail, have recently voted to roll back restrictions on firearms in national parks, following the lead of several states that have done the same.
A retired lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army, Stollenwerk is now a third-year law student at Georgetown University and founder of the pro-gun law student group called the Georgetown Law-Militia. As states debate gun laws, his group's website provides legal advice and an organizational forum. It also provides talking points that keep activists focused.
"We're enabling people to communicate and take gun rights to a higher level of discussion," he says.
He points to a meeting in Greenfield, Wis., last week as a case in point.
Greenfield Ald. Linda Lubotsky had wanted to allow police to fine gun-toting citizens who entered stores that posted "no gun" signs.
About 15 gun advocates showed up armed with information, some of which made it apparent that the proposed ordinance was likely to come under a credible legal challenge.
The proposal was tabled pending further research, but Lubotsky still hopes she can pass an ordinance that can hold up to legal scrutiny.
"There were about 15 people there that took their guns off and left them in the car, because this is a public building, and they gave me a lot of information and they were very courteous," she says. "They attend all these different municipal meetings to try to protect their rights, which is certainly their option."
Lubotsky says she's not against open carry of firearms; she just wants store owners to be able to have a say on what weapons are being brought into their stores.
Gun activists also showed up last week at a City Council meeting in South Milwaukee, where a similar ordinance went down on a 4-4 vote, with the mayor refusing to break the tie.
"What's going to happen in Wisconsin, like other states, is you're going to get people who go to these public meetings, and they're going to travel beyond their hometown," Stollenwerk says, adding that eventually, officials will have to accept guns as a matter of course.
"Once you reach a critical mass of people who stand up and start carrying and say, 'If you bother me I'm going to sue you' ... all of a sudden it's like the sky clears, and all of a sudden, basically, they leave you alone."
Law enforcement officials in Madison and Fitchburg, where area gun violence has been especially rife in recent weeks, declined comment on the gun advocates' argument that more guns equals less crime.
But a Google news search for accidental shootings reveals the downside of gun ownership: There's the 3-year-old girl in Bakersfield, Calif., who found a .45-caliber handgun under her parents' bed and shot her 2-year-old brother dead; the Newton County, Texas, man who went to his trailer home to retrieve a .40-caliber Glock pistol to settle a property dispute but instead shot his fiance in the head; the Hiram, Ohio, man who killed his 58-year-old wife while he was cleaning his gun.
But Stollenwerk is quick to provide the positives: the far more rare but less tragic stories of crimes thwarted by plucky armed citizens. There's the son in Biloxi, Miss., who plugged an intruder in his mother's home; the man in a pharmacy drive-up in Tucson, Ariz., who shot a woman whose gun malfunctioned when she tried to fire at him; the Roanoke, Va., family man who, upon hearing a deranged man trying to enter his home, locked his family in a bedroom and then shot the intruder.
Examples like these, which were published in the July 2009 National Rifle Association newsletter, are the meat and potatoes of the pro-gun advocates' arguments in defense of the right to bear arms. The passion such stories engender have Stollenwerk hopeful that someday, Wisconsin will move beyond the current debate about open carry and join the other 48 states that allow citizens to carry concealed weapons.
"A lot of people like to jump right to concealed carry, but first things first," he says. "You've got to get your basic rights to move around the state with a gun openly before you start talking about trying to get a special permit to conceal one."
selbow@madison.com