This whole paranoia spawned posting thing will certainly end up in higher court. That is how it should be. Too much he said she said going on in local goverments. Too many city lawyers playing supreme court justice. Hopefully the legislature will enact true constitutional carry and modify Act 35 to eliminate the confusion but I don't think we will see constitutional carry any time soon. The State has committed too much time and money establishing a shall issue law that scrapping it too soon would be a bad political action. It would take courage for any legislator to suggest it be abolished. The resolution will lay with the courts and that is a crap shoot based on the case law we have discussed on this forum. The bottom line is that Article I section 25 of our state constiitution gives every qualified Wisconsin resident the right to use firearms to provide for their own personal protection. The WSC, the AG, the governor have all ruled that as a minimum that constitutional right protects visible carry. The erroneous WSC decision in Hamdan that concealed carry is still lawfully prohibited because we have the alternate manner of visible carry by which we can exercise our rights, is what put us in the position we are today. If the WSC is going to make that distinction between concealed carry as a privilege and visible carry as a right. Then in my opinion the application of Act 35 must be done in accordance. We need the higher courts to make that same proclamation.
The demotion of visible carry from a right to a privilege as done in Act35 is unconstitutional. The intent of Act 35 was to provide a means to allow us the privilege to carry a concealed weapon. The inclusion of visible carry into any of the controls applied to concealed carry is in my opinion, without question, unconstitutional. That includes postage of signs to restrict our right to provide for our personal protection by use of visible firearms in public places. How on earth can the legislature or some lower political unit justify that a law intended to provide for a privilege, can also restrict the exercise of a state constitutional right? In Hamdan the WSC did say that the State may not evicerate Art I section 25. It ruled that the State must provide a means for us to exercise the activities contained in Art I sec 25. That is now constitutional law and as such part of our constitution. It applies to all levels of state goverment.
The "State" is not necessarily an independent body but a conglomeration of a number of sub divisions of political units. Each and every official of each of those units swears on the day they take office to protect and support the constitutions of the U.S. and the State of Wisconsin, so help them God. Increasingly those words are soon forgotten at all levels of government. Local govermnets are more frequently divorcing themselves from the community of the "State" and building cocoons around their enterprises. Even to the point, as we see in the DoJ rules on training, ignoring the rule of the legislature. Somehow the message that we live in a state that is governed by "rule of law" and more specifically constitutional law, needs to be heraled. We have to convince the legislators that any controls on visible carry do not belong in Act 35. The tiltle of the concealed carry statute is
175.60 License to carry a concealed weapon.
End of rant and only my opinion.