The WI GOP fail on gun measures was tragedy and farce

The legislative show WI Republicans put on Friday by instantly killing two popular gun safety bills was a tragedy inside a farce.

Because dismissing the proposals and adjourning a special legislative session in seconds and without any debate would be mere clownish buffoonery if the issues at hand were not matters of life and death.

As domestic-violence gun homicides, accidents, and suicides march on - - 

Wisconsin gun deaths marked by suicides among rural men, study says

- - or consider the data in this comprehensive piece - - 

Between 1999 and 2014, 408 children in Wisconsin were killed by guns, including 21 children in 2014. Put another way, a child has died from injuries inflicted by a firearm about once every two weeks in Wisconsin since 1999. Firearms are the third leading cause of injury death for Wisconsin children, and they have killed more children in Wisconsin than drowning, fires, and falls combined....

Between 1999 and 2014, 167 children in Milwaukee County were killed with firearms. That means that 41%, or a little more than four out of every ten firearm deaths of children in Wisconsin, occurred in Milwaukee County. Milwaukee County had 4.4 child deaths from firearms per 100,000 children over this period, compared to a death rate of 1.4 in the remainder of the state. That means that children in Milwaukee County were three times as likely as children in the rest of the state to be killed by firearms.

Other counties in which a significant number of children were killed by firearms over this period include the combined area of Brown, Outagamie and Winnebago Counties, in which 30 children died, and Dane County, in which 16 children died. The appendix includes a list of all Wisconsin counties in which five or more children were killed with guns between 1999 and 2014.

Older children are the most likely to be killed with firearms, but even the youngest children are sometimes victims. Fifteen children in Wisconsin age four years and younger have been killed by firearms since 1999, about one child a year. Another 14 children who were five to nine years old died over this period. The remainder of the children who died were age 10 or older, with the largest share of children — 57% — ages 16 and 17... 

Research has shown that identifying prohibited persons through background checks and denying their gun purchases reduces their risk of committing new gun-related or violent crimes by approximately 25%.[9] Reducing the likelihood that a particular individual will commit a gun-related crime could contribute to a reduction in the number of children killed with guns. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends background checks for firearm purchases as one way to “reduce the destructive effects of guns in the lives of children and adolescents.”

States that have changed requirements for background checks have seen corresponding changes in the level of gun violence.

- - citizens should remind GOP legislators that "No" is only a syllable and not a public service strategy, though more and more along with Speaker Vos's equally vapid "#Never" it's the WI GOP's most important playbook.

Perhaps the most ludicrous excuse GOP State Sen. Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald hid behind Friday was that intellectually-dishonest fallback frequently hauled out by weak politicians caught on the wrong side of the facts; trash the pollsters.

Fitzgerald questioned the accuracy of the polls.

“Polling is one thing,” he said. “I think if you get into the details, because some of these bills are so technical, you may get a different response.”

Fitzgerald cast doubt on non-partisan, scientific polling which has shown 80% or better support in Wisconsin for universal gun-buyers' background checks and for the so-called 'red-flag warning' bill - - both of which he kept off the Senate floor to make sure his members would never have to take special-interest-bucking votes.


About polling, Fitzgerald and his chicken-sh*t caucus know better. They live-and-die by polling which tells them when to run, when to flip and when to retire. And they know that denying polling at the 80% level is beyond stupidity.

He might as well tell the game warden if caught with clearly undersized walleye;  'Yes, your tape measure shows my 16-inch walleye are only 10-inches long, but let's get into the details: have you actually measured that tape measure to prove that what you say is an inch is really an inch?'

Or imagine an NFL referee telling the Lambeau Field crowd after the crucial 4th-down-and-goal winning scoring play near the end of the game; 'The Green Bay runner advanced the ball beyond the length of the chain into the end zone, but the Bears have challenged the ruling because I can't certify that the ten-yard chair is a true ten yards. So, Chicago ball. And I'm going home.'

Then imagine that ref having a solid chance to be elected to Congress.

And when that's backed up by polling, do you think Fitzgerald will attack the results?