The fight for Constitutional Carry was long and hard and all of us in Wisconsin fought hard.
In the end permit carry has passed the legislature and will be signed by Governor Walker this Friday.
While we lost the battle but we will win the war, when the debate about concealed carry started it was simply between no carry or permit carry. Because of the hard work by patriots like yourself we shifted the debate to permit carry or Constitutional Carry.
We had permit carry on the ropes and Constitutional Carry was beginning to get the press and recognition that it deserved as the only constitutional way to enact concealed carry.
It was then that Governor Walker swooped out of the clouds and took a boot to the face of liberty.
Walker issued a statement saying any bill that reaches his desk should include a permit and training.
After this the calls for compromise renewed in strength and Constitutional Carry was turned into permit carry.
And there you have it: Scott Walker loses the respect of gun owners as he — ignoring tens of thousands of WI C4L member petitions, phone calls and e-mails delivered to his office — snuggles up to anti-gun police organizations while knifing gun owners in the back.
Yes, I know the institutional gun lobby initially gave lip service to SB93 — which, at the time of this writing has magically morphed into the NRA’s Personal Protection Act (PPA) — and they claim any concealed carry bill is a step in the right direction.
They also assert that in nearly every other state where Constitutional Carry has passed, it is always preceded by acceptance of a permit bill, paving the way like the Lewis and Clark of gun rights. But there’s a problem with this excuse: Those states don’t boast majorities or a coveted super-trifecta of newly elected republicans.
It’s one thing to argue for incrementalism when you’re politically outgunned; it’s another thing to preemptively concede the battle when you’re in power, which is precisely what state republicans have done by taking Constitutional Carry off the table.
As of this writing, the permit-to-carry bill has passed, but the real test is what happens afterward when things quiet down. That’s when state politicians will tell gun owners to shut up and go away, “we gave you your carry bill,” they will say. And many will.
But not us. You see, the fire for Constitutional Carry has already been lit. The people have gotten a taste for the political feasibility of liberty only to have it yanked away not by anti-gun democrats, but by republicans who are working for state police rather than for them. What that means for Walker, and the other F-rated big-government antigun republicans like Jeff Fitzgerald in the Wisconsin legislature, is this:
If you fought against Constitutional Carry, your F-rating is well-deserved, a fact that will not be lost on voters in upcoming elections.
Print 
PDF