Two things are absolutely predictable after every mass shooting in America
One is there will be another one before very long. The other is that Republican politicians will spout nonsense to avoid taking any positive action to reduce widespread slaughter by unregulated firearms.
In Wisconsin, Republican state Rep. Jesse Kremer of Kewaskum and state Sen. Devin LeMahieu of Oostburg responded to the recent mass shooting at an Oregon community college with an appalling bill to force Wisconsin college campuses to stop banning deadly weapons from classroom buildings and sports venues.
Kremer denied the bill to turn campuses into free-fire zones was inspired by the Oregon shooting even though it parrots the National Rifle Association (NRA) line on mass murders that the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.
It’s really not true. Those who’ve examined U.S. mass shootings say there has never been a mass murder in the past three decades that was ever stopped by an armed civilian with a gun.
Kremer claimed he’d been working on the bill for months because he was sitting out there in Kewaskum just worried sick about the safety of college students facing what he’d heard was increasing violence around the UW-Milwaukee campus.
Since I live in that UW-Milwaukee neighborhood and have taught on campus, I would like to put Kremer’s mind at ease. It is actually one of the safest neighborhoods in Milwaukee.
In fact, the neighborhood is so safe and so violence-free that overwhelmingly complaints to police involve petty misdemeanors one would hope not even the crankiest, most anti-student neighbors would ever consider resolving with deadly weapons.
But that brings up another big problem with encouraging college students to pack heat on campus. There’s a rumor going around that college students drink large quantities of alcohol and I’m afraid it’s true.
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If my neighbors get annoyed now by students talking in loud voices late at night when they’re traveling in packs between house parties or going home at closing time, imagine how much worse it would be if completely wasted college students had the option of firing deadly weapons at each other or even into the air just for fun.
Then there’s the serious risk of adding guns to the already rambunctious combination of binge drinking and college sports.
That may be what the UW-Madison Police Department had in mind when it strongly objected to the Republican bill with the vastly understated observation: “Allowing concealed weapons inside a building like Camp Randall Stadium, filled with 80,000 people, creates a major security issue.”
State Sen. LeMahieu, whose district is closer to Green Bay than to Madison, has never been foolish enough to introduce legislation arming Packers fans with deadly weapons at Lambeau Field.
Badger fans deserve the same protection from stadium crossfire on game day. Perhaps Republicans think college students at Camp Randall would be harder to hit since they jump around so much.
Right to a Bloodshed-Free Education
It’s safe to say the overwhelming majority of students, faculty and staff on college campuses strongly support the policies of the UW System and almost every other college campus to ban deadly weapons from classrooms and other venues where students gather.
After all, most of those who study or teach at institutions of higher learning are considered to be intelligent people. That has never been a requirement in politics.
But even many modestly educated Republican supporters aspire for their own children to join that elite world of the well educated so many right-wing politicians openly disdain.
And all parents of Wisconsin students have a right to feel their children can safely receive a bloodshed-free education.
Ignorant legislators like Kremer and LeMahieu are an embarrassment to our state, but we don’t have to be held hostage any more to Republican political cowardice and indifference toward gun violence.
Not so long ago, many Democrats were just as fearful as Republicans about confronting the gun lobby over the horrific consequences of the unrestricted spread of weapons of mass destruction across our country.
But in response to the Christmastime slaughter of children at Newtown and the regular massacres since, we now have a Democratic president and vice president calling for intelligent gun regulation to protect public safety.
Democratic presidential candidates now debate who would be the strongest opponent of the NRA. Republican candidates never do that, of course, but it won’t be easy for them to defend the NRA’s opposition to universal background checks and other common sense regulations.
Even Ronald Reagan, the Republicans’ holy icon, opposed civilian access to military-style assault weapons after a 1989 elementary schoolyard shooting in Stockton, Calif., killed five children and wounded 32 others.
The presidential election could include a showdown over sensible gun regulation that, in one of Reagan’s favorite phrases, could leave more clueless Republicans “on the ash heap of history.”
