Raising a red flag on Memorial Day – Wisconsin Examiner

As a nationwide vacation, Memorial Day is supposed to deliver us collectively. Even when we differ on the politics that led our nation into the various wars the U.S. has fought through the years, I can recognize my neighbors who elevate a flag, fingers on hearts, on the veterans’ memorial on the native park. It’s transferring to honor service, sacrifice, the elevation of a better good over particular person self-interest. Regardless of our variations, we are able to come collectively round our shared historical past and our nation’s beliefs — that every one persons are created equal, that, no matter race, faith or nationwide origin all of us belong, collectively, to this huge, imperfect democracy that goals to uphold liberty and justice for all.

However this yr is completely different.

This yr, over Memorial Day weekend, households have been gathered in Uvalde, Texas and Buffalo, New York to bury their family members — 19 little youngsters and two lecturers shot lifeless of their lecture rooms in Uvalde; a retired police lieutenant, a substitute trainer and a beloved grandmother of six among the many 10 Black victims of the racist gunman within the Tops grocery store in Buffalo. On Friday, with mother and father and group members nonetheless reeling, the Nationwide Rifle Affiliation introduced its members to Texas for the group’s annual convention. Gun rights activists wrapped themselves within the flag, repeating the phrases  “liberty” and “freedom” advert nauseum, till they have been drained of all which means. The individuals who defend unfettered entry to automated rifles with no background checks, who oppose even essentially the most modest measures to guard towards one more mass taking pictures, declare to symbolize America’s highest beliefs. There have been extra firearms deaths within the U.S. since 1968 than  U.S. troopers killed in each battle because the Revolutionary Conflict. Our nation isn’t just divided, it’s damaged.

Gun worship is a horrible illness. And right here in Wisconsin we’re not immune.

Within the days between the 2 mass shootings in New York and Texas, Wisconsin Republicans met in Middleton for his or her celebration conference and authorized their 2022 celebration resolutions. Towards the start of the resolutions doc on web page 4, there’s a piece titled  “conservative values.” First amongst these is “2nd Modification and gun rights.”

There, in black and white, the celebration unequivocally states its place that the state should improve unfettered, unregulated entry to weapons. The platform takes a agency stand towards common background checks for gun purchases. It opposes the monitoring by the federal Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms of the hundreds of thousands of weapons bought yearly in the US. And it particularly derides Gov. Tony Evers’ proposal that Wisconsin be part of 19 different states which have purple flag legal guidelines — also referred to as excessive danger safety orders — that allow police or relations to petition a court docket to briefly take away firearms from an individual who poses a right away danger to himself or others. 

A defiant Wisconsin GOP

The language of the resolutions is proudly defiant, trashing modest gun security laws floated by Evers and President Joe Biden as if this have been the plain ethical excessive floor:

“NOW, THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED, that the Republican Occasion of Wisconsin, in conference assembled, states its opposition to the creation of those “gun management” legal guidelines; and BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that the Republican Occasion of Wisconsin asks that the legislature defend the residents from this real, extreme risk to our liberty by exhibiting its opposition to those legal guidelines by not allowing this laws to come back earlier than the Wisconsin State Meeting or Senate; and BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that our authorities leaders defend our 2nd Modification Rights by opposing any laws that will prohibit the sale or possession of lawfully produced weapons, clips/magazines, and ammunition or any laws that will impose extraordinary taxes or charges on similar.”

If the worth of “liberty” is that we should tolerate the periodic bloodbath of elementary college youngsters of their lecture rooms and grandmothers on the grocery store, that’s OK with the Republican Occasion of Wisconsin.

In its platform, the GOP additional resolves to get rid of the present state system for issuing permits for weapons and make Wisconsin a “constitutional carry” state, permitting the authorized, public carrying of handguns, both hid or out within the open, and not using a license or allow.

Wisconsin Republicans’ obsession with growing the proliferation of weapons has reached the purpose the place they don’t even justify it in sensible phrases anymore. It’s only a matter of religion, impervious to cause.

Take Meeting Speaker Robin Vos’ feedback to the Related Press that he’s “open to the thought” of arming lecturers, to allow them to have interaction in classroom shootouts — an answer that reveals you ways really off the rails the GOP has gone. Even Vos admits that placing extra weapons in colleges is unlikely to stop college shootings. “The concept that we’re going to take a heinous act like this [the Uvalde school massacre] and discover some sort of logical strategy to forestall it 100% of the time, I simply don’t see that occurring,” he instructed the AP.

What sort of a society throws up its fingers and declares that it could’t defend its personal youngsters from being mowed down in school?

The concept that mass shootings are unavoidable is just a lie. 

The US is an outlier amongst nations. We endured 214 mass shootings inside the first 145 days of 2022 — a couple of per day. The speed of loss of life by gun violence on this nation is matched solely by international locations like El Salvador and Guatemala, the place governments have been overrun by armed gangs. Amongst First World nations, there may be no comparability.

It’s fairly apparent that unleashing hundreds of thousands of weapons and refusing to control or observe their use results in extra gun violence.

However among the many “actually good concepts” proposed by Wisconsin Republicans within the final legislative session, in keeping with Vos in a current interview with Wisconsin Eye, was “making it simpler to personal a firearm to guard your self coping with crime.” One such invoice would have allowed individuals to carry hid weapons onto college grounds.

As Republicans push for much less and fewer regulation and increasingly weapons, gun violence retains going up. The Examiner’s Isiah Holmes stories that after former Gov. Scott Walker signed a sequence of payments making it faster and simpler to purchase a gun and permitting Wisconsinites to hold hid firearms, gun homicides elevated. And incidents of violent gun deaths have carefully tracked the variety of hid carry permits issued within the state. 

There’s no query that the NRA and its handmaids within the Republican celebration, each in Wisconsin and nationally, have actively labored to create the situations for mass shootings. They efficiently blocked the renewal of the 1994 federal assault weapons ban when it expired in 2004, making it potential for the 18-year-old shooter in Uvalde to legally buy a semi-automatic weapon particularly designed to kill as many individuals as potential as rapidly as potential. They’ve lobbied closely towards background checks. In a victory for the NRA right here in Wisconsin, former Republican Gov. Scott Walker did away with 48-hour ready durations for handgun purchases in 2015.

The Republicans know that measures like ready durations make weapons much less accessible and subsequently scale back their use. That’s why they’ve imposed the identical ready durations and different restrictions on abortion entry that they object to on the subject of buying weapons. In relation to abortion, they are saying these restrictions are a approach of “defending human life.”

Defending gun producers

If Republicans are tired of defending college youngsters from the following mass taking pictures, they’ve given loads of thought to defending gun producers from lawsuits after the following mass taking pictures happens. 

In February, the Legislature pushed by way of a invoice to guard gun sellers from civil lawsuits.The measure, Senate Invoice 570, would forestall individuals from suing gun and ammunition makers, distributors and sellers when their merchandise are used illegally. SB-570 was backed by the NRA, Wisconsin Firearm Homeowners, Wisconsin Gun Homeowners, Wisconsin Bear Hunters Affiliation, Nationwide Taking pictures Sports activities Basis and Hunter Nation, in keeping with Wisconsin Democracy Marketing campaign.

The Wisconsin invoice was a response to a profitable settlement by households of youngsters murdered within the 2012 mass taking pictures at Sandy Hook Elementary College in Connecticut. The households obtained $73 million from Remington, which manufactured the assault rifle used to kill 20 first-graders and 6 lecturers. SB570, which was vetoed by Evers, would have banned such lawsuits in Wisconsin.

It’s exhausting to fathom how Republicans in our state and nationally may stay decided not simply to do nothing to guard towards mass shootings, however to actively again insurance policies that improve gun violence.

Regardless of their rhetoric about defending American values, many of the public will not be with them. A big majority of individuals in the US inform pollsters that they favor stronger background checks for gun house owners and purple flag legal guidelines. Most of us don’t purchase the concept that we’ll be protected if we every, individually, begin carrying a gun in all places we go, in case we’ve to shoot again to defend ourselves towards the growing danger of gun violence.

There’s no query that the chance is growing. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives simply launched a startling report exhibiting that licensed gun producers produced greater than 11 million new weapons in 2020, virtually triple the quantity produced in 2000.

Maddeningly, Republicans see political alternative within the rising worry and insecurity after every new taking pictures. When Milwaukee Bucks followers have been caught in crossfire within the Deer District that injured 21 individuals, the identical Republicans who help insurance policies that upped the movement of unregulated firearms into town,  together with GOP gubernatorial candidate Rebecca Kleefisch, cashed in on the disaster, dashing to make marketing campaign advertisements posturing as defenders of public security. 

Thus far, voters haven’t compelled Republicans to take duty for the results of their actions. Till that adjustments, there may be apparently no low to which they won’t sink.

After the college taking pictures in Uvalde, Sen, Ron Johnson prompt that “vital race idea” and “wokeness” have been liable for the homicide of elementary college college students and rejected the concept that “some gun regulation” may have any influence on future mass shootings. 

Perhaps it’s signal that Johnson, who has obtained about $1.2 million in contributions from the NRA, felt he needed to run away from CNN’s Manu Raju to keep away from answering a query about why he opposes increasing background checks for firearms. Likewise, the handful of Republicans who found a sudden scheduling battle that prevented them from attending the NRA conference in Texas gave the impression to be experiencing a obscure stirring of conscience.

What’s patriotism?

As galling as it’s to take heed to Republicans blame mass shootings on the whole lot besides quick access to weapons, in a approach they’re proper that the violence erupting in our nation proper now could be tied to their obsession with nonexistent threats like vital race idea and the “nice substitute”— the concept that individuals of coloration are pushing out whites. (Johnson claims he’s by no means heard of  “the nice substitute”  however he’s made textbook “substitute idea” remarks, attacking President Joe Biden for having what he calls “open border insurance policies” and telling a conservative speak radio host, “I’ve received to imagine [Democrats] wish to change the make-up of the citizens.”)

Right here’s the place Republicans are proper that “vital race idea” and “the nice substitute” are destabilizing our nation: The extra they fire up racist hate, the more serious issues get. They’re feeding a fringe motion that believes America is about white energy backed up by the specter of violence. That deranged thought apparently motivated the shooter in Buffalo to take 10 harmless Black buyers’ lives.

Because of their twisted worldview, the minuteman with a musket pictured on the Wisconsin Republicans’  resolutions doc has morphed into the teenager militiaman Kyle Rittenhouse, who introduced his semi-automatic rifle to Kenosha to kill two unarmed Black Lives Matter protesters.

On Memorial Day, we’d like individuals of all political persuasions to face up towards this deeply distorted view of American patriotism. Violent racism is woven into our nation’s historical past — even when Republicans don’t need children to find out about it at school — however we are able to’t enable it to outline our future. Nor can we settle for that periodic bloodbaths in our communities are the worth of freedom. 

Now we have to discover a strategy to come collectively once more round a shared set of beliefs – freedom from worry, freedom from hate and violence, the optimism that we are able to make a greater life for our kids. We owe them that.