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Milwaukee, WI police chief setting stage for confrontation

April 22, 2:28 PM

Seattle Gun Rights Examiner

Dave Workman

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Milwaukee, WI Police Chief Ed Flynn is playing with political nitro glycerin, and he doesn’t seem to realize it, or perhaps he simply doesn’t care.

Quoted by the La Crosse Tribune, Chief Flynn says he will ignore a finding by State Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen that peaceable open carry of firearms is legal. Flynn’s directive to officers in his department is “if you see anybody carrying a gun on the streets of Milwaukee, we’ll put them on the ground, take the gun away and then decide whether you have a right to carry it.”

The chief displayed a rather cavalier, if not outright arrogant, attitude when he added, “Maybe I’ll end up with a protest of cowboys. In the meantime, I’ve got serious offenders with access to handguns. It’s irresponsible to send a message to them that if they just carry it openly no one can bother them.”

My message to my troops is if you see anybody carrying a gun on the streets of Milwaukee, we’ll put them on the ground, take the gun away and then decide whether you have a right to carry it.

Perhaps some higher legal authority might explain to the chief that it is also irresponsible to send a message to the public that a police chief can literally tell the state attorney general to pound sand, he’s going to do it “his way,” and too bad if that violates someone’s civil rights. Already, some people have been arrested for carrying openly, according to my colleague Candace Dainty.

Note to Chief Flynn: Wisconsin is still part of the United States, not a police state. This is the kind of attitude that gets people grumbling about “jack-booted thugs.”

Yet “police state” is exactly what critics in the Open Carry movement have suggested Flynn is trying to establish, evidently with the support of anti-gun Gov. Jim Doyle, and State Rep. Leon Young, a Milwaukee Democrat who plans to introduce legislation banning open carry.

The people have the right to keep and bear arms for security, defense, hunting, recreation or any other lawful purpose. - Article I, Section 25, Wisconsin State Constitution

There is a problem with Young’s plan. It will be unconstitutional under the state’s rock-solid (in language, anyway) constitutional right to keep and bear arms provision. Article I, Section 25 of the Wisconsin State Constitution states, “The people have the right to keep and bear arms for security, defense, hunting, recreation or any other lawful purpose.”

Joe Waldron, legislative director for the Bellevue, WA-based Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, threw a constitutional hardball at Chief Flynn and Rep. Young Wednesday.

“Because Wisconsin does not allow concealed carry,” Waldron said, “the only way for citizens to exercise their constitutional right to keep and bear arms is to carry handguns openly. Chief Flynn should not assume he or his officers have the authority to decide who can and cannot exercise that right.

“If you cannot carry openly, and you cannot carry concealed,” he challenged, “how can law-abiding Wisconsin citizens exercise their state constitutional right to keep and bear arms? We encourage Rep. Young to address that issue to the state Supreme Court before he pushes ahead with that scheme.”

Liberal Democrat Doyle shares much of the blame for this. Twice he has vetoed sensible concealed carry legislation, which might make this open carry dilemma moot.

Milwaukee had 71 homicides last year, the lowest number since 1984. Since 1989, there has been only one other year that the body count has dipped below 100. This year it has already posted 19 homicides.

Contrast Milwaukee with Seattle, WA, a city of approximately the same population, but where citizens have a long-established concealed carry statute and open carry is recognized as legal, without putting people on the ground. Local police and sheriff’s departments even issue training bulletins to their officers, reminding them that open carry is legal.

Last year, Seattle had 28 homicides. So far this year, the city has recorded six criminal homicides, and two justifiable shootings by police officers, both in January. It is probably time to ask Chief Flynn in Milwaukee what his guys are doing wrong under his command that the men and women of the Seattle Police Department are doing right.

While anti-gun Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels seems determined to provoke a lawsuit with his proposed ban on legally-carried guns on city property, the fact that people are legally carrying guns all over Washington State and in Seattle has not turned the place into Tombstone or Deadwood. Perhaps Nickels should move to Milwaukee and become mayor there. His attitude about legally-carried firearms squares with Flynn’s, and Nickels also made the imperial presumption that he can ignore an opinion from the state attorney general. Those two guys were made for each other.

See what other Gun Rights Examiners are saying:

For more info: Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms.

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Milwaukee, WI police chief setting stage for confrontation

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