MADISON, Wis. (AP) - Wisconsin Republicans moved ahead with narrow bills to streamline gun seizures in domestic abuse cases Thursday. Minority Democrats, though, demanded the GOP go bigger and impose universal background checks.
The Senate’s public safety committee unanimously approved a measure that would create a formal legal process for confiscating guns from people subject to domestic restraining orders with no discussion.
The panel also unanimously approved a proposal that would require judges preparing to return weapons as restraining orders expire to ask the state Justice Department to determine if anything else in the person’s record prohibits them from possessing a gun. The only comment on that bill came from committee Chairman Jerry Petrowski, R-Marathon, the measure’s chief Senate sponsor. He said the proposal would help the flow of information.
The committee votes clear the way for votes in the full Senate. The Assembly has already passed both measures by overwhelming margins; Senate approval would send the bills on to Gov. Scott Walker.
As the committee was meeting, Sen. Nikiya Harris, D-Milwaukee, and a number of other Democrats held a news conference, demanding Republicans take action on Harris’ bill that would require background checks for all gun buyers. Current law requires checks only for purchases from federally licensed dealers; buyers who go through unlicensed dealers online, in private transactions or at gun shows don’t have to undergo background checks.
Harris’ bill and an identical Assembly companion measure have languished in Petrowski’s public safety committee and the Assembly criminal justice committee since they were introduced last April. The Democrats hauled into the news conference more than a dozen cardboard boxes that they said contained 16,500 signatures from Wisconsin residents who support universal background checks.
The two domestic abuse bills don’t go nearly far enough, Harris said in a telephone interview. Abusers could simply walk down to the local gun show and get a new weapon without any kind of check.
“What we should be doing is preventing those dangerous individuals from obtaining a firearm at all,” she said.
Democrats at the news conference said Republicans must move on background checks because Milwaukee’s homicide rate has risen 18 percent over the last three years and southeastern Wisconsin has seen two mass shootings - one at a Sikh temple in Oak Creek and another at a Brookfield spa.
Rep. Evan Goyke, D-Milwaukee, pointed to a map he said shows hundreds of shootings in his district and said Republican leaders haven’t responded to his 10 requests for a public hearing on background checks. He said Walker sponsored a 1994 bill that kept guns out of the hands of children charged with certain crimes as juveniles when the governor was in the Assembly and he needs to support background checks now.
“That bill is meaningless unless these loopholes are closed,” Goyke said. “Give us a forum to voice our side - that’s all I’m saying.”
Time is quickly running out to pass background checks. The two-year legislative session ends in April.
Petrowski said in an email to The Associated Press that he’s focused on the two domestic abuse bills, saying they’ll protect victims and improve public safety.
“Both of these bills received unanimous support in my committee this morning. With the short window of time remaining in the legislative session my priority is going to be on moving bills that have a chance to become law and make a real difference.”
Rep. Joel Kleefisch, R-Oconomowoc, the chairman of the Assembly criminal justice committee, didn’t immediately return a message.
Walker spokesman Tom Evenson said in an email to the AP that Wisconsin has “numerous laws in place regarding background checks,” including the bill Walker sponsored in 1994.
Spokespeople for Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, and Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, R-Juneau, didn’t immediately return messages.
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