President Barack Obama recently pledged to use executive action (fact sheet here) requiring, among other things, licensing of the dealer and background checks on the purchaser on all gun sales in the United States. This executive action is clearly designed to make it much harder for criminals to obtain firearms.
Now, Scott Walker, the Governor of Wisconsin and a failed Republican presidential candidate who dropped out after his own party firmly rejected him on the national stage, is asking Brad Schimel, the Republican Attorney General of Wisconsin, to sue the federal government in an attempt to overturn the president’s executive actions.
Should federal courts side with Walker and Schimel, it would, once again, be ridiculously easy for a known criminal or someone else who is not legally allowed to possess a firearm to obtain a gun and kill people. For example, in 2012, Zina Haughton and two of her co-workers were shot and killed at a Brookfield, Wisconsin spa by her estranged husband, who purchased a gun online despite being under a restraining order that legally prohibited him from possessing a firearm. Had there been a strictly-enforced requirement of background checks on all gun sales in 2012, Zina Haughton would almost certainly be alive today.
Scott Walker and his far-right political allies in Wisconsin want to make it easier for criminals and others who shouldn’t be allowed to possess firearms to obtain firearms. That is absolutely asinine, and the vast majority of Americans think that it’s asinine as well.
The Progressive Midwesterner 