CCW in Wisconsin
CCW has once again made it to Governor Doyle’s desk:
The state Senate approved a Republican bill that would let Wisconsin residents carry concealed weapons, setting up what could be a fierce political clash between the Legislature and Gov. Jim Doyle.
The Senate’s 28-5 vote Tuesday sends the bill to Doyle, a Democrat who already has vetoed one version of it and has vowed to veto this one.
“The governor believes people carrying loaded weapons around will make Wisconsin less safe,” Doyle spokeswoman Melanie Fonder said.
But Republicans say people should be allowed to fight off criminals.
Wisconsin is one of only four states that bans concealed weapons. National Rifle Association lobbyists working with Republican legislators have been trying make carrying concealed weapons legal here for years.
There’s talk that the Republicans have enough pull to override the veto. Good.
January 19th, 2006 at 10:31 am
Unless, of course, those people work for the government, right?
January 19th, 2006 at 1:44 pm
28-5 is way more than required to override the veto. Was the vote tighter in the lower house?
January 19th, 2006 at 2:00 pm
*boggle* representatives of his constituents send him a bill in great agreement and he tosses it out on a malformed opinion. Lovely. The constituents ought to be paying attention to this one and toss someone out thusly π
January 19th, 2006 at 7:50 pm
Well, it raises a question. The assumption here is that it’s Doyle who’s not representing his constituents, but it’s always possible that it’s the legislature that misrepresenting them. If Doyle thought vetoing the bill would cost him politically, he wouldn’t do it. So it seems like we’re talking about two sets of constituents here. Indeed, according to the polls I can find on packing.org, Wisconsin residents are about evenly divided on CCW, so it looks to me like the state legislature supports CCW at a much higher rate than the general populace does. Could this be the result of *gasp* powerful lobbyists? Maybe.
It looks like both the assembly and the senate of Wisconsin are apportioned by population, with 99 assembly members serving two-year terms, and 33 senate members serving four-year terms. In any case, according to the story, it takes 66 assembly votes to override a veto, and the bill passed 64-32 — not enough to override the veto.
January 20th, 2006 at 5:49 pm
The tidal wave continues…I love seeing vetoes overridden on big votes like this. Here’s hoping they can come up with a couple more votes. Is the NRA all over that?
They’ve dropped the ball on CCW bigtime here in MD.