Providing some light and sense on this gun-rights topic is Mark Walters (or other speaker from list below) from the Second Amendment Foundation.
Shortly after a man reportedly armed with two handguns fatally shot five people at the Miller Coors brewery in Milwaukee, the head of a Seattle-based gun prohibition lobbying group sent out an email blast using the tragedy to promote gun control legislation in Washington State.
The email called for gun control proponents to demand passage of House Bill 2947, a proposed ban on so-called “high capacity magazines.” That measure is meeting strong resistance from grassroots rights activists who showed up in good numbers for a quickly-scheduled legislative hearing earlier this week. Turnout was apparently unnerving to the billionaire-backed Alliance for Gun Responsibility, whose email complained, “Our opposition is tireless in their work against this bill and they are more organized than ever before.”
This sudden surge of Second Amendment activism was actually a long time coming. Passage of the Alliance’s gun control Initiative 594 in 2014—requiring so-called “universal background checks” that do not appear to have not prevented a single violent crime in Washington state—was the first strike. In 2018, Initiative 1639 was pushed through, prohibiting young adults from buying and owning modern sporting rifles and creating a definition of a “semiautomatic assault rifle”—a firearm that doesn’t really exist—that applies to every self-loading rifle ever manufactured, including .22-caliber hunting and target rifles.
Reports from Milwaukee are downplaying the use of two handguns by the shooter, perhaps because that detail doesn’t follow the current popular narrative about banning so-called “assault rifles,” some activists have suggested on social media.
Surprisingly, the Alliance email admitted up front, “We don’t know many details yet” about the shooting, but it suggested a ban on “high-capacity magazines” might curtail such incidents.
The suspect has been identified by USA Today as Anthony N. Ferrill, 51. He reportedly had worked as an electrician at Miller Coors for 17 years. He had a family and was known to be a firearms owner, according to the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. The newspaper heard from neighbors who were stunned that Ferrill was the suspected shooter. Published reports say he had been involved in a “long-running dispute with a co-worker that boiled over.”
Meanwhile, the Alliance is lamenting about the newly-energized grassroots rights activists “calling and emailing legislators every single day and if we don’t do the same thing, we will lose.”
The email also said something else, in bold type, that leaves Evergreen State activists curious: “It is up to us to make sure our elected officials understand that it is their duty to pass this bill. We are NOT going to run another initiative to ask voters to do what our lawmakers were elected to do.”
According to the Crime Prevention Research Center, the Milwaukee shooting “Appears to be yet another mass public shooting in a gun-free zone.” All of the victims were brewery employees, so this might not qualify as a “public” shooting but instead a workplace shooting. Reports indicate the killer, who took his own life, had been fired earlier in the day and came back to the facility with guns.
One of the guns reportedly was fitted with a “silencer,” a suppressor device that can be legally owned and there are “more than 29,333” registered in Wisconsin. The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel reported that, “Crime involving the devices is relatively rare, according to an often-cited study that said about 150 cases involving silencers were prosecuted in federal court from 1995 to 2004.”
USA Today is reporting that Democrat Gov. Tony Evers had called on state lawmakers to consider new gun control measures only hours before the shooting. However, Republican Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald “made it clear that Wisconsin’s gun laws would not change under a Republican-controlled Legislature.”
Existing gun controls that were supposed to prevent such incidents did not prevent this one. Rights activists insist that adding yet another gun control law would not have prevented the shooting, either.
Expert guests available on this topic:
ABOUT MARK WALTERS (in Eastern Time):
Mark Walters is a national board member of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms and a broadcast media spokesman for the Second Amendment Foundation.
Recipient of the 2015 Gun Rights Defender of the Year Award, Mark Walters is a weekly national columnist for Ammoland, and author of three books, Lessons from Armed America with Kathy Jackson: foreword by Massad Ayoob, Lessons from Unarmed America with Rob Pincus: foreword by Ted Nugent, and Grilling While Armed.
Mark is the host of two nationally syndicated talk radio programs, Armed American Radio, and Armed American Radio’s Daily Defense heard on hundreds of radio stations across the country, six days per week. In addition,
Mark has appeared on national and international radio and television on gun-related stories and is a popular podium speaker on firearms topics. Mark is a husband and father of two children and resides in Georgia with his family.
ABOUT DAVE WORKMAN (In Pacific Time):
Dave Workman is an award-winning career journalist and senior editor of TheGunMag.com (formerly Gun Week). He also writes for Liberty Park Press, Conservative Firing Line and several firearms periodicals. He is also the communications director for the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms.
He has authored Op-Ed pieces in several major newspapers including the Chicago Tribune, Seattle Times and Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He has also co-authored seven books with Alan Gottlieb, founder of the Second Amendment Foundation.
Workman’s beat is firearms, from politics to the outdoors. He is widely considered an authority on firearms, concealed carry and gun politics.
ABOUT ALAN GOTTLIEB (In Pacific Time):
Alan is a strong advocate of defense. He’s a nuclear engineering graduate of the University of Tennessee, publisher of Gun Week, chairman of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, and Founder of the Second Amendment Foundation. He also serves on the Board of Directors of the American Conservative Union.
ABOUT STEPHEN WILLEFORD (In Central Time):
A native of Sutherland Springs, Texas, Stephen Willeford was raised in a family of five on a dairy farm near the First Baptist Church. He is the fourth generation to live on a few hundred acres of land in Wilson County.
Stephen has always relied on his faith to guide his life, and his deep roots in Sutherland Springs are a product of his family’s commitment to their community. An avid sportsman, Stephen began shooting at a young age and honed his shooting skills by participating in shooting competitions as he grew older. He made sure his three children were trained in gun safety, passing along his expertise.
After the deadly mass shooting in November 2017, Stephen has become known across the country as the “good guy with a gun.” Stephen credits his unwavering faith and penchant for preparedness as to why he was able to step in during this critical incident, believing that each day of his life prepared him for what happened on that Sunday morning.
Stephen has begun speaking publicly about his life and experiences, even delivering a lauded speech at the National Rifle Association Convention in May 2018. Because of his selfless service to his community, Stephen was also an honored guest of members of the Texas delegation at the 2018 State of the Union address in Washington, D.C.
An experienced professional plumber, Stephen earned his license from the Plumbers and Pipefitters Apprenticeship School in San Antonio and has nearly 35 years of experience in his field. In 2018, Governor Greg Abbott appointed Stephen to serve on the Texas Private Security Board. He is a member of the National Rifle Association (NRA), was an NRA-certified instructor and a former assistant scoutmaster with the Boy Scouts of America.
Stephen has been married to Pam Farmer Willeford for 30 years and has three children and three grandchildren.
ABOUT TOM GRESHAM (In Central Time):
Tom Gresham is a spokesman for 2nd Amendment Foundation. He hosts the nationally syndicated weekend radio talk show ‘Tom Gresham’s Gun Talk,’ carried on 266 stations. He also has created, hosted and directed several television series about guns including Shooting Sports America on ESPN, and Guns and Gear on NBC Sports. An author of several books, Tom has also written thousands of magazine articles about firearms.
ABOUT THE 2ND AMENDMENT FOUNDATION:
The Second Amendment Foundation (www.saf.org) is the nation’s oldest and largest tax-exempt education, research, publishing and legal action group focusing on the Constitutional right and heritage to privately own and possess firearms. Founded in 1974, The Foundation has grown to more than 650,000 members and supporters and conducts many programs designed to better inform the public about the consequences of gun control. News coverage of Stephen Willeford shooting back at assailants at Texas Church:
