The Milwaukee Post

April 7, 2017 • Milwaukee County Post • 9 OPINION More needs to be done after another homicide in Milwaukee To the editor: Three punks made the front pages of our newspapers for another horrible mur- der. No doubt they will be asking a judge or jury to take their age into consideration in a verdict. The answer to that should be no! All involved in the carjacking and mur- der knew what they were doing, and not one time did they give innocent people a thought with their lives. Now, making these crimes a federal offense may help some, but for most it will not matter where they do time. The true answer is to enact the death penalty. I have asked several times in letters to Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett and County Executive Chris Abele to find the funds for more protection on our streets, but I guess their minds were caught in a hoop for the new arena or on trolley tracks, or spinning around on a wheel tax. Hundreds of millions of our money are being spent for entertainment, but not enough for more safety. There were seven shootings in one week and a couple of decent people lost their lives; one only doing his job for the city. Decent people are fed up with driving down their streets in fear, trying to go to work and to school, maybe shopping or visiting family members. We need more law enforcement officers on our streets — in some areas more than others. A woman just a week ago talked about poor conditions at the Lincoln Hills juvenile facility, and she's right. But we also need more of them with fewer com- forts and more punishment to fit the degree of criminals' crimes. Maybe some offenders should lose contact with their family members, just like this city work- er's family will never be able to talk to him again. Cameras capturing information are some help, but only in identifying a crimi- nal after the fact. We need more visible offi- cers. A few more suggestions are: Privately owned prisons overseen by the state, place- ment of prisoners in distant prisons and fewer comforts inside facilities. Why isn't Milwaukee Police Chief Edward Flynn asking for more officers? It is a mystery. Maybe he doesn't want to step on toes. Step on them, chief ! You know the need is there, and you'll surely get backing. Bonnie Meyer Cudahy No such thing as 'tweak' for politicians To the editor: How naive of Owen Robinson to have us believe in his March 31 column that the proposed retirement system bill has only a "small tweak" in it. Our politicians only use "small" as a cover-up for something much bigger and usually insidious. I wonder what he left out of his article that we are not supposed to know about before it's too late. Michael Bourdo Milwaukee LETTERS TO THE EDITOR By OWEN B. ROBINSON Shortly after the Constitutional Convention of 1787 ended, James Madison, whom John Adams labeled the "father of the Constitution," began the arduous task of defending the intricate document signed by his fellow conventioneers and advocating for the state legislatures to ratify it. The birth of a new nation was not to be had without some painful moments. One of the immediate and most forceful attacks on the new Constitution came from his fellow Virginian, Richard Henry Lee. Lee was a powerful politician, forceful orator and fierce advocate for liberty. It was Lee who had called for the original resolution to break from Britain at the Second Continental Congress in 1776. But Lee turned his political prowess against the fledgling Constitution because he was fear- ful of the strong central government it creat- ed. To retard the power of the federal govern- ment, Lee proposed a declaration of rights that was to include the freedom of religion and the press. Madison was flabbergasted by the proposal because it was, in his mind, utterly unnecessary. The Constitution was firmly secured to the foundation that all power and rights rested in the people except for those few specific powers ceded to the government as enumerated in the Constitution. It was a bedrock Enlighten- ment philosophical concept as articulated by the likes of Thomas Paine and John Locke. Madison saw danger in what became the Bill of Rights because to enumerate specific individual rights to be protected by the Constitution would lead some to think that those rights not specifically enumerated for protection are within the power of govern- ment to restrict or rescind. This is why the 10th Amendment became a catch-all for rights. Madison eventually came around to support and author the Bill of Rights as a practical necessity to assure skit- tish state legislators and secure their support for ratifying the Constitut- ion, but Madison's fears were prescient. The natural momentum of government is to expand its power and our federal government has often run roughshod over natural rights not enumerated in the Constitution, as amended. Our government has also not been shy about trampling those rights that are singled out for protection. It is the appropriate function of govern- ment to intervene and set boundaries when one right rubs up against another. For exam- ple, it is undeniably my right to speak out and protest against my government. But the government can, and should, deny that right to me if I try to do it on another citizen's pri- vate property. The government can, and should, also restrict certain rights in a more systematic way when there is a substantial or pressing government interest to do so. But the standard for what constitutes a "substan- tial government interest" is, and should be, extraordinarily high. Since the ratification of our Constitution, the right to keep and bear arms, as enumer- ated in the Second Amendment, has been steadily eroded thanks to fear, ignorance, and opportunistic politicians. For the first several decades, this right was rarely restricted. People regularly carried firearms either openly or concealed. During Reconstruction after the Civil War, a wave of restrictions to the Second Amendment swept over the South as a means for the federal government to main- tain order and, as white Southerners regained control of their state legislatures, to suppress black Americans. Subsequent waves of government restric- tions of the Second Amendment came as politicians took advantage of various oppor- tunities to disarm the public. New York City required its citizens to obtain a license to carry a concealed firearm in 1911 after a brazen murder-suicide in broad daylight. Mayor Richard Daley ordered that all firearms in Chicago be registered in 1968. All of these restrictions of the Second Amendment grew out of fear, hate, igno- rance and complacency without anything that could rationally be called a "substantial government interest." A couple of decades ago, Americans began to take back their Second Amendment rights with the steady loosening of gun laws in states and the uni- versal legalization of concealed carry. The evidence is clear that the public did not suf- fer any negative consequences of this move- ment. The data points to several possible benefits like lower crime. The nation's most crime-ridden bastions remain those with the strictest remaining gun control laws. The next progression in reclaiming our Second Amendment rights is the passage of what has been termed "constitutional carry," and it has been introduced in Wisconsin. Constitutional carry is simply the return to how our Second Amendment was originally conceived and how it was enforced for most of the first century of our nation's history. Free Americans who have not committed a serious crime and who are mentally competent would be free to own and carry a firearm in any manner they so choose. All of the other restrictions, like respecting private property rights, would remain in place. Opponents of constitutional carry rest their arguments in the same irrational fear and hate as those who opposed concealed carry. "It will be like the Wild West with blood in the streets," etc. But history and facts disprove their arguments. As of right now, 12 other states already have constitu- tional carry. One of them, Vermont, has had constitutional carry since the Constitution was ratified in 1791. Alaska has had it for 23 years. Liberal New Hampshire and conservative North Dakota both passed constitutional carry earlier this year. None of the states that have constitutional carry have experienced any ill effects. The reason is simple and is the same reason why there has been nothing but positive effects since concealed carry was passed six years ago in Wisconsin: concealed carry or consti- tutional carry only really applies to good, law-abiding people. Much to our collective lament, the bad people already practice con- stitutional carry. We should never allow our government to restrict any of our civil rights without a rig- orous debate and an eminently justifiable cause for doing so. And when we have fool- ishly allowed our government to restrict our civil rights without just cause, we should take every opportunity to take back our rights. Wisconsin should return to constitu- tional carry. (Owen B. Robinson is a West Bend resident whose column appears occasionally in The Milwaukee County Post. He can be reached at owen@bootsandsabers.com.) Constitutional carry will restore public's firearms rights Robinson

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