Empower Wisconsin | Nov. 8, 2019
By M.D. Kittle
MADISON — Gov. Tony Evers wanted his gun show Thursday.
Republicans wouldn’t give it to him.
Evers had ordered the Legislature to convene a special session on gun-restriction bills. Late Thursday, Republicans gaveled in and gaveled out without taking up any of the Dem measures — a universal background check proposal and another constitutionally challenged bill that allows courts to take away the guns of people deemed “threats.”
The just said no to Tony’s show.
But that didn’t stop Evers and legislative Democrats from the hysterical liberal theater Wisconsin voters have grown accustomed to.
There were the gun-control protesters, plenty of them children enlisted in the cause. The Dem press conferences blasting Republicans for not listening to “the will of the people.” The “shame” signs.
The hypocrisy was enough to choke a climate change warrior in the back of a CO2-spewing limousine.
“They are refusing to come to work,” Sen. Lena Taylor (D-Milwaukee) told reporters. “I get it if you disagree with a piece of legislation, I’m all for a little debate and disagreement, but you’ve got to show up for work. You’ve got to show up to defend your position.”
Apparently lost on Taylor is the fact that she and her fellow Democrat senators in 2011 fled the state to stall a vote on then-Gov. Scott Walker’s public union collective bargaining reform bill known as Act 10.
Republican leadership made it clear early on that they would not take up any bills that would restrict the rights of law-abiding gun owners. They were especially alarmed after Evers said he would support a so-called government “gun buy-back” of assault weapons.
Evers and his fellow liberals kept pointing to a Marquette Law School poll that showed broad support for universal background checks.
Tony’s gun show Thursday was all about political theater. Even the prayers were political.
“We ask this in the name of a God who has never been indicted, who has never been impeached,” Bishop Mark Freeman, of Racine, said at the close of his liberal-themed invocation on the Senate floor, surrounded by Democrats. The prayer invoked the left’s No. 1 villain, President Donald Trump.
Taylor and her colleagues then engaged in a moment of silence. It marked the last time they would be quiet in front of cameras.