First, the judge made it clear up front that he would not rule on any constitutional issues. He flatly refused to connect the dots that a state statute (DC) was being wrongfully applied to deny a citizen his protected right to go armed.
What you may not know, is the strategy shift made in the last brief Brads attorney submitted to the court by making Wis stat 941.23 the open carry state statute. We figured that although the judge may overlook the obvious constitutional issues, we were not giving him a pass on ignoring a 137 year old state statute which only prohibited concealed carry, while allowing open carry.
The judge acknowledged this as a fact as soon as he offered his own solution to the legislature - to just add “or unconcealed” to the law. By doing so, he admitted Brads argument that 941.23 did grant in fact a statutory authority to citizens to open carry dangerous weapons such as guns (anywhere - with certain exceptions).
So, what we now know (after 137 years of being on the books) is 1) there is a state law that grants citizens the authority to carry weapons and it specifically operates the manner of carry in Wisconsin and 2) that the law and the authority the law grants is protected by the state constitution as a citizens right. This is not an absolute right and this law does restrict concealed carry. The law does not intend to restrict open carry.
The state now has a brand new 137 year old open carry law. The two places where the judge totally blew it was his misunderstanding of the states preemption law when he suggested West Allis Common Council could pass a ban on open carry and his total ignorance that the legislature did pass not one, but two carry bills which Jim Doyle made sure would not become law. His poking his judicial finger at the legislature was wrong. They did try to fix this.
This is a process and we are not yet finished.
Yes, you are right about him complaining about the legislature not trying to ‘fix’ this issue. They brought bills through twice, only to have Doyle veto them twice, and they almost got the two-thirds overrides twice, but Doyle arm-twisted the dems to make sure they were short one vote of two-thirds each time - and one of these times the democrat that intro’d the bill voted against his own bill on the override vote, killing it.
The other thing that made me irritated was teh fact he wsa so apologetic to the police on this matter, like THEY were the victims here. He had no sympathy or regret that Brad had to go through all this. Very disturbing.