WISN radio’s Common Sense Central:

It was an odd briefing on a tragic double murder after a deadly van crash. Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett greeted reporters looking for an update on the ongoing investigation, not Police Chief Ed Flynn.

“Mayor, I saw the Chief as I was walking in.  He was leaving,” said Channel 12’s Colleen Henry as soon as Barrett asked for questions.  “I’m wondering if there’s a reason he’s not here talking to us about this violence.”

“Because I wanted to talk about it myself,” Barrett answered.

The way he did was jarring, condemning the murders, but immediately shifting the blame for them from the murderers themselves or city and county criminal justice policies to state and federal law and even the NRA.

“In the span of three or four hours on a beautiful Sunday evening, we had four people who died,” Barrett said.  This is news, but is it enough news to make…our state lawmakers, our federal lawmakers, [or] candidates for President to pause and say ‘What’s going on here?’”

In fact, a state lawmaker and candidate for President, Governor Scott Walker, has been talking about violence in Milwaukee, most recently after a one year-old boy was shot and killed just after Christmas, in this exchange with FOX 6 reporter Mike Lowe:

Lowe: “But Chief Flynn and Mayor Barrett have asked you for something very specific, and that is legislation that would say, if you’ve been convicted of a misdemeanor three times in the last five years, you can’t own a gun.  Right now you’re allowed to do that.  And what they’re saying is these are people committing felonies and plea bargaining them down to misdemeanors, so you’ve got felons running around with guns.  Is that something you’d be willing to consider?”

Walker: “Sure. The more things we can do to get illegal guns out of the hands of criminals , the better.  Part of it, too, goes back to the district attorney’s office, where right now, without a law change, they have the ability — if they view gun violence to be a problem — to charge, as other counties do across the state of Wisconsin.  In many counties people will go in for an extended amount of time to the prison system.  For whatever variety of reasons that has not happened in Milwaukee County.”

That is what’s known as prosecutorial discretion, and it has nothing to do with state politics.

Instead, it reflects a willingness of the Milwaukee County District Attorney’s Office to accept plea deals that allow violent individuals to avoid significant prison time and, as a result, return more quickly to the City’s streets.

Take, for example, Sylvester Lewis, who had a criminal record that began at age 12, included at least 15 arrests, and culminated with a felony criminal conviction for burglary at age 18.

Yet for some reason he was not in prison, but instead on the streets on May 21st, 2014, when he opened fire on another man but instead shot and killed 10 year-old Sierra Guyton as she played on the Clarke Street School playground.

What state law could have prevented that shooting?  Lewis was a felon in possession of a firearm and therefore in violation of Wisconsin Statute 941.29.  On May 21st, 2014, that was irrelevant.  He was still able to kill little Sierra.

That he wasn’t in prison was relevant, as he obviously wouldn’t have been able to kill Sierra if he was locked up.  But he wasn’t, even though he pleaded guilty to a Class F felony less than two years earlier—a conviction that could have landed him in prison for up to 12.5 years.

What led more directly to Lewis being able to kill Sierra Guyton, a gun law that he willfully violated or a sweetheart plea deal that kept him out of prison even after a felony conviction and a lengthy juvenile record?

“We know several things are happening. We know that there are more guns that are flooding the streets of our city,” Barrett continued on Monday.

But do we know how many of them were legally purchased and legally carried?  The Wisconsin Department of Justice is not permitted to keep statistics on where concealed carry permit permits are granted, so it is impossible to know whether there are more of them in Milwaukee, which has by far the highest rate of gun violence in the state.

However, a search of records seems to indicate that only one concealed carry permit holder out of the more than 200,000 in Wisconsin has ever been convicted of a homicide.  Phillip K. Green was convicted last January of shooting an acquaintance to death during a fight at a house party in May of 2013.

Another man, Todd Hadley, was acquitted in November of 2013of shooting a man to death and injuring another.

He and Green appear to be the only two concealed carry permit holders ever charged with fatal shootings since Wisconsin became the 49th state to allow residents to carry concealed firearms in 2011.

By way of comparison, Barrett said that the City of Milwaukee’s “homicides year-to-date are up 160%, from 14 to 39.”

Never mind that that is actually an increase of 178.5%.  The Mayor’s math mistake can be excused, but what can’t be ignored is that 19.5 times more people have been killed by non-concealed carry permit holders in just four months than have been killed by concealed carry permit holders.

Barrett continued by refuting claims that an increased police presence could have possibly stopped Sunday’s violence.

“No increase in police staffing levels would have prevented the horrific tragedy on 48th Street yesterday,” he said.

But somehow a state law could have?  There is obviously a law in Wisconsin forbidding murder, and it is punishable by the harshest sentence allowable under state law—life in prison without the possibility of extended supervision.

On 48th Street in Milwaukee on Sunday, that law was wholly ignored by a suspect who either didn’t think about the legal consequences of double murder or didn’t care.

If someone would willfully violate the most serious state law on the books, what makes Mayor Barrett so confident that that same suspect would respect a law prohibiting him from owning or purchasing a firearm?

Barrett’s rant then meandered into presidential politics.

“We know we had seven, eight candidates rushing to the altar of the NRA to say how they’re protecting freedoms.  No freedoms were protected in Milwaukee where those four people died, three of them because of gunshots.”

It perhaps should go without saying that there does not appear to be any record of an NRA member being convicted of murder in Milwaukee in recent history, but Barrett’s statement appears to be impugning the organization for its lobbying on behalf of the Second Amendment right for law-abiding citizens to keep and bear arms.

In fact, the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed in District of Columbia v. Heller that the Amendment does in fact confer “the individual right to possess and carry weapons in case of confrontation.”

Moreover, federal law already requires gun purchasers to pass a National Instant Criminal Background Check System screening, and every state makes it illegal for a felon to own any sort of firearm.

Again, felons generally ignore laws because, well, they are felons and either don’t consider the consequences of their actions or don’t care about them.  As such, they tend to obtain the guns that they use in crimes through theft, illegal purchase on the “black market” or a “straw purchase.”  All of these, it should be noted, violate the law.

So where is Barrett’s evidence that someone who is willing to shoot two people to death in broad daylight would obey a new state law?

“This community has to face the reality that the gun laws that this state has put forward over the last few years, as proud as it makes the Governor and the Legislature feel, has resulted in more guns on the City of Milwaukee,” Barrett asserted.

If the Mayor is going by the number of guns seized, which he seemed to be when he highlighted the fact that “the police have taken 628 guns off our streets so far this year,” that is simply not true.

In 2006, Milwaukee Police seized 2,490 guns and another 2,733 in 2007, long before the Republican State Legislature passed its Concealed Carry Law and other new gun regulations in 2011.

In 2013, the most recent year for which full-year data was available, Milwaukee Police seized 1,921 guns.

Of course, the Mayor didn’t mention that when concluding his remarks by chiding the state government for supposedly not funding law enforcement in Milwaukee.

“We need to have a state government that’s going to devote resources to this issue.  I need the Attorney General to have his office engaged with our police department directly,” Barrett said.  “I need him to help us in the Legislature and the Governor to get more resources to our District Attorney’s Office so we can have more prosecutions of gun crimes.”

As opposed to, say, a politically motivated John Doe prosecution of constitutionally protected political speech that numerous judges have shut down?

Because that prosecution has easily cost more than $1 million in legal fees alone—money that could have been spent on the gun prosecutions that Barrett so desperately wants.  In fact, the cost of the unconstitutional John Doe is likely much higher, but the District Attorney’s Office has refused to disclose how much it spent on what amounted to a partisan witch hunt.

No, the real reason that we don’t have, in the Mayor’s words, “prosecutions of gun crimes” is because there is prevailing belief in both City and County government that “minor offenses” shouldn’t be punished.

The Mayor said as much on Monday, pledging that he doesn’t “want to lock up a lot of people who are carrying a nickel bag of marijuana, but I do want to lock up more people who get involved in gun fights.”

That, it seems, is the fundamental problem right there: a lax attitude toward criminality that has emboldened a criminal element in Milwaukee to no longer fear the consequences of illegal activity.

And when that criminal element isn’t locked up, but rather routinely plea bargains down serious crimes to get back on the streets more quickly, it’s a recipe for disaster for Milwaukee or for any city whose leaders seem more interested in shifting blame than getting tough on crime.

By the way: Between Sunday and this morning, Milwaukee had seven homicides. Since Jan. 1, Milwaukee has had 43 homicides. Great quality of life you got there, Mayor Barrett.