AJ and others. If this is truly how your state government is run, then you're fighting a losing battle there for CCW. Maybe change tactics and go for impeaching the entire lot of them.
The abuses you describe above as sort of "business as usual" are the kind of thing that governments topple over.
AFAIK, it's not "business as usual". No one's played hardball with us as a group that badly, yet. However, there has been some quasi-legal harrasment of certain individuals over CCW advocacy already. So we're not entirely without precident.
If you rate the various states CCW battles on a "down n' dirty scale" with Missouri's pegged at a "10", I'd say WI's been about a 7.5, IMO. The last three legislative cycles the PPA (our CCW bill, Personal Protection Act) have been an equvalent of a 99 yard drive in football, only to fail in the with the goal line in reach every time. And the last two times it's been treason by a previous "supporter" in the legislature.
I agree that the odds of a paddy wagon pulling up to the shoot are slim, but no one wants to be a test case. The WCCA gets "help" from the NRA in the form of thier staffers and professional lobbyists working on the PPA bill, but we're a completely independant grass-roots, unpaid organization. Everyone's got jobs, bills, families etc.
Even if the legal concerns prove to be over the top, it's clear we were getting set up for a first rate mugging in the mainstream urban press. Everyone's got to remember that while a MG shoot for "gun people" is akin to car enthusiasts getting a chance to drive a lap at Daytona in a stock car for only $40, and thus makes perfect sense as a fund-raiser, to the fence-sitting "sheeple" and the deer rifle & shotgun hunter-only types it's going to look weird at best, and bloodthirsty at worst.
The fence-sitters are the fence-sitters as always, and the state's hunters have been a long term source of dissapointment for us, we've never been able to count on the majority of them. However, we ABSOLUTELY DO NOT need them working against us.
And KIDGLOCK, the
Wisconsin MG laws are UNCLEAR. "Posession" has been worded vaugely enough that holding and using an MG that's not yours could be used to at least get people arrested and arraigned. The intent of the law was indeed probably to define "posession" in the federal sense of the NFA, but there's enough wiggle room for a motivated anti to drag us through the courts for a long time before we finaly prevail. And again, it wouldn't be the WCCA on trial, it would be each and every one of us individualy. "Innocent" people don't recoup thier legal fees from the sate either.
It's great you're willing to "lawyer up" and fight, but such suits can literaly take decades, assuming you don't run up against anti judges who are willing to deny your case cert or standing. In the meantime, bank accounts will be drained, jobs lost, and lives could be ruined. Saying that wrongful arrest and malicious prosecution is one of the more difficult uphill battles there are, is somewhat of an understatment.
We don't know how low our enemies would go legaly, and the press
started this fight in the basment. We stepped into a minefield, and fortunately only one (the Milwauke Journal Sentinel article) went off, giving us enough warning to back off and regroup.