A 65-34 state Assembly vote Tuesday sank a bill that would have let citizens carry concealed weapons.
Gov. Jim Doyle vetoed Senate Bill 214 after it passed last year. The Senate overrode his veto, but Assembly Republicans fell one vote short of the two-thirds majority needed to save the bill.
\This wasn't even close,"" said Minority Leader James Kreuser, D-Kenosha. ""We had the votes the whole time.""
The state Supreme Court ""urged"" the Legislature to revise the law after it reversed the conviction of a grocery-store owner found with a gun in his pocket but upheld another conviction for carrying a concealed weapon, according to Scott R. Jensen, R-Waukesha.
""We are going to make it clear that law-abiding citizens who get training, who pass a background check, would be able to carry a concealed weapon,"" said Scott L. Gunderson, R-Union Grove.
Representative and former police officer Leon D. Young, D-Milwaukee, said it would make the police's job more dangerous.
""Now, when they stop somebody, they're going to have to think that everybody is carrying a gun,"" he said. ""They're likely to have to approach the car armed.""
Kreuser said he wants Wisconsin to be better than the 44 other states that allow concealed weapons.
Both parties mustered support from their members since the original vote to pass the bill. The only two Republicans who had voted against it, John F. Townsend, R-Fond du Lac, and Luther S. Olsen, R-Berlin, joined the rest of their party. Assembly Speaker John Gard, R-Peshtigo, said he ""told everyone to vote how their conscience tells them to vote.""
Olsen said he had opposed the bill because of the problems it would cause police, but ""the restrictions we have today will not be here the next time"" similar legislation is proposed.
The number of Democratic votes supporting the bill dropped from seven to six with the reversal of Gary E. Sherman, D-Port Wing.
The vote was originally scheduled for Jan. 27, then delayed twice. During the debate on the rescheduling, some Democrats said the Republicans were waiting until not everyone was present in order to skew the vote. All 99 representatives attended Tuesday.
This conclusive vote means the Assembly can move on to other issues this session, but several representatives said they expected a similar bill in the future.
""Ideas like this that have so much support always resurface,"" Gard said.
