People hoping to carry a concealed weapon will first have to complete a minimum of four hours of training, according to emergency rules announced by Gov. Scott Walker’s office Friday.
The emergency rules, proposed by Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen, must be drafted so the law can take effect on its scheduled date, Walker spokesperson Cullen Werwie said. Emergency rules are used until more permanent rules can be established.
In a statement, Walker’s office expressed the need to “improve the permanent rules substantially.” Werwie said some of the rules made by the Wisconsin Department of Justice do not account for individual responsibility.
“Specifically, one thing we would like is the omission of the four hour minimum training requirement,” Werwie said. “We feel it is an individual’s personal responsibility to decide the type of training they need.”
The concealed carry law states the DOJ must determine whether an individual has met statutory requirements before it can issue a permit, DOJ spokesperson Dana Brueck said in an email to The Badger Herald. One requirement is proof of training, which the statute refers to as a “firearms safety or training course.”
The DOJ is responsible for implementing the concealed carry law, Brueck said.
“The DOJ did a great deal of research and talked to many different training organizations, including the [National Rifle Association], and other interests,” Brueck said in the email. Based on that research, the consensus of the training organizations was that a minimum of four hours of training was necessary to provide adequate education in firearm safety, Brueck said.
NRA spokesperson Andrew Arulanandam expressed concern over the four-hour training requirement, accusing the attorney general of trying a “one-size-fits-all” approach.
Arulanandam said other states have had success in the past with similar concealed carry laws without having to implement a training requirement.
“There might be some people that require more than four hours’ training, and for those people it’s not best to give them the impression that four hours would suffice,” he said. “It basically comes down to this: We trust people to do the right thing, and people have done the right things in states that have these laws.”
Arulanandam also said the DOJ and attorney general were overreaching their authority by “assuming the role of a legislator.”
He characterized these actions as “unprecedented” and said this pattern has not been seen in other states with laws on concealed carry.
“This is where the DOJ and attorney general as members of the executive branch of government are basically trying to legislate from their executive office, and that’s wrong,” Arulanandam said.
Brueck said the agency was aware of the NRA’s opposition.
She said the requirements made by the DOJ are well within their jurisdiction.
“We are aware of some of the criticism of the DOJ’s proposed emergency rules, but defining terms used by the Legislature is a regular and necessary part of rule-making, and that is what we did here,” Brueck said.
