A gunman entered the Molson Coors facility in Miller Valley in Milwaukee on Wednesday, killing five of his co-workers before turning the gun on himself, according to the Milwaukee Police Department.
But even before all of the facts were known, including the source of the weapons used, the identity of the killer and even the motive for the attack, Democrats and their media allies were ready to criticize the Republicans.
Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes (D), providing no information beyond what is publicly known, waded in omnisciently to offer his opinion on the shooting.
Despite being able to say the shooting was “avoidable” with no information, Barnes failed to identify which specific proposal by Gov. Tony Evers (D) would have prevented the shooting.
Barnes was not the only one unable to point to an Evers proposal related to the mass shooting. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s Molly Beck went further than Barnes and pointed directly at Republicans for blame.
The linked Journal Sentinel story by Beck and Patrick Marley also does not point to any policy proposal by Evers that could have prevented the Molson Coors shooting. The story instead ties Republicans to the shooting by noting the coincidences of time and short distance from separate press conferences held by Evers and Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R-Juneau) on subjects unrelated to gun laws.
Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, R-Juneau, early Wednesday afternoon made clear that the state’s gun laws would not change under a Republican-controlled Legislature despite a call for a review from Democratic Gov. Tony Evers.
“We’re going to have that discussion about the Second Amendment forever,” Fitzgerald told reporters in Franklin, about an hour before the shooting at the Molson Coors brewery. “A lot of the provisions that are in place already, people are satisfied with.”
His comments came just after Evers again called on lawmakers to take up legislation aimed at keeping guns away from people who are dangerous, underscoring the deep divide between Evers, Democrats and Republicans on the issue of gun restrictions.
Fitzgerald was participating in a press conference regarding the costs of the proposed Green New Deal. Evers was announcing his veto of a proposed tax cut funded by the state’s budget surplus.
The article by Marley and Beck, while noting the supposed coincidence of the timing, did not report how often Evers and Fitzgerald are asked at unrelated press conferences about gun control, so we can decide if the coincidence is actually noteworthy.
The two Journal Sentinel authors then proceeded to quote eight Democrats, including several Democratic candidates for president, calling for attacks on the Second Amendment rights of Wisconsin’s gun owners without asking if any of their proposals would have prevented Wednesday’s shooting incident.
The Journal Sentinel’s attack on Republicans was echoed by Jessica VanEgeren of Up North News:
At a press conference Wednesday morning only 2.5 miles from the MolsonCoors Brewery, Gov. Tony Evers was asked what he could do to get Republican lawmakers to address gun violence.
Roughly six hours later, news broke that a recently fired brewery employee shot and killed five coworkers before turning the gun on himself. It is the deadliest mass shooting in Wisconsin since a white supremacist killed six people and injured four more before killing himself at the Oak Creek Sikh temple in 2012.
VanEgeren also fails to mention how Evers’ proposals could have prevented the violence at Molson Coors. But that didn’t prevent VanEgeren from making sure here readers knew that Evers had been asked about Republican opposition to his gun proposals just hours before the shooting.
The media and the Democrats went looking for the real killers in the absence of any facts about Wednesday’s shooting. No causation is necessary. The Republicans are guilty.
