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Maybe Gov. Tony Evers shouldn’t have said anything about Beto O’Rourke’s plan to buy back assault weapons. To be fair, he tried to brush away the question when a reporter first asked him about assault weapons at a Sept. 19 news conference on guns. Evers was there to support a new bill to establish an “extreme risk protection order” process to remove firearms from people deemed at risk of harming themselves or others, as well as background checks legislation that has languished because GOP leaders don’t want to bring it up.

“What I’m focused on are two bills that the people of Wisconsin have already spoken on, and that’s universal background checks and the extreme risk protection orders,” Evers said. “We have to focus on what we know we can accomplish, and we can accomplish those two things.”

Does that mean Evers is against buybacks for assault weapons, the reporter asked.

“I’d consider it,” the governor said shaking his head and raising a hand as if to push the question away, “but my focus is on these two bills and on the two offices that would prevent it from going forward to a hearing and to a vote. It’s two bills, two offices.”

Those two offices belong to Assembly Speaker Robin Vos and Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald, who are doing their level best to prevent common sense gun legislation supported by big majorities of Wisconsinites from ever coming up for a vote.

And Evers’ passing comment on the assault weapons buy-back idea, which is not part of any current Wisconsin legislation, gave them the perfect opening to do what they do best: change the subject and manufacture a lot of phony outrage.

The comment “revealed Democrats’ real agenda,” the two legislative leaders declared in a joint press release. “With Governor Evers considering confiscating firearms from law-abiding citizens,” they added, “it shows just how radical Democrats have become.”

That wasn’t the end of it. Later that night former state Sen. Leah Vukmir, the GOP’s candidate for U.S. Senate against Tammy Baldwin in 2018, tweeted a picture of herself taking aim with a hunting rifle and tagged the governor with the taunting message, “come and take it.”

Commenters on Twitter immediately pointed out that the rifle Vukmir is holding in the picture is not an assault weapon.

For those keeping track at home, there are no current proposals in the Legislature or the executive branch to take away deer-hunting rifles in Wisconsin.

“Why would we want to take your deer rifle?” one commenter asked.

“On a scale of 1 to 10, this tweet is an 11-point loss,” said another, referring to the gap between Vukmir and Tammy Baldwin in the 2018 Senate race.

There’s a reason why Republicans want to change the subject from red-flag laws and background checks to fantasies about the governor coming for your guns, and it’s written in big letters on Vukmir’s cap in that photo: NRA. The gun group, a major source of cash for Republican politicians, opposes background checks and red flag laws.

But huge majorities of Wisconsinites of every political stripe support those measures.

So the Republicans in the state Legislature would rather not bring them up at all.

According to the latest Marquette Law School poll, 81 percent of respondents in Wisconsin favor red flag laws, which allow police to take guns from people who have been found by a judge to be a danger to themselves or others, and 80 percent support expanded background checks. Among Republican voters, 74 percent support background checks, along with 94 percent of independents and 76 percent of conservatives.

And no wonder. With mass shooting after mass shooting in the news, it’s getting harder and harder to defend the NRA position.

The toll of gun violence in Wisconsin was brought home at a Sept. 18 rally on the Capitol steps hosted by the Wisconsin Coalition for Gun Safety.

Family doctors, students, and state legislators all spoke about the need to stop the tide of gun violence in our state.

The most powerful testimony at the rally came from state Sen. LaTonya Johnson (D- Milwaukee). The crowd grew silent as she described her experience attending funeral after funeral for children killed by gunfire in her district on playgrounds, sidewalks, even inside their own homes.

“It’s about time our state starts standing up for our kids and those who cannot stand up for themselves,” she said.

In August, a Verona high-school student was murdered with a gun. On Sept. 28 a man was shot and killed on the 500 block of Northport Drive, while bystanders, including children, looked on. The police issued a warrant for two men believed to be involved in the shooting, and alerted the community that the men were at large, and considered “armed and dangerous.”

This is no way to live. Universal background checks and red flag laws are a minimal step toward a safer, saner community.

Ruth Conniff is editor-in-chief of the Wisconsin Examiner.