Another article, focusing on local reaction to the new law, found in the Racine Journal Times.

JSOnline reports that lawmakers have removed the training required for a concealed carry permit.

The Wisconsin State Journal reports the same.

Follow the link to the article here.

Please make sure that you care citing the source from the JSOnline page.

Follow the link here to see the details of the concealed carry law.

Thanks to Teralyn for the link!

By Patrick Marley and Jason Stein of the Journal Sentinel

Madison - Members of the public will be able to carry guns when they observe the state Assembly, but not the Senate, under differing rules the two GOP-led houses are developing for separate parts of the Capitol.

The discussion comes as Wisconsin moves to become the 11th state in the nation to allow concealed weapons in most of the Capitol’s elegant marble halls and rooms. Lawmakers are deciding whether to allow guns in the parts of the building that they control after Republican Gov. Scott Walker’s administration told them that guns would be allowed in the parts of the statehouse controlled by the executive branch.

On Thursday afternoon, Senate President Mike Ellis (R-Neenah) dropped his fight against allowing people to bring guns onto the Senate floor after he succeeded in getting them prohibited in the public viewing galleries that overlook the floor.

“I wanted a touchdown; I got a field goal,” Ellis said Thursday. Earlier in the day he had said, “We have enough problems as it is without having Tom Mix and Hopalong Cassidy with their six-guns” on the floor.

The issue is now being debated after Walker signed a bill allowing people to seek concealed-weapons permits starting Nov. 1. Permits will be granted to those 21 and older who take training and pass a background check showing they are not felons or otherwise barred from carrying guns. Under that law, the public is barred from carrying guns in courthouses and police stations, which would include the Supreme Court’s hearing room in the statehouse and the Capitol police station in the basement.

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, as of last year seven states allowed visitors to carry weapons into their capitols with a concealed-weapons permit, and two other states allowed anyone to carry a weapon into their statehouse. The conference couldn’t immediately provide the names of those states. Since last year, at least one other state, Florida, has moved to allow visitors to carry concealed guns with the proper permits.

“We do not know if there are any further restrictions regarding the chambers (in those capitols) because we have not asked that question in our surveys,” conference spokeswoman Meagan Dorsch said.

In the Capitol in Madison, the areas controlled by the Senate would allow concealed carry with the exception of the viewing gallery during Senate sessions and the offices of individual senators who chose to prohibit guns. Concealed carry would be allowed on the Senate floor and in committee hearing rooms.

A spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R-Juneau) said a committee would vote soon to approve this policy.

Different policies

Ellis and Fitzgerald – the two top leaders in the Senate – defended their decision to treat the viewing galleries differently than other parts of the Capitol. They said that while the Senate is in session, members of the public are already barred from certain activities in the balconies, such as filming proceedings.

“It’s a unique part of the Capitol,” Scott Fitzgerald said. “It’s got a long list of prohibitions that’s been in place for many years.”

A committee of Assembly leaders had planned to vote Thursday to allow guns on the Assembly floor and in the Assembly viewing galleries, while also leaving the decision on representatives’ offices to the individual lawmakers.

But the office of Assembly Speaker Jeff Fitzgerald (R-Horicon) said Thursday that the committee vote would be postponed, because the overall Capitol policy from Walker’s Department of Administration won’t be unveiled until Friday. Fitzgerald said the vote would be taken soon.

“We feel in the spirit of the law we passed we want law-abiding citizens to be able to protect themselves,” Jeff Fitzgerald said.

He said he would allow concealed weapons in his office.

Assembly Minority Leader Peter Barca (D-Kenosha) said the issue was a distraction from the more important problem of lowering the state’s unemployment rate.

“I didn’t think they could talk any less about jobs,” Barca said of Republicans. “But they found a way.”

Barca said he had a number of questions about how the policy would work, including whether it might allow rifles to be carried into the statehouse and whether visitors in the galleries would be able to openly load and unload their guns.

Barca said he hadn’t made a final decision about whether to allow concealed carry in his office. First, he said, he would need to see the Walker administration policy and then talk with his staff and constituents about what would make them feel safest.

Ellis said he didn’t like the idea of visitors carrying guns into his office.

“I don’t want them in my office. They can leave them in Frank Lasee’s office,” Ellis said, referring to the state senator who strongly supports concealed carry.

Lasee, a Republican from De Pere, had joked that he could have a “guns welcome” sign for his office. Lasee’s chief of staff, Rob Kovach, said the senator didn’t think guns should be banned from the galleries.

“If they’re allowed in the Capitol, why not the gallery?” Kovach said.

So far, only a small number of states allow concealed carry in their capitols, and even then it can be subject to restrictions. Florida, for instance, opened up its statehouse earlier this month in response to a change in state law, the Palm Beach Post reported.

Gun owners with concealed-carry permits can bring their guns into the statehouse there as long as they show their license and photo identification when they enter the building. But they can’t take their guns into “any meeting of the Legislature or a committee thereof” and are given a written notice of that when they come in the building, the newspaper reported.

States, besides Wisconsin, allow visitors to carry weapons into their capitols. Eight of those require a concealed-weapons permit.

Walker policy would allow weapons on Assembly floor

Madison - The public will be able to carry guns into most parts of the state Capitol, under a policy being developed by Gov. Scott Walker.

Lawmakers are developing their own policies that would allow individual lawmakers to decide whether to allow guns into their offices.

Under rules planned for one chamber, guns would be allowed on the Assembly floor and in the Assembly viewing galleries, said sources who have been briefed on the plans. That would mean the public could bring guns into the viewing galleries but would still have to adhere to other existing rules, including one that bars the use of still cameras and video cameras.

“People who carry concealed can come in my office, I don’t care,” said Rep. Robin Vos (R-Rochester).

Vos said he planned to apply for a concealed-weapons permit but had not decided whether he would bring a gun to the Capitol.

Senate Minority Leader Mark Miller (D-Monona) said he has not been briefed on the plans.

“I don’t think there should be weapons in the Capitol,” Miller said. “People should be able to enter public buildings and feel safe.?.?.?.?There’s children who come in the building, for Pete’s sake.”

The Assembly Committee on Organization is to meet Thursday to set the policy on guns for that house. Minority Democrats are expected to raise concerns at that meeting.

No decision has yet been made by GOP senators on allowing guns on the Senate floor, in the Senate galleries and in committee rooms. Republicans who control that house will set a policy in the coming days, said John Hogan, chief of staff to Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald (R-Juneau).

Walker spokesman Cullen Werwie said an announcement would be made soon on the policy for guns in the Capitol and other state buildings but had no other comment.

Walker’s administration is charged with deciding whether to allow guns into the building because of a law Walker signed making Wisconsin the 49th state to allow people to carry concealed weapons.

The law takes effect Tuesday. People can carry concealed weapons once they receive a permit from the Department of Justice. Permits are available to those 21 and older who take a training course and pass a background check that shows they’re not felons or otherwise barred from possessing guns.

Sources said the administration’s plan would allow guns in most parts of the Capitol but not the state Supreme Court hearing room. The concealed weapons law bans guns in courthouses.

During massive protests this spring, the administration installed metal detectors to ensure no weapons were brought into the building. The protests were overwhelmingly peaceful, but lawmakers from both sides received death threats by email and phone.

Republicans complained they often felt unsafe, with Scott Fitzgerald at one point calling the Capitol a “powder keg.”

Fitzgerald spokesman Andrew Welhouse said Wednesday that Fitzgerald would likely allow guns in his office.

Hogan, Fitzgerald’s chief of staff, said GOP senators were seeking to work out a policy for the other areas under control of the Senate before the law takes effect. Hogan said he expected each senator to retain the final decision on his or her own office.

“The?.?.?.?places we need to consider are each office, the floor and galleries and the hearing rooms,” Hogan said.

On Tuesday, a dozen people were removed from the Assembly galleries and arrested for videotaping proceedings and holding up signs.

Vos said he did not see a contradiction in allowing guns in the galleries while banning the use of cameras. He said people could bring both guns and cameras into the galleries, but couldn’t use either.

“You can have a gun in the gallery, but you can’t shoot,” he said.

By Frank Bruni

Between the struggle to fold a sport jacket so it doesn’t wrinkle, the 45-minute wait on a security line if I’m flying, the price of gas if I’m driving and the worry either way that I left the coffee maker on, I thought I was pretty well versed in the inconveniences and stresses of domestic travel.

By Karl W. Giberson and Randall J. Stephens

THE Republican presidential field has become a showcase of evangelical anti-intellectualism. Herman Cain, Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann deny that climate change is real and caused by humans. Mr. Perry and Mrs. Bachmann dismiss evolution as an unproven theory. The two candidates who espouse the greatest support for science, Mitt Romney and Jon M. Huntsman Jr., happen to be Mormons, a faith regarded with mistrust by many Christians.

The rejection of science seems to be part of a politically monolithic red-state fundamentalism, textbook evidence of an unyielding ignorance on the part of the religious. As one fundamentalist slogan puts it, “The Bible says it, I believe it, that settles it.” But evangelical Christianity need not be defined by the simplistic theology, cultural isolationism and stubborn anti-intellectualism that most of the Republican candidates have embraced.

Like other evangelicals, we accept the centrality of faith in Jesus Christ and look to the Bible as our sacred book, though we find it hard to recognize our religious tradition in the mainstream evangelical conversation. Evangelicalism at its best seeks a biblically grounded expression of Christianity that is intellectually engaged, humble and forward-looking. In contrast, fundamentalism is literalistic, overconfident and reactionary.

Fundamentalism appeals to evangelicals who have become convinced that their country has been overrun by a vast secular conspiracy; denial is the simplest and most attractive response to change. They have been scarred by the elimination of prayer in schools; the removal of nativity scenes from public places; the increasing legitimacy of abortion and homosexuality; the persistence of pornography and drug abuse; and acceptance of other religions and of atheism.

In response, many evangelicals created what amounts to a “parallel culture,” nurtured by church, Sunday school, summer camps and colleges, as well as publishing houses, broadcasting networks, music festivals and counseling groups. Among evangelical leaders, Ken Ham, David Barton and James C. Dobson have been particularly effective orchestrators — and beneficiaries — of this subculture.

Mr. Ham built his organization, Answers in Genesis, on the premise that biblical truth trumps all other knowledge. His Creation Museum, in Petersburg, Ky., contrasts “God’s Word,” timeless and eternal, with the fleeting notions of “human reason.” This is how he knows that the earth is 10,000 years old, that humans and dinosaurs lived together, and that women are subordinate to men. Evangelicals who disagree, like Francis S. Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health, are excoriated on the group’s Web site. (In a recent blog post, Mr. Ham called us “wolves” in sheep’s clothing, masquerading as Christians while secretly trying to destroy faith in the Bible.)

Mr. Barton heads an organization called WallBuilders, dedicated to the proposition that the founders were evangelicals who intended America to be a Christian nation. He has emerged as a highly influential Republican leader, a favorite of Mr. Perry, Mrs. Bachmann and members of the Tea Party. Though his education consists of a B.A. in religious education from Oral Roberts University and his scholarly blunders have drawn criticism from evangelical historians like John Fea, Mr. Barton has seen his version of history reflected in everything from the Republican Party platform to the social science curriculum in Texas.

Mr. Dobson, through his group Focus on the Family, has insisted for decades that homosexuality is a choice and that gay people could “pray away” their unnatural and sinful orientation. A defender of spanking children and of traditional roles for the sexes, he has accused the American Psychological Association, which in 2000 disavowed reparative therapy to “cure” homosexuality, of caving in to gay pressure.

Charismatic leaders like these project a winsome personal testimony as brothers in Christ. Their audiences number in the tens of millions. They pepper their presentations with so many Bible verses that their messages appear to be straight out of Scripture; to many, they seem like prophets, anointed by God.

But in fact their rejection of knowledge amounts to what the evangelical historian Mark A. Noll, in his 1994 book, “The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind,” described as an “intellectual disaster.” He called on evangelicals to repent for their neglect of the mind, decrying the abandonment of the intellectual heritage of the Protestant Reformation. “The scandal of the evangelical mind,” he wrote, “is that there is not much of an evangelical mind.”

There are signs of change. Within the evangelical world, tensions have emerged between those who deny secular knowledge, and those who have kept up with it and integrated it with their faith. Almost all evangelical colleges employ faculty members with degrees from major research universities — a conduit for knowledge from the larger world. We find students arriving on campus tired of the culture-war approach to faith in which they were raised, and more interested in promoting social justice than opposing gay marriage.

Scholars like Dr. Collins and Mr. Noll, and publications like Books & Culture, Sojournersand The Christian Century, offer an alternative to the self-anointed leaders. They recognize that the Bible does not condemn evolution and says next to nothing about gay marriage. They understand that Christian theology can incorporate Darwin’s insights and flourish in a pluralistic society.

Americans have always trusted in God, and even today atheism is little more than a quiet voice on the margins. Faith, working calmly in the lives of Americans from George Washington to Barack Obama, has motivated some of America’s finest moments. But when the faith of so many Americans becomes an occasion to embrace discredited, ridiculous and even dangerous ideas, we must not be afraid to speak out, even if it means criticizing fellow Christians.

Karl W. Giberson is a former professor of physics, and Randall J. Stephens is an associate professor of history, both at Eastern Nazarene College. They are the authors of “The Anointed: Evangelical Truth in a Secular Age.”

A version of this op-ed appeared in print on October 18, 2011, on page A27 of the New York edition with the headline: The Evangelical Rejection of Reason.