Milwaukee Common Council Unanimously Votes to Join Gun Safety Consortium

Posted on by

The City of Milwaukee’s Public Health and Safety Committee held a meeting Thursday in which they unanimously voted to approve an agreement that will unite Milwaukee with the Gun Safety Consortium, a group committed to the development and testing of gun safety technology.  

The agreement is largely a product of Milwaukee’s ongoing four-year partnership with Common Ground, a Wisconsin-based affiliate of the IAF dedicated to identifying problems in communities and implementing solutions. 

“The Gun Safety Consortium is an elite group of forward-thinking municipalities who understand that by combining their expertise and purchasing power, they can identify and promote superior products that specifically address the problem of unsecured guns, perhaps one of Milwaukee’s top health and safety hazards,” said Rev. Robert Ater, a founding member of Common Ground. 

The agreement will make Milwaukee the 18th member jurisdiction of the consortium. 

“In response to similar commitments from Columbus, Cincinnati and Pittsburgh, the mayor is joining the consortium as a member, which elevates Milwaukee’s status among the 100 plus cities that have joined this,” said Aaron Szopinksi, policy director at the Office of the Mayor. “[Mayor Tom Barrett] knows that working together to solve all kinds of gun violence on the full spectrum that it occurs takes a lot of partnerships like this.” 

Barrett and other local officials have done a number of events with Common Ground since 2017. Szopinksi said the mayor is always glad to work with them.  

“[Common Ground] have shown a knack for really getting people together around issues that move the city and prompting action on it,” said Szopinski. “I think the mayor philosophically loves that kind of partnership and knows that all of us together is what it takes to make a difference.” 

The agreement is also related to Milwaukee’s participation in the Do Not Stand Idly campaign, a nation-wide effort organized by Metro IAF with the goal of persuading cities, states and the federal government to use their firearms purchasing power to influence gun manufacturers to prioritize and advance safety measures for their products. 

“This agreement will allow our police department to test out gun safety products to make guns safer for their work, and also to influence manufacturers with a buying power that public sector employees have to make guns safer,” said Kailyn Kenney, chief of staff to the Common Council president. “Violent crime is at epidemic proportions in the city, and we need guns that are more equipped to stay out of the hands of folks who should not have guns and to also operate more safely.” 

The products tested are designed to reduce incidence of gun theft and accidental or unauthorized firing of guns. This includes technologies such as fingerprint-activated trigger locks, and trigger locks equipped with a motion sensor alarm.  

Ater said the Milwaukee Police Department has already discussed preliminarily placing an order for the products, and that the MPD will get to keep all the technology received for testing.  

“We’re hoping that this process will then push gun manufactures to develop more technologies that can be used by the public,” said Ater. “The sad truth is that so many gun crimes and deaths are preventable if there were effective firearm security products that gun owners would actually use.” 

Ater said he hopes the first round of testing can begin in November and be concluded by January.  

Milwaukee has historically been plagued with an excessive amount of gun violence, an issue that has only worsened in recent years. According to a report by the Medical College of Wisconsin, using data from the Milwaukee Homicide Review Commission and the MPD, firearm homicides in the city increased from 80 in 2019 to 167 in 2020.  

The same report shows there have been 671 nonfatal shooting victims in Milwaukee in 2021, a 27.1% increase from the entirety of 2020.  

“Just this past Saturday night, there were shots fired on the street in front of my home,” said Ater. “Every day, there are guns stolen from homes, vehicles or businesses, and most of these guns enter trafficking pipelines.”  

The issue does not pertain to firearm homicides alone. According to the CDC, suicides make up 70% of all firearm deaths in Wisconsin. 

“Stolen guns are frequently used in violent crime, sometimes multiple crimes,” said Ater. “Unsecured guns are accessed by unauthorized users, often children, and used in suicides or accidental shootings.”