Governor Tony Evers
In the wake of last week’s slaughter of students and teachers in Uvalde Texas, U.S. Senator Ron Johnson blamed “wokeness” and “indoctrination” for school shootings, a take that didn’t sit well with Governor Tony Evers.
Johnson told Fox Business Network host Neil Cavuto that he doesn’t think expanded criminal background checks will help prevent school shootings.
“No matter what you do, people will fall through the cracks. You can’t identify all these problems, you can’t arrest someone for a crime they haven’t committed yet.”
Cavuto noted that mass shootings happen in the U.S. far more than other countries, and asked about whether mental health is a contributing factor.
U.S. Senator Ron Johnson
“The solution lies in stronger families, more supportive communities, I would argue renewed faith,” Johnson said. “We’ve lost that. We stopped teaching values in so many of our schools. Now we’re teaching wokeness. We’re indoctrinating our children with things like CRT, telling, you know, some children they’re not equal to others and they’re the cause of other people’s problems.”
“First of all it distracts us from what we know the people of Wisconsin want,” Evers said when asked about Johnson’s comments. “They want safe schools, and historically 80 percent of the people support red flag laws and also expanding universal background checks. So for him to say something like that, first of all it’s in direct with what the people of Wisconsin want, and frankly, it makes no damn sense.”
Evers spoke with reporters in Madison on Friday, a day after Johnson made his comments, and three days after the mass shooting in Uvalde.