[JURIST] Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker [official website] signed two bills [Senate Bill 35 PDF; Senate Bill 49 PDF] Wednesday loosening Wisconsin’s gun laws. The bills, to take effect on Friday, eliminate Wisconsin’s 48-hour waiting period for purchasing a handgun and allow off duty, retired and out-of-state police officers to carry firearms on school grounds. Both the content and timing of the bills have been criticized [Reuters report], coming a week after a mass shooting in a black church by a white gunman in South Carolina. But Walker defended the bills, saying the shootings occurred because of racism, not access to guns.

Gun control has a prominent topic in US politics since a school shooting in Newtown, Connecticut in December 2012. Last December the US Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit ruled [JURIST report] that a law prohibiting individuals who have been committed to a mental institution for any amount of time from possessing a firearm is unconstitutional under the Second Amendment. This court was the first to strike down a federal gun law under the Second Amendment since the Supreme Court [official website] effectively struck down [opinion] Washington, DC’s ban on firearm ownership six years ago. However, mass shootings in Colorado, Connecticut and elsewhere have spurred some state legislatures to create and adopt gun control laws. In August 2014 a federal judge for the US District Court for the District of Maryland [official website] upheld [JURIST report] portions of Maryland’s gun control law, which banned certain types of “assault weapons” and a limited gun magazines to 10 rounds, explaining that the law served a legitimate government interest of ensuring public safety. In June of that year a judge for the US District Court for the District of Colorado [official website] upheld [JURIST report] two Colorado statutes that expanded mandatory background checks and banned high capacity magazines.