Bill Would Make It Illegal To Threaten Mass Murder With A Gun

Two Democratic state lawmakers have introduced a bill they hope will prevent mass shootings in schools.

Threatening to bomb a school is already a felony in Wisconsin, but state Rep. Steve Doyle, D-Onalaska, and state Sen. Janet Bewley, D-Ashland, said there’s no law against threatening to commit a mass murder with a gun. Bewley said the bill is a response to an incident in her district where a teen repeatedly threatened to come to school with a gun and shoot a lot of people.

“There was no way for the system to capture him,” she said. “If he had said, ‘I’m going to go and I’m going to explode a bomb,’ they could have prosecuted. But both the district attorney and the sheriff in that county said, ‘If only we had something with teeth, we would have been able to go in and help this kid.’”

Bewley said the bill would give prosecutors and judges the ability to hold people accountable when they threaten to commit mass shootings.