States with weak gun laws, including Wisconsin, experience more firearm deaths among children ages 0 to 17, according to a study published in the June issue of JAMA Pediatrics.
“We cannot accept that harsh reality as normal,” said Nick Matuszewski, associate executive director at WAVE Educational Fund, a statewide grassroots organization dedicated to preventing gun violence. “This study provides dramatic evidence that when lawmakers step up and take action, they can save young lives.”
The study, authored by national public health researchers using data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, found that in Wisconsin, which was categorized as one of 28 states with the most permissive gun laws, child firearm deaths increased by 15%. The most affected group nationally was African American children.
The study examined a period of time before and after a 2010 Supreme Court ruling that expanded local and state control over firearms laws.
After that ruling, many states enacted new and more permissive firearm laws, according to the report. The study looked at all types of firearm deaths, including suicides, homicides and unintentional shootings.
In 2015, Wisconsin ended its 48-hour waiting period to purchase firearms, said Tyler Kelly, policy and engagement senior associate at WAVE.
Kelly said many neighboring states and others across the country have strengthened their laws on background checks.
“In Wisconsin, we have no red flag law, weak storage laws and a lack of a waiting period for buying a firearm,” Kelly said. “All have been shown to save lives.”
Reaction from state leaders
State Sen. LaTonya Johnson, D-Milwaukee, said the findings of the study are no surprise to anyone who lives in Milwaukee.
“We see the consequences of this inaction in every child that dies and every family that grieves,” Johnson said. “Most of the kids killed by gun violence in Wisconsin come from right here in our city.”
New Milwaukee Public Schools Superintendent Brenda Cassellius said during a recent interview that 24 students in the district were victims of homicide this school year. Most were shot.
New legislation, same old story
Johnson is among a group of Democratic elected officials who are pushing their Republican counterparts to move forward the Safe Summer package of legislation that would revamp the state’s gun laws.
“I’m always hopeful, but if I’m being realistic, over and over again, Republican leadership has refused to debate common-sense gun safety proposals,” Johnson said. “Even a hearing would be a step forward at this point. I don’t believe that’s too much to ask.”
Championing the legislation is Democratic State Rep. Shelia Stubbs of Madison. She experienced a mass shooting at a school in her district in December 2024.
“That day was a really difficult day for me. As a parent, I cried,” she said. “I don’t know how many more people must die from gun violence in the state of Wisconsin.”
The Safe Summer package includes four bills. They would reinstitute the 48-hour waiting period to purchase a firearm; create an extreme-risk protection order, also known as a red flag law; ban ghost guns; and institute universal background checks for all firearm purchases.
“We need better gun laws to keep guns out of the wrong hands,” Stubbs said.
Gov. Tony Evers included similar measures in his last budget request, but they were removed by Republican lawmakers on the Joint Committee on Finance.
NNS reached out to several Republican elected officials from Wisconsin for comment, but they did not respond.
Republican leaders in Wisconsin and Second Amendment advocates have said over the years that gun violence is tied to a lack of accountability for criminals and not gun ownership.
Stubbs and others disagree. She said the Republicans in Wisconsin refuse to discuss gun control legislation.
‘We need better gun laws’
“We need better gun laws to keep guns out of the wrong hands,” she said. “It’s important to talk about the gun safety legislation to regulate access to firearms and promote responsible gun ownership.”
Kelly said polls have found that the majority of Wisconsinites support stronger gun laws, including universal background checks and waiting periods to purchase guns.
“If you’re using the gun for the right reasons, you shouldn’t have a problem waiting two days for it. “People in crisis shouldn’t be able to get a gun at the snap of their hands.”
Stubbs said another major issue that the legislation would resolve is closing a loophole that allows private sales of firearms without background checks.
“Those are transactions that do not get vetted,” she said.
A universal issue
While proposed gun laws often become a partisan issue in Wisconsin and around the country, Stubbs hopes that changes.
She said Democrats are looking for a Republican co-sponsor for the bills, calling gun violence a universal issue that affects everyone.
“At the end of the day, many of my colleagues are parents. They have loved ones. Gun violence has impacted all of us in one way or another,” Stubbs said.
Her hope is that something gets done before the next tragedy.
“I hope it doesn’t take something more to happen before we do something,” she said. “We want everyone to have a safe summer. Enough is enough.”
As she sits on her living room sofa surrounded by a large cutout, framed photos and a houseful of other reminders of her son Javon, Andrea Wilson, 41, can’t help but lose hope that her son’s murder will ever be solved.
“Nobody’s ever going to be held accountable,” she said. “It just feels like no one is going to be held responsible for his murder.”
It’s been nearly a year since she’s heard from Milwaukee homicide detectives and more than 16 months since Javon, 21, was hanging out with a group of friends when someone opened fire on them. They took him to St. Joseph’s hospital, where he died from a gunshot wound to his stomach.
Losing her firstborn is bad enough, she said, but not having justice makes it harder. Wilson is not alone in her struggles. In Milwaukee, hundreds of families share the unenviable bond of having a loved one murdered, with no one held responsible for it.
Unsolved murders in Milwaukee
From 2020 to 2024, 901 homicides occurred in the city of Milwaukee. Over 350 of those murders remain unsolved, based on homicide clearance data provided by the Milwaukee Police Department.
The homicide clearance rate refers to the percentage of cases cleared through arrest or because an arrest is impossible because of certain circumstances such as death, divided by the total number of homicides. Clearance rates also factor in murders solved during a calendar year for incidents that occurred in prior years.
The clearance rate in Milwaukee fluctuated between 50% and 59% from 2020 to 2023. The year Javon was murdered, in 2023, 59% of 172 murders were cleared.
Last year, when homicides dropped in the city by 30%, the clearance rate rose to 78%. Unsurprisingly, the clearance rate was lowest during the peak of the COVID pandemic when the number of homicides exploded in Milwaukee.
Javon’s story
Javon was a fast talker and good kid who excelled at wrestling and other sports in school. He was also extremely bright, graduating from West Allis Central High School with a 3.9 GPA. Offered two college scholarships, he chose instead to attend MATC and pursue his dreams of being a rapper and entrepreneur.
The day he got shot began like any other. He went to play basketball, came home to shower, and he let his mother know that he was heading out again.
Then there was a knock at the door, and she learned Javon had been shot and was in the hospital.
As she arrived, she asked about his condition.
All the hospital staff would tell her, she said, is that they were waiting for detectives to arrive.
“I should have realized then that he was already dead,” Wilson said.
Wilson said her son wasn’t the intended victim but got caught up in someone else’s beef.
After he died, she said, she called detectives for two weeks straight, even providing the names of potential suspects.
“It didn’t matter. They called it hearsay,” Wilson said. “I feel like I know who murdered my son.”
MPD stated that it continues to seek suspects in Javon’s homicide.
‘There’s no stopping them’
Janice Gorden, who founded the organization Victims of Milwaukee Violence Burial Fund 10 years ago, said it’s common for mothers to conduct their own investigations in their loved one’s murder.
“Sometimes they have way more information than the detectives do,” she said.
Sadly, she said, many become consumed with trying to solve the murder themselves.
“They drive themselves crazy trying to find answers to who killed their loved one,” she said. “I try to help but I can’t. I just listen to people like that because there’s no helping them. There’s no stopping them.”
Since Javon’s death, Wilson said she’s gone through thousands of emotions, one of them being severe depression. Her mother, who helped raise Javon, her first grandson, is equally devastated. Javon also had a special bond with his little brother Shamus, who’s 8 years old.
Shamus keeps a large cutout of Javon’s high school graduation photo in his bedroom and even grew out his hair to mimic his brother’s dreadlock hairstyle. Wilson said Shamus has struggled with anger issues since his big brother was killed.
“He doesn’t know how to adjust his emotions,” she said. “It’s been a very downward spiral for all of us.”
Brenda Hines founded an organization in her son Donovan’s memory to help other grieving families. (Edgar Mendez / Milwaukee Neighborhood News Service)
‘I never knew it would happen to me’
Like Wilson, Brenda Hines knows the pain of losing a son to gun violence.
Her middle child, Donovan, 23, was shot and killed while driving a car near North 29th Street and West Hampton Avenue in 2017. His case also remains unsolved.
Hines said Donovan was never afraid to travel somewhere new without a plan other than to make it. She said she isn’t sure whether her son was killed in an ongoing dispute over a car or whether it stemmed from a woman.
“I know there were people at the funeral home and at his vigil who knew,” she said.
Hines has worked as a Salvation Army chaplain since 2014, heading to crime scenes to help other families deal with tragic incidents such as murders.
“I never knew it would happen to me,” she said.
Since Donovan’s death, she’s turned her pain into action, opening the Donovan Hines Foundation of Exuberance to honor her son and to help other families by providing mental health, grief counseling and other support.
She also hosts an annual vigil to honor homicide victims in Milwaukee, part of a national series of events. Many of the families she’s met along the way are also waiting for justice for their loved one’s murders.
“It really tears the family apart,” she said. “It’s like an open wound that is still bleeding. The tears flow every day.”
Hines says she can’t tell families she knows exactly how they feel.
“Every situation is different. But, I can tell them I understand,” she said.
Solving murders
James Hutchinson, captain of the Milwaukee Police Department’s Homicide Division, said his team of 33 detectives remains committed to solving a case even as the days grow into years.
“If someone comes in and says we have info on something that happened five years ago, we’ll take that info and follow up,” he said. “From the first two weeks, to a month, or months or years down the line, we’re equally as committed to solving a murder as we were today.”
Many families, such as those of Hines’ and Wilson’s, question whether every stone gets turned in an investigation.
“I don’t know if they did their due diligence,” Wilson said. “I don’t know if they care.”
Hines, who has worked closely with officers during her time as a chaplain, said she respects the challenges police officers face.
“They don’t have enough evidence,” she said.
Still, she can’t help but feel that more could have and should be done.
“I’ve met personally with detectives because they won’t call back,” she said. “It’s a bad process.”
Though it may not be much solace to the hundreds of families in Milwaukee still hoping for justice, Hutchinson said he and the detectives in his unit take each case personally. They know that the victim’s family and friends are devastated by their loved one’s murder.
“It’s heartbreaking,” he said. “Making a death notification is one of the hardest parts of this job.”
Hutchinson said resources in his department were spread thin when murders exploded in the city during the pandemic, which increased the challenge of building a case.
The biggest challenge, though, he said, is that witness cooperation isn’t what it used to be.
“It’s changed for the worse,” Hutchinson said. “There wasn’t a no snitching campaign back then.”
Wilson admits that witnesses to her son’s murder were reluctant to talk to police. She tracked down suspects on her own and offered those names to officers. That wasn’t enough to warrant charges, police told her. She needed her son’s friends to step up.
“At this point y’all should tell what happened,” she told them. “Somebody needs to be held responsible.”
How Milwaukee compares nationally
Thomas Hargrove, founder of the Murder Accountability Project, the largest database of unsolved murders in America, said Milwaukee homicide clearance rates are similar to what he saw nationally, especially during the pandemic.
Many cities have struggled to solve murders since then. Part of the challenge is resources.
“When you have enough resources, good things happen. When you don’t, bad things happen,” Hargrove said. “When you have over 200 murders, your system is off.”
He also said it’s also much harder to get a conviction now than it was 20 years ago, which can create friction between the district attorney’s office and local police.
Although police might make an arrest in a homicide case, that doesn’t mean that charges will be filed.
Police, Hutchinson said, only need probable cause to make an arrest. The burden of proof at the district attorney’s office, which files homicide charges, is higher.
“They have to be able to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt,” he said. “Many times we will make an arrest for probable cause, but we can’t get to that level.”
What often happens, Hutchinson said, is that officers will bring a case to the DA’s office or discuss what evidence they have and then have a dialogue about whether more is needed to file charges.
While that can bring some frustration, admits Hutchinson, it is better than arresting the wrong person.
“My worst nightmare I would have in the world is to have the wrong person held accountable for a crime,” he said.
Milwaukee County District Attorney Kent Lovern acknowledges that the work to hold someone accountable for murder can be burdensome on families seeking justice.
“Obviously there is a significant gap between the evidence needed to make an arrest versus the evidence needed to successfully prosecute a case,” Lovern said.
The reason for caution and continued dialogue with officers in hopes of building a strong case is because there’s no room for error.
“We really have one opportunity with a particular suspect to bring forward charges, and we want to get it right. Not only for the person charged, but the victim’s family and the integrity of the system,” he said.
Regardless, said Hargrove, the more murders that remain unsolved, the worse it is for everyone.
“The more murders you clear, the more murderers you get off the street, the more the murder rate will go down,” he said.
Trying to move on
As Hines reflects on the ripple effect her son’s murder has had on her family, she does the only thing she can to maintain hope.
“I have to have the peace of God,” she said. “He has taken care of the situation. I still get angry but I have to let God take control.”
Meanwhile, Wilson, who still talks to Javon’s friends regularly, visits his grave monthly, and she threw him a huge birthday bash in May.
She wonders whether it’s time to put away some of his photos. Among them are large poster boards filled with pictures that were on display during Javon’s funeral.
“I have to admit it is kind of depressing,” she said. “But it makes me feel like he’s still here with me.”
For more information
Anyone with any information about murders is asked to contact Milwaukee police at (414) 935-7360. If you wish to remain anonymous, contact Crime Stoppers at (414) 224-TIPS (8477).
It allows for an individual to request federal agencies conduct a review of a homicide case investigation to determine whether it warrants a reinvestigation.
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