Milwaukee City Wire

For my family, personal safety will never be an abstract concept. After an attempted home invasion, I understand it as something we have a duty and a right to defend.

I woke up suddenly to a pounding on the front door. With my two little boys still asleep, I rushed downstairs to see two large men through the window. They refused to leave. After a few frantic minutes, I found our family’s firearm, pointed through the glass, and yelled, “I’m not afraid to shoot.”

To this day, I am thankful that I had both the right and the means to keep my family safe — and that there were police on the other end of the line to send help. My family and I owe our lives to both factors.

After that attempted home invasion, I opened my small business. It’s a shooting range that serves a customer base that is about 45 percent women and works with local police programs to teach classes on self-defense and gun safety. We work with the Citizens Police Academy to support our police because they defend us.

The current effort to undermine law enforcement ignores my family’s experience and thousands of others like it. The debates were a slap in the face to American families.  While Joe Biden claimed to stand for “law and order with justice,” his actions indicate the exact opposite.  

During the Obama-Biden administration, funding to state and local law enforcement were cut by millions. Radical left politicians and activists consider our security a mere bargaining chip in their ideological campaign against police and the Second Amendment.

For me, nothing is new about these attacks on policing, it’s simply an old fight taken to a national level in the lead-up to an election. The Milwaukee area went through a nascent version of the “defund the police” insanity that now informs Democrats’ public safety strategy. Amid law enforcement layoff and furloughs, the Milwaukee County Sheriff warned Wisconsinites that we should contemplate firearms training and consider ourselves partners in securing our own safety. Seven years on, that advice seems prescient. 

Milwaukee and other cities around the country are experiencing a historic rise in homicides. In Milwaukee, the murder rate is double what it was last year. Almost as bad, in places where Democrat elected officials choose to tolerate it, rioters and looters have created a breakdown in public order that leaves residents at the mercy of criminals. 

Our government must ensure its citizens’ safety. While left-wing radicals defame our law enforcement heroes as “the enemy,” President Trump is our champion of law and order. The President signed executive orders to promote more just law enforcement, stronger neighborhoods, and safer policing. He and his administration have been the only forces in the country trying to actually restore order in places where it has been allowed to slip away.

In the City of Milwaukee, I would have never imagined that I would have to fight for my safety. But this fight isn’t just for my kids anymore — it’s for our nation. On Nov. 3, we have the choice between safety and chaos. 

President Trump pledged to stand up for safety in our cities and suburbs. The President’s stance is in sharp contrast to the policies of his opponents’. A Biden-Harris administration would undoubtedly mean that our families are less safe.

When Joe Biden was vice president, he was more concerned about slapping American police departments with consent decrees and federal monitoring than with ensuring that crime stayed low. And now, during the sharpest wave of violence since the 1960s, he’s signaling to the radicals that he’s OK with “redirecting” law enforcement funds to their priorities.

Kamala Harris is even worse. As rioters attacked police and burned businesses, she told her followers to donate to organizations that bail out rioters so they could get out quickly and keep rioting.

It’s clear — if the Biden-Harris ticket wins in November, Americans won’t be safe. Our families won’t be safe. Our communities won’t be safe. We deserve a leader who is willing to fight for us — not for the people pounding on our doors.

— Cheryle Rebholz is the founder and co-owner of Bear Arms Indoor Boutique Shooting Range.