Anal As Everything - It

Anal As Everything - It all started as a last-ditch, rear-guard effort by Senator Steve Kelley (DFL, Hopkins), during the debate over the Minnesota Personal Protection Act, last month at the Capital. After contentious debate and much grandstanding on the part of the DFL opposition, the bill passed into law by a strong majority.

But Kelley, a lawyer by trade, found what he considered a showstopper. Currently, business and other private entities have to clearly post their property as off limits to permitted hand guns, and then remind anyone caught in violation that they needed to take it to the parking lot (rather than lie in wait to call the cops).

During the Senate debate, Kelley - looking for any angle to serve as a spoiler - read the provision to mean the business owner needed to do both.

Kelley and the whole anti-carry clacque were told, rather clearly, that this wasn't the case. They couldn't let it drop.

So Pawlenty and Charlie Weaver, being good GOPers, tried to make everyone happy:

On Tuesday, Gov. Tim Pawlenty, House Speaker Steve Sviggum and the Republican sponsors of the new law called for changing the "and" to "or." They said that would address concerns of businesses and sports arenas such as the Metrodome.

Sounds fair, right?

Not to the DFL. To the party of Pappas, this is an opportunity:

"I'd just as soon leave it exactly as it is," said Sen. Don Betzold, DFL-Fridley. "I'd like to have a discussion on the whole bill . . . Let's have as bad a law on the books as possible to show the folly of it."

Betzold is the Senate sponsor of a technical corrections bill, which Republicans had proposed using to tweak the handgun law. He rejected that plan, saying his bill is "certainly not for substantive matters on controversial bills."

The DFL is mad. They're going to do anything they can to try to derail this law.

Even exploit children:

DFL legislators held a news conference Tuesday at a tot lot in a Minneapolis park -- a place from which permitted handguns cannot be barred under the new law -- to promote what they dubbed "the do-not-shoot list," a public petition in favor of Slawik's bill to repeal it.

"It frightens me," said one of more than 600 signers so far, Jennifer Lawton of Minneapolis, holding month-old daughter Josie to her breast. "I'm actually nervous about going to the State Fair this year," another place where handguns cannot be prohibited.

Unmentioned: Both locations are already home to plenty of concealed carriers, most of them utterly untrained, unpermitted and illegal.

Apparently the DFL is counting on their votes.

Posted by Mitch at May 27, 2003 09:24 PM