How Can You Tell...

...when Nick Coleman is spreading BS about guns and gun control?

Answer: His fingers are moving over the keyboard.

It was sometime in the late eighties, I think, when Nick Coleman left the TV beat and, with much ballyhoo, took up the general columnist role. As a TV reporter, he was loopy but innocuous - think Brian Lambert, only his political bias was more subtle than the bludgeoning shillelagh we used to get from Lambert.

One of his earlier columns dealt with assault rifles. It was a lame recitation of talking points filtered through a platoon of highly-trained strawmen. It was laughable, except it was pretty much a distillation (or "aping") of the media-at-large's official boilerplate on the subject.

Nice to see some things never change.

He went to the Thirty Five Thousand Million Mom March demonstration at the Cathedral the other day:

There were a million moms at the Cathedral of St. Paul Tuesday.

Minus 999,979.

Five years ago, the moms could have taken a run at a million. But five years ago is a long time, when you are talking about politics.

Five years ago, the Million Mom March turned out thousands against guns in St. Paul and then, on a beautiful Mother's Day in May of 2000, assembled three-quarters of a million strong in Washington, D.C., to demand that the nation's lawmakers put an end to the carnage.

The Los Angeles Times estimated it as more like 150,000, and the Park Service said at the time it was more like 40,000. So - does Nick Coleman really have a baloney detector, or does he just turn it off when he's getting his talking points straight from Citizens for a Supine "Safer" Minnesota?

It looked like they even had a chance. But that was then. Before 9/11, before President Bush let the ban on assault rifles lapse, [and yet violent crime continues to drop!- Ed.] before a government agency warned that terrorists can buy weapons easier than they can get on airplanes, before the National Rifle Association bought Congress. Before we stopped giving a rip.

"We" stopped giving a "rip" because like the villagers in "The Boy Who Cried Wolf", a majority of people - in Minnesota and elsewhere - realized that the anti-gun movement was largely discredited.

And what does Nick Coleman think - that terrorists are going to walk into Bill's Gun Shop in Lilydale and pick up a crate of SKSes? That there's any shortage of fully automatic assault rifles and submachine guns on the black market - they've been arming drug gangs for decades.

On Tuesday, the remnants of the million moms [Heh heh - Ed.] mustered around the country to jog our conscience about the daily mayhem, the 82 Americans who are shot to death each day, including eight kids under 18 years old.

Unmentioned: Most of those "82" killed every day are suicides or casualties of the drug war. Most of the eight kids killed are teenagers involved in the drug trade. Tragic, absolutely. The fault of the law-abiding gun owner? Hardly.

But those are the sort of facts that routinely escape Nick Coleman's baloney detector, too...

...when the bell started tolling in St. Paul, only 21 "moms" had shown up, including a couple of priests and a few stragglers who joined the somber assembly during the 15 minutes it took to ring 82 times.

"We have thousands of members and friends," [Yeeeeah. Thousands...no, TENS of thousands! Yeah, that's the ticket! - Ed] said Million Mom organizer Mary Heller, who nevertheless seemed chagrined at the turnout. "And we're still fighting for the same thing we have been fighting for the last five years -- sensible gun laws."

One thing Heller and the other moms wanted me to help them make clear is that they are not "anti-gun." Instead, they stressed, they are "anti-gun violence."

OK. Point noted. But the victory goes to the gunslingers: If not even the mothers can come right out and say they hate the bloody guns, then it is clear: The bloody guns have won.

No. The battle will be won when the likes of Mary Heller, and Rebecca Thoman, and Matt Entenza and Chuck Schumer and Wes "Lying Sack" Skoglund admit there's a difference - a vital, crucial one - between a gun in the hands of a law-abiding citizen and one used by a criminal. All of them, and their minions in the press, refuse to acknowledge the difference; until they do, the "bloody liars" are still in play.

How long do you suppose we'll have to wait until that distinction is violated in this column?

In the previous few days, a criminal suspect shot an Atlanta judge and three others to death. In Milwaukee, an armed churchgoer took the lives of his pastor and six others and then turned the gun on himself. And in Minneapolis, a security system was installed in the Hennepin County Government Center in an effort to stave off another courthouse shooting like the one that took a life two years ago. And all of this while a Minneapolis restaurant was just reopening after a week spent cleaning up the gore following a shooting incident that killed two customers.

Wow, that didn't take long at all.

In most of those cases except possibly the Milwaukee case, the shooter was someone who by law had no right to have a gun; in no case would they have qualified for a concealed carry permit in Minnesota.

Coleman laments that even the gun-grabbers don't call themselves gun-grabbers anymore. Come to think of it - he's right. Rebecca Thoman! Call a spade a spade! Show your stripes, as Nick would have you do! See what it gets you!

Still, only 21 came to the cathedral, and not a single TV station showed up.

You'd think that trying to rein in the guns would be a popular cause at a time like this. But you'd be wrong. Today, we don't care about stopping gun violence. Today, we discuss what kind of handgun best suits your mood and complements your outfit.

[Sigh].

Yes. The decision is exactly that trivial.

Americans don't have the will to put the guns away. We are a gun-toting, gun-loving, gun-happy bunch. With blood on our hands.

Gosh. Nick's getting so used to libel, he doesn't even know when he's doing it anymore.

"We" do not have blood on our hands. Criminals, the insane, the suicidal - they all do. We do not.

More than 150,000 Americans have been shot to death since those million moms went to Washington in 2000, including more than 16,000 kids.

The rate among kids is nowhere near that figure.

The kill rates have been falling somewhat since the moms first marched, but some of the improvement is due to the morbid fact that big-city emergency rooms have gotten better -- through experience -- at saving people who are bleeding to death.

Possible - although Coleman doesn't cite any evidence. Perhaps he "knows stuff", but would it kill him to pass on a source once in a while?

Before the cathedral bell started counting the daily dead, the moms visited the State Capitol, just down John Ireland Boulevard from the cathedral, to give little bells to the politicians and ask them to join them on the cathedral steps at noon. The politicians were very polite. Some even said they might stick their heads out the door of the Capitol at noon just to see if they could hear the death knell.

None made it to the cathedral.

Good. They've learned their lesson; participating in this sort of squalid grandstanding on company time costs them votes.

I'm feeling better already.

America has made up its mind: Eighty-two people with their guts and their brains blown out every day is the price we are willing to pay for ... what?

Yet another question that needs elaboration.

It depends on which 82 people we're talking about. Since half of them are likely suicides - I'm far from indifferent. Perhaps some of those priests need to be out working the flock to find the depressed before they fall off the edge.

The drug dealers that make up a fair chunk of the rest of those 82, most of them killed by other drug dealers? None have asked me to talk them out of their chosen trade (note to any budding drug dealers reading this space: QUIT WORKING IN THE DRUG TRADE. YOU'LL DIE. It ain't much, but I'm doing my best.

Do I feel sorry for the 2-5 cases of self-defense shootings per day? Hell no. Every innocent victim that defends him/herself via the justifiable use of lethal force (by law, almost always in situations where death, rape, abduction or grievous injury are the alternative) is a victory.

Accidents? I fully favor training gun owners; I've never advised anyone to buy a gun without taking training. The school system should allow the NRA's juvenile gun safety program into the schools; it's by far the best available, and kids who've been trained in how to respond when they see a gun are vastly less likely to hurt themselves or others.

Care to join me in this initiative, Nick Coleman? I'll donate money for books to Maxfield School, and you can help me launch the gun safety program. Deal?

Posted by Mitch at March 18, 2005 05:38 AM | TrackBack