After a few fairly quiet years, gun control is back in the MN Legislature.
Alice “The Phantom” Hausman (who isn’t any better about being seen in 66A today than she was in 66B fifteen years ago, and whose upcoming retirement from office is greeted by many with “I thought she already was…“) has introduced the House version of a bill unreeled a few weeks ago by Senator John Marty. The only real question this time around is “which gun control activist is she going to pick to introduce her bill in committee this time?”
So – in a year where people have had enough of crime, where gun sales and carry permits have broken all previous records, and when gun control in general is polling the lowest it has since it became an issue, about 55 years ago, why is Minnesota’s radical left suddenly going long on it?
I’ts simple. Science.
We’ll come back to that.
Fighting For His Life: Redistricting has pitted Senator John Marty (DFL-Roseville) against Senator Jason Isaacson (DFL-Suburb Full Of The Un-Bright). In the scramble to reorganize around the new boundaries, they both have roughly 6-8 weeks to appeal to their party’s base – insane “progressive” extremists – to get the nomination to go ahead.
It is a race to the bottom in ever since. And Marty, on the subject of “who’s craziest about guns”, jumps out to an early lead. He wrote this op-ed on some astroturf radical-left blog a few weeks ago outlining the philosophy behind his bill:
The recent conviction of the killers of Ahmaud Arbery is welcome news; it has been described as “justice being served.” The convictions were appropriate for the three white men who followed a young black jogger in their cars, confronted him, and then shot him. But it cannot bring back Ahmaud Arbery. Convictions alone cannot be seen as justice.
Beware. A “progressive” is going to start talking about what “Justice” really is.
When people – and in many states, the laws – allow armed people to chase others they suspect might have committed theft, and if they get scared about their safety in the ensuing struggle, kill the person they are chasing, we have normalized lynching.
What Marty has done, here, is take a couple of facts, and turn them into a bald-faced, inflammatory lie.
You are allowed to chase thieves. Even alleged thieves.
And if you reasonably and immediately fear death, use only the force needed to end that threat, are not the aggressor, and in many states make reasonable efforts to disengage, you can defend your life.
A jury found that the Arbery’s killers didn’t meet – or come close to meeting – the standard for self-defense (even given the antiquated pre-Civil War law allowing whites to chase blacks, which the defense tried in its desperation to use).
If the rules in Georgia “normalize lynching”, they’re sure going about it the long way, since all three men have been “normalized” into life terms in jail, at the very least.
So Marty’s lying.
The killers in the Arbery case, like the killer of Trayvon Martin in 2012, claimed that they were authorized by the law to make what they considered a citizen’s arrest. In both cases, when the young black men being hunted down, undoubtedly frightened, resisted their assault, the killers said that they became frightened and needed to shoot as a matter of self-defense. The people who provoked the incidents claimed self-defense.
And again, Marty’s lying about the Martin case. I won’t go through all the details…
…because Massood Ayoob already did, and with a level fo detail that everyone should bring to the table in trying to debate gun grabbers like Marty and Hausman.
Although the courts convicted the killers in the Arbery case, our laws are encouraging vigilantism. Multiple states have enacted the NRA-backed “stand your ground” laws, where a person can shoot someone based simply on their subjective feeling that they are at risk, even if walking away and avoiding the confrontation was a reasonable alternative. In Minnesota, there are currently at least three proposed bills to adopt a stand your ground provision here.
Marty is not only lying, here – self-defense involves the “subjective feeling”, provided a jury agrees that the feeling was reasonable, the fear was immediate, the shooter wasn’t the aggressor, and the force used was reasonable.
And he’s playing word games. Years of abuse of “science” have trained ignorant people with big vocabularies that “subjective” is a synonym for “inferior”. I’ve had at least one person – with a PhD in Education, no less – say this regarding “Stand your Ground” laws.
To which I respond “what ‘objective’ standard “perceiving an imminent threat’ do you recommend?”
It was a short conversation.
These laws give people a sense of entitlement to bring high-powered weapons to public settings, ostensibly to protect themselves or other people or property. In the recent Kenosha case, Kyle Rittenhouse, the 17-year-old who was acquitted, felt it was his right to bring a high powered, semi-automatic rifle to a protest. Rittenhouse’s lawyer said that he did “nothing wrong.”
Marty’s lying again. Rittenhouse’s defense claimed his shooting was justified. A jury agreed.
Stand your ground laws promote vigilante justice, and guns in the hands of racist vigilantes lead to modern-day lynchings. We need to repeal those laws and take a comprehensive look at how we regulate guns.
Marty is lying and preying on his audience’s ignorance.
“Stand your ground” wasn’t a factor in Rittenhouse’s defense; he may have tried harder to retreat than any self-defense defendant I’ve ever seen (with the possible exception of this guy).
And it wasn’t part of the Arberry case, either.
Practically anyone can purchase an arsenal of weaponry powerful enough to gun down dozens of victims in minutes, including semi-automatic rifles and large capacity ammunition magazines.
And yet practically nobody actually does it.
In a nation with more guns than people, if law-abiding gun owners were a problem, you’d know it.
After so many years in which the gun lobby dominated the political system, it is a hopeful sign that we are seeing the beginning of a national conversation about gun laws.
As we’ve noted countless times in the past, whenever leftists start talking about “conversations about giuns”, they mean “they lie, scream, defame, slander and insulit; you listen”.
Which is what Marty is doing.
Up next, Big Left’s inevitable deflection to cars:
As we work to promote safer communities, consider how we regulate automobiles. There are lawful uses for both guns and cars, but both are deadly when misused.
With cars, we require the operator to be trained, licensed, and insured. We register the vehicle, and re-register it when transferring to a new owner.
Except literally nobody says owning and driving a car is a constitutional right – a mandated “Right of the People”, on par with free speech, assembly, worship and the press.
John Marty should propose training for people to be allowed to vote.
Licensing for the news media (that may be redundant these days).
Insurance before worshipping.
Make that dog hunt, Senator. Then we’ll talk.
We don’t have a gun registration system because the gun lobby has used fear tactics to fight even modest regulation. They say, “First they’ll register your guns, then the next thing they’ll do is take ’em away.”
Right. Just like they did with cars…
Well, no. Just like they did with guns, in New York. DC, Chicago, and like they tried to do in California, Virginia and New York State. Not to mention the UK and Australia, in the past few decades.
But keep talking about cars.
So what is Marty proposing (with emphasis added by me):
Here are some reasonable changes that are long overdue:
– Licensing gun owners and registering firearms, requiring training and insurance.
Which takes us back to having to get permission from a state functionary to exercise a constitutional right, and requires trust that a future administration won’t revoke the licenses and send cops around to the registered addresses to round ’em up at their pleasure.
Like they did in Chicago, DC, New York City, Australia, the UK, and like they tried to do in New York State, California and Virginia.
– Prohibiting people without occupational need or personal safety risks from carrying weapons, whether concealed or openly brandished, around the community.
This is just pandering to “Karen”. There is an extremely negative correlation between carry by the law abiding citizen, with or without a permit, and crime committed by those citizens.
– Putting a lifetime ban on gun ownership for people convicted of violent crimes.
This is just pandering to the ignorant; these people are already banned from owning guns until their rights are restored by a judge. Someone convicted of a violent crime will have a pretty steep burden of proof to get a judge to restore their rights – outside Hennepin and Ramsey counties of course.
Perhaps Marty should propose registrations, licensing and lifetime bans on judges that catch and release violent criminals?
– Banning certain dangerous weaponry such as large capacity magazines.
Which are, again, not correlated in any way with the street crime that accounts for most gun homicides.
These modest proposals do not punish responsible gun owners any more than vehicle registration punishes responsible car owners.
And again, this is mealy-mouthed double talk. Marty is lying. He proposes confiscation of guns – which only happens to those who are law-abiding and responsible.
But these proposals will help stop the arms race on our streets where gang members are more heavily armed than the police and where anyone with a temper or a minor grudge can end up murdering someone in a road rage incident.
Wait – what?
Gang members aren’t “responsbile gun owners”, or even legal gun owners. Ands they will not be getting licensed, buying insurfance, or registering their guns.
None of my audience needs to be told this. And I suspect none of Marty’s audience gets the distinctionn
Regulation saves lives. Over the last 75 years, motor vehicle regulations have cut the traffic death toll by about 90 percent, based on the number of miles driven.
Logic isn’t a long suit of Marty, or anyone who votes for him.- but the distinction wouldn’t confuse a moderately bright fifth grader; the lawful, ordinary use of cars is prone to accidents. Ensuring their safe use, and making cars themselves more accident. proof, will have an effect.
Guns are designed to poke holes in targets, whatever that target is. That’s their purpose.
If gang members start running down crowds of people with cars, Marty’s analogy would be marginally less nonsensical.
Speaking of nonsense, Marty is going to butcher the sainted memory of Justice Scalia:
Regulating firearms would reduce fatalities too. The U.S. Supreme Court has held that the Second Amendment gives an individual right to bear arms in self-defense, but that is not an absolute right. The court says that reasonable restrictions may be placed on the possession of firearms.
Commenting on Scalia’s dicta on the Heller decision should only be allowed to people with licenses and insurance.
“Reasonable regulation” incliudes keeping them out of felons hands – prudent restrictions against objective issues.
Not the sort of Karen-baiting ninnyism that Marty and Hausman are yapping about.
Blindsided Them With Science: So – why are Marty and Hausman going long on gun-grabbing, at the tail end of a decade that saw the most radical turnaround in public opinion in the history of the gun rights debate?
Polling shows that the public isn’t smelling what the DFL’s been cooking. Crime is making the Twin Cities – once the pride of the upper midwest, and crown jewels in “progressivism’s” CV, gradually unlivable.. Schools are collapsing, and the teachers union seems hell-bent on accelerating the unfolding disaster.
But the DFL has dealt with all of that before.
But there’s one more challenge – one the DFL hasn’t had to face in the past.
Science.
Let me explain.
After two years of lockdowns, mask hysteria, Vaccine Summer followed by Omicron Winter, and mandates, it turns out that pure, unadulterated science has found a cure for Covid-19: war.
And with the end of Covid, comes the end of the sort of bullying, log-rolling and virtue-screaming that validates and affirms the self-esteem of today’s generation of “progressives”.
With the end of Covid, and of bullying, log-rolling, of snitch-lines and the hierarchy of officially-blessed paranoia atop which they sat for two glorious (to them) years, their reason for existence has been undercut.
Marty senses – out of self-preservation, but not incorrectly – that trying to logroll and bully and harp on law-abiding gun owners (not gang bangers, nosireebob) might provide the sense of mission that events have so cruelly yanked away from Marty’s base.
Show me where I’m wrong.
