Hard to believe it’s been thirty years since Guy Harvey Baker – a Gulf War Marine veteran with, clearly, mental illness issues – killed officers Ron Ryan, Tim Jones, and a police dog named Laser (story from 2014).

The PiPress had a fairly good retrospective of the events – with one crucial omission:   

Ryan, 26, was checking on a man — Guy Harvey Baker — who was sleeping in a car in a parking lot at Sacred Heart Catholic Church in the Dayton’s Bluff neighborhood about 7 a.

He picked up a .38-caliber revolver from his lap and shot Ryan.

Scores of officers joined the search for Ryan’s killer. Jones had the day off, but he came in to help.

Laser picked up Baker’s trail about 10 a.m. on Conway Street, not far from Johnson Parkway.

Mara Gottfried’s story, ten years ago, was a good retelling.  But she leaves out how the police actually found Baker’s “trail” on Conway later that morning – and, in a way, the story of a man who is both the story’s unsung hero and third (human) victim.

Lyle Granlund – 48 years old, at the time – was having breakfast with his kids on the upper level of a three-plex he owned across from the parking lot.  One of his sons yelled that there’d been a shooting.  Granlund grabbed a handgun and loaded three rounds – all he could grab at the moment – and went to his window.  He saw officer Ryan on the ground, and saw Baker driving toward another woman, standing in the doorway of a nearby apartment building, apparently getting ready to rub out the only known witness to the shooting. 

Granlund – an expert marksman – pondered taking out Baker.  But he held up, worried that the Ramsey County attorney, the infamously anti-gun Tom Foley, would prosecute him.  So he opted to fire two shots through Baker’s back window, shattering it and leaving the rounds (intentionally) in Baker’s dashboard, to hopefully scare Baker off and mark the car for the police.  He saved his third round, in case Baker decided to come for him.  But no – Baker accelerated away from the scene of the Ryan shooting…

…and it was by the shattered window that the SPPD found Baker’s trail, a couple hours later, nearby on Conway Street.

I interviewed Granlund later that year, for the old Gun Owners Action League (a predecessor of GOCRA and MN Gun Owners Caucus) newsletter.  Granlund told me that while the SPPD remained officially mum about his contribution to that day’s search, more than one senior Saint Paul cop had come to his door in the following days, paying their respects to his effort to save their fellow officer.  A lieutenant left him his SPPD tie pin – a gesture that Granlund, in our interview, still found deeply touching.

I wrote about Granlund again, almost ten years ago, in a piece that includes a lot of useful background and  a link to a now-disappeared column by Ruben Rosario. 

 Granlund was right, of course; Foley did try to prosecute him.  Their attempt to get him for “reckless discharge” foundered when the police lab found Granlund’s two rounds exactly where he said they’d be in Baker’s car.  The Ramsey County Attorney’s office dropped its  attempt to prosecute Granlund only when the SPPD told Foley he’d get no cooperation from the police.  Someone listing himself as a retired SPPD cop tells the story in this thread. 

Oh yeah – and Granlund was denied a Minnesota carry permit; the SPPD that (quietly) regarded him as a hero also didn’t think he had any reason to need one. 

Gottfried picks up the story from 30 years ago today.

Baker heard the dog whining outside a fish house where he was hiding, saw Jones through the window and, through the side of the shack, shot the 36-year-old officer with the gun had stolen from Ryan. When Laser bit his leg, he shot the dog, too.

No prosecutor will ever issue an indictment, and no jury will ever hear the case – but in a very real if indirect way, Officer Jones was killed by official gun-control hysteria. 

The tragedy didn’t end that day.  When I spoke with Granlund, probably in September or October, he was clearly upset that he’d not been able to save Jones by killing Baker.  It went much deeper than that; Granlund spent the next ten years depressed about the episode.  He died in 2004 of a heart attack, at age 58, and is buried in the same cemetery as Officer Ryan. 

The lesson?  Let nobody tell you that an armed citizen can’t do immense good; one, and God only knows how many more, people are alive today because of Granlund’s action. 

And let no weasel government official get away with terrorizing the law-abiding citizen without a fight – preferably ending with a prosecutor sent to the unemployment line at the polls.

The families of the slain officers are the main focus of Gottfried’s story, of course.  I’ll urge prayers – or whatever your worldview does – for the families on what has to be a miserable anniversary.

This is an update of a piece that first appeared in SITD ten years ago today.

So the Minnesota Supreme Court just ruled that a criminals life is more valuable than yours.

No, literally: its A22-0432 State of Minnesota v. Earley Romero Blevins.

And it says that, whereas in Minnesota until today you had to make a reasonable effort to retreat before using lethal force in self-defense (outside your home), now you must retreat before even attempting to present a firearm.

In other words, you have to try to run away BEFORE you can draw your firearm to defend your, and your family’s, lives. 

That means if someone is trying to kill you, you have to give them a couple of seconds of trying to get away before you can even start to see to your own protection.

And that’s if you meet all the other criteria of self-defense; showing the threat to your life is reasonable and immediate, that you were not the aggressor, and that you only use the force to end the threat.

Now, you can do a completely correct self-defense shooting, and still go to prison because some district attorney thinks you should’ve tried harder, against a subjective standard that nobody’s figured out yet, to run away BEFORE you drew a firearm (or picked up any other weapon). 

Put succinctly, it says the life of a criminal is worth more than the life of their victim.
This is completely backwards.

The voters of this state should be ashamed.

To:  Rep. McCollum
From:  Mitch Berg, Obstreporous peasant
Re:   Civil RIghts

Your Highness,

Yesterday, you criticized the federal appeals court ruling that said Minnesota could not deny carry permits to qualfied adults between ages 18 and 20. 

Please list the other civil rights from which adults ages 18-20 should be excluded.

Thanks in advance.

That is all. 

It was just another day in the suburbs of Toronto, where gun control has solved all street crime:

I’d say “the prosecutor most likely charged the cameraman for photographing a license plate”, but I don’t want to give Mary Moriarty any ideas.

Being stalked?

Living in a crime-prone neighborhood?

Have an abusive, violent ex in your life?

These upper-middle-class white suburban women have a message for you:

Suck it.

But at least you have a selfie!

As the Minnesota state legislature, led by the no-way, no-how insane Nicole Mitchell, meanders toward passing a “safe storage” bill, I went out to try to take the community’s temperature on the issue.

I started out at a Menards. There was a line of people in various gang colors, lined up waiting for new safes to be rolled out of the back room. The attendant, Lars “Schmidty” Schmidt, said they were down to just a couple left, and the truck with more wasn’t due until Tuesday.

Things were getting a little edgy, so I went to a Cabela’s.

It’d be a little threadbare to say “I was shocked”…

…but I was.

I kid you not, the line of gang members trying to buy gun safes to comply with the “safe storage” law ran out the door.

This is where the story gets a little dicey – honestly, i can hardly believe I saw this.

One guy was driving away with his new safe when two youths walked up to him in the parking lot, stuck a gun in his face, and jacked the pickup

And then as they were driving away with the new gun safe, another car blocked them in, and three guys got out and carjacked them. They drove off with the safe, leaving three other gang members outraged, perplexed, and with no way to keep their firearms safely locked up.

All of this is as true as I can make it.

A friend of the blog sends this email:

Saw this article this morning & thought you might have fun with it. I
could see a headline like “White colonialists invade Native American
land and destroy culturally sensitive structures”. The article
mentions that the land belongs to the Leech Lake band and the
structures involved belonged to Native Americans

The friend was right.

Not only was it a story of cultural oppression, but…:

Foresters for the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources used dynamite to blow up two enclosed wooden deer stands state officials say were permanently left on state land against state law.

Neighbors in the area say the demolition was unsafe and unnecessary. Agency officials on Wednesday said the action didn’t follow “DNR policy or reflect good judgment” and that follow-up measures are likely.

…dynamiting deer stands can not be good for the environment.

Today’s DFL:

1. They nominate a convicted stalker to run against his alleged (by his own video) victim.
2. They trot Nichole Mitchell’s animated political corpse into the Senate chamber to vote for their idiotic “safe storage”, which will get tossed in court, and which will literally create a presumption of guilt against a homeowner whose firearms are stolen via any means.
3. And then, when Rep Franson brings up an emendment to exempt current victims of active stalkers, tell the little ladies they shouldn’t worry their pretty little heads and leave the guns to the menfolk.

What? You thought I was kidding?

This would be called “mansplaining” anywhere else.

Which brings us to the female face of misogyny, Jamie Becker-Finn:

They are treating their moment in absolute power as a way to say “nya nya” to people they hate. No more.

Today is the 32nd anniversary of the mostly peaceful LA Riots.

And of perhaps the greatest testimony for the 2nd Amendment in modern times – the impromptu armed resistance of the merchants of Koreatown:

Here’s one take on the story (some language NSFW).

We are in a state where the current political majority believes that the rioters hold the moral high ground, and who would likely punish the Koreans more than those who were attacking them.

Anyway – salute.

New Zealand’s government imposed draconian gun regulations in the wake of the 2019 Christchurch mosque massacre (which, let the record show, would have been worse without a good guy with a gun).

“Unexpectedly”, gang membership has skyrocketed, and gang-related shootings are up by a third:

“Over the last five years gangs have recruited more than 3000 members, a 51 percent increase. At the same time, we’ve seen a significant escalation in gang-related violence, public intimidation and shootings, with violent crime up 33 percent.” says Mr Goldsmith.

On the one hand, everything Jacinda Ardern touched turned to crap.

On the other – they were warned.

Israel has always had a paternalistic but pragmatic view of civilian firearms. As a general rule, they are opposed – but there’ve been exceptions. After a series of school massacres fifty years ago, they liberalized teacher carry in the kibbutzim – until they turned the job over to security (successfully, so far, where “success” doesn’t include civil liberty).

And now, as of last week…:

Israel Police will allow civilians to come armed to performances at Tel Aviv’s Yarkon Park, Army Radio reported Monday morning. 

This decision comes as huge concert events are set to return to venues, with the first being Israeli star Omer Adam’s upcoming show. The return of these large events brings the need for increased security. Security forces decided to allow civilians to attend events with personal firearms, rather than increasing the amount of security personnel, Army Radio report noted.

Can’t say I didn’t try to warn them, where “them” = everyone that treats self-defense as a privilege.

Guy gets ambushed by girlfriend’s ex-boyfriend in a Minneapolis apartment hallway.

Gets shot 15 times.

At 5-12 foot range

With a .45 ACP.

And lives to return fire.

And then performs first aid on himself until the cops arrived.

And, three years later, tells his story:

And whatever your stance on self-defense, this is an amazing story.

As you may recall, our “Lieutenant”/co-governor and state’s designated Karen, Peggy Flanagan, filled out her March Madness bracket based on the schools’ home state abortion laws.

She got well under half right in the first round. She was down to two of the Elite Eight, and one – UConn, seeded #1 in its quarter of the bracket – left in the Final Four.

So “abortions laws” might not be a great predictor of basketball success.

What is?

Carry permit laws and Contitutional Carry. Seven out of the “Elite Eight” were either shall-issue or Constitutional Carry, and Connecticut has always been the most liberal of the mid-Atlantic states as re issuing permits.

To: The Mall Of America
From: Mitch Berg, Guy Who’s Never So Much As Stolen a Candy Bar, Ever
Re: Adios

Dear Mall of America,

There’ve been muggings in your parking ramps.

I had a friend get her catalytic converter stolen in your ramp.

And of course, crime has become endemic all around the Mall, starting when the Blue Line started almost 20 years ago, and growing ever since.

And of course, there’ve been shootings (and, let’s be honest, worse).

So, this is your response?:

After several high-profile shootings in the past two years, the mall has added its first gun-sniffing dog. For about 20 years, MOA has used K9s to sniff out explosives, but now they’re training all eight of their dogs to detect firearms, a fairly new concept in the canine world. 

Kenny McDonough, the mall’s Canine Lt., says the dogs undergo an extensive eight-week training in-house. They learn to smell every component of a firearm to detect who may have a gun on them. 

Of course, I could have told you the result:

Mall officials say most of their finds have been conceal and carry people who weren’t aware that the mall is private property and doesn’t allow firearms. 

Which, of course, violates state law – but as the late great Joel Rosenberg taught us, “test cases are for other people”.

The only shame is that, like so many other products, services and companies that people who care about freedom are boycotting, I haven’t patronized the MOA for a couple of years now. It’s just not fun anymore.

But you’re making it clear that people like me – people who care about protecting the lives of the innocent – are your real enemies.

So thanks for the memories, MOA. I’m done with you.

That is all.

…that the DFL knows its voter base believes its own press and has no critical thinking ability whatsoever:

So – we’ve got a straw buyer problem, but DFL county attorneys would pursue charges “because the penalties aren’t high enough”, so the DFL demands more penalties to the camera, but then leads his entire ghouish, creepy, Orwellian caucus in voting against a bill that’d do just that.

We’ll need a whole lot of Minnesotans who are tired of being treated like gullible children to turn out this November.

SCENE: Mitch BERG, at the library checking out audiobooks, is too engrossed to notice Avery LIBRELLE has walked in.

LIBRELLE: Merg!

BERG: Uggggghhhh…er, hey, Avery. What’s…

LIBRELLE: Silence! Conservatives are violating the Constitutional separation of church and state!

BERG: Right – the new Alabama law on in vitro fertilization references a majority religious view in regulating the willy-nilly fertilization of frozen embryos…

LIBRELLE: Bla bla bla. They’re citing a flying spaghetti monster in trashing civil liberties.

BERG: So – the left doesn’t refer to…God…?

LIBRELLE: Superstition! Flying Spaghetti Monsters!

BERG: …in abridging a civil liberty?

LIBRELLE: No! We are people of science!

BERG: Right.

Hawaii’s highest court ruled Wednesday that Second Amendment rights as interpreted by the U.S. Supreme Court do not extend to Hawaii citizens, citing the “spirit of Aloha.”

In the ruling, which was penned by Hawaii Supreme Court Justice Todd Eddins, the court determined that states “retain the authority to require” individuals to hold proper permits before carrying firearms in public. The decision also concluded that the Hawaii Constitution broadly “does not afford a right to carry firearms in public places for self defense,” further pointing to the “spirit of Aloha” and even quoting HBO’s TV drama “The Wire.”

LIBRELLE: Well, that’s different.

BERG: Because Hawaii…

LIBRELLE: Hawai’i.

BERG: Right – it’s indigenous and colonized?

LIBRELLE: Yes. Now – I’m off to find books for “restorative editing”.

BERG: Of course you are.

And SCENE

\\

“Why do you say that no “gun safety” group ever says anything that is simultaneously substantial, original and true?”

Easy. That’s a hard, objective face.

“So what about the shooting in Burnsvile that killed two cops an a parameeic? Gifford got the basic facts straight”

Well, they got some of them.

Not the ones that show us, as uaual, that their political and legal stance is gibberish, of course:

According to records with the Minnesota court system, Gooden had a rap-sheet going back to 2004 when he was convicted for disorderly conduct. In addition to a variety of traffic-related infractions including driving after suspension, expired registration, and speeding, Gooden had a domestic assault charge dismissed in 2005.

In 2008, Gooden was convicted of second-degree assault with a deadly weapon and was subsequently sentenced to multiple years of probation.

After this conviction, Gooden lost his right to possess firearms. Years after the conviction and completing his probation sentence, Gooden applied to have his firearm rights restored. In 2020, a Dakota County judge denied Gooden’s application for restoration of firearm rights. The Dakota County Attorney’s Office opposed Gooden’s application, citing two order for protection petitions filed against him by two different women.

According to information from Crime Watch Minneapolis, Gooden was also “wanted or was to be arrested for 2nd degree criminal sexual conduct” at the time of the shooting.

CrimeWatch has more of the details the mainstream media will painstakingly avoid (Twitter thread):

So Giffords is to rep4ting actual facts about guns, gun laws, gun owners, gun crime and the Second Amendment as Melvin Carter is to fixing potholes.

i

The Legislature is back in session. And the DFL lost no time trying to extend last session’s jamdown.

Gun control? Yep, they got it:

Details here.

Of course, the bill will get dissected in court, if it gets passed. Best to make sure it doesn’t – which means if you’re not a member of the MN Gun Owners Caucus, you should be.

Senator Isa Perez-Vega may be a contender to pass Erin Maye-Quade as the most cloyingly annoying DFLer in the Senate.

Possible saving grace for this session? It’s an even-numbered year – and DFLs from Greater Minnesota are getting nervous about how the Faerie Raenbow Agenda from last session is going to go over in Eveleth. In this case, Sen. Hauschild – who currently occupies Tom Bakk’s old seat – and a clear case of nerves over making Minnesota a “sanctuary state”:

And with a one-vote majority in the Senate, it’s making a bit of a difference.

The DFLers in Greater Minnesota have to be looking at…:

• Joe Biden’s escalating unpopularity. Trump doesn’t have to win the national election for them to still lose their seats in counties that are, or are drifting, red.
• The disproportionate impact of DFL policy on rural Minnesota

…and thinking it just might be time to reel in some of the worst excesses.

Hope Hauschild takes the hint on Isa Perez-Vega’s idiot bill.

A few phone calls and emails might certainly help him make up his mind.

After a year and a half, the final report on the Uvalde Massacre was released last week.

And it told us something we knew within about a year of the Columbine Massacre – because the Secret Service reported it, after doing a deep study of spree killers: when someone is engaged in a spree killing (a mass murder with no other motivation), the best response is to meet them with violent opposition. Spree killers almost invariably operate in a psychotic reverie – and violent resistance shatters that fugue state. The directive: Don’t negotiate. Don’t wait for SWAT. Go in – if you’re a cop, do it as soon as you have another cop to cover you. Move in in mutualliy-supporting groups of 2-4 cops, and get rounds on target. If nothing else, violent resistance breaks the fugure state, and usually causes the spree killer to give up or kill themselves. (The Secret Service report didn’t endorse armed civilian resistance – but the real-world record shows a myriad of cases of regular schnooks ending spree killings. It’s the principle, not the actor, that gets the spree killer to point the gun at their own head.

And the Uvalde cops? Like the Parkland cops before them, they didn’t forget all their training…:

Eleven officers from the Uvalde school district and Uvalde Police Department arrived on the scene within three minutes of the shooter’s entry into the school. Five advanced initially and two were hit by shrapnel. Police made three attempts to enter the classrooms, which are adjoined by an interior door.

But as at Parkland, there was apparently crisis in leadership:

Pete Arredondo, then the chief of the Uvalde school police department, “directed officers at several points to delay making entry into classrooms in favor of searching for keys and clearing other classrooms,” the report found. He also tried to negotiate with the shooter, and treated him as a barricaded subject instead of a continuing threat to children and school staff, the report says…”The report concludes that had law enforcement agencies followed generally accepted practices and gone right after the shooter to stop him, lives would have been saved and people would have survived,” [US Attorney General Merrick ]Garland said.

The only “negotiating tactic” to which spree killers respond is shots on, or near, the target. They are the target.

The Sentencing Guidelines Commission has issued a report on how gun crime is dealt with in Minnesota.

It’s pretty putrid:

OF 958 convictions for gun crimes in MInnesota for a year ending last June, 413 had their mandatory minimum sentenes waived.

That was for the entire state. Any guesses on how that breaks down with Metro vs. Greater MN numbers?

Let’s look at the big stats – convictions and minimum sentences – for the four largest metro Counties:

Literally half of the people conviced of committing a crime with a gun in the Metro are given less than the state’s minimum sentence for the act – double the rate of the rest of the state.

Brandon Herrera is one of my favorite Guntubers.

I watch him mainly for his detailed, frequently off-color, mostly hilarious, and technically interesting gun takedown vids. He’s sort of like Ian McCallum, only gleefully NSFW.

This clip – going over a lawsuit by one of the victims of a (thankfully) failed mass murder attempt against a long list of gun and accessory companies whose products weren’ t involved in the incident – is worth a watch.

Again – language exuberantly NSFW.

The interesting part is at the end; Herrera challenges the defendants to not settle this specious, frivolous lawsuit out of court, and the viewer to hold them accountable if they do.

I’m going to try to find the list (and the current status of the case).

Scene: MItch BERG is picking up a piece of litter and throwing it into a public trash can. He almost walks into Avery LIBRELLE

BERG: Oh. fuuuuuuurcryingoutloud Avery…

LIBRELLE: Merg! Shut up. I’m as giddy as a little menstruating person! NRA president Wayne LaPierre has resigned! The pro-murder movement took a huge hit.

BERG: Heh. That’s kinda funny.

LIBRELLE: Yeah…wait, what?

BERG: You’ll notice it’s all us shooters and Second Amendment activists doing the cheering, right? Start this about 1:42.

BERG: LaPierre essentially neutered the NRA for the past decade.

LIBRELLE: Pfft. Everyone knows they’re the black heart and soul of the American gun movement.

BERG: Kinda racist, but whatever. The NRA for the past decade or so has been basically a fund-raising machine that stopped operating at the state level. Most of the work for the past fifteen years has been the Second Amendment Foundation and a whoooole bunch of state groups that sprang up to fill the vacuum – like the MN Gun Owners Caucus.

LIBRELLE: But…they’re the evil empire.

BERG: “Evil”. Heh. Look – if the NRA is smart enough to elect a president who wants to use all that power and money to move policy, along with that huge legal and activist infrastructure that got built up while the NRA was spending all that fundraising money, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

LIBRELLE: Blah, blah, blah. I’m actually here to protest in favor of the Palestinians. I’m here to block you.

BERG: Cool. I’m waiting to cross this street, at the crosswalk, once the light changes. Block me there.

LIBRELLE: All right!

(LIBRELLE walks into the intersection as traffic honks and zooms around him.)

PASSING DRIVER: Hey, get out of the road, bud…er, lad…er… (looks at BERG, who is crossing the cross-street with the green light. BERG shrugs.)

And SCENE

Yesterday – four days after the DFL’s vaunted “Red Flag” swatting-enablement and gun confiscation bill came out – the form to file to appeal a Red Flag order is out.

And it’s worse than you might have expected:

It should go without saying that your metro county attorneys – the ones that can’t be bothered to charge actual violent criminals – will turn up at court to oppose your appeal, and that the legal bills to litigate the issue against the bottomless resources of a hostile county attorney will be on you.

By the way – as bad as you think the new ERPO law is, it’s actually worse. The MN Gun Owners Caucus explains it here

What to do if you’re surrounded by a mob on the road?

Like most self-defense law, it’s a lot more complicated than you think.

While the lawyer is talking Washington State law (talk with a Minnesota defense attorney before assuming anything) they highlight the episode that happened in Minneapolis, by the Walker, a month or so ago.

Forewarned is forearmed.

Woman defends herself from a “mostly peaceful” attacker:

As someone pointed out in the comments, it’s grimly funny that she had her gun ready to go, but had to dig for her phone.