The good guy with the gun does in fact make a difference.

But according to the Crime Prevention Research Center, they make a much bigger difference than even I thought:

Evidence compiled by the Crime Prevention Research Center shows that the sources the media relied on undercounted the number of instances in which armed citizens have thwarted such attacks by an order of more than ten, saving untold numbers of lives. Of course, law-abiding citizens stopping these attacks are not rare. What is rare is national news coverage of those incidents. Although those many news stories about the Greenwood shooting also suggested that the defensive use of guns might endanger others, there is no evidence that these acts have harmed innocent victims.

Part of the problem is that the FBI is a little sluggish about counting episodes where the spree killer commits suicide after being confronted; the two events are not separate when they are inextricably linked.

But some of it is just plain bureaucratic dishonest. One fairly bald-faced example:

For example, the Bureau’s report about the Dec. 29, 2019 attack on the West Freeway Church of Christ in White Settlement, Texas, that left two men dead does not list this as an incident of “civic engagement.” Instead, the FBI lists this attack as being stopped by a security guard. A parishioner, who had volunteered to provide security during worship, fatally shot the perpetrator. That man, Jack Wilson, told Dr. John Lott that he was not a security professional. He said that 19 to 20 members of the congregation were armed that day, and they didn’t even keep track of who was carrying a concealed weapon.

Coverage of the actual episode right here. The FBI also treated this similar shooting as a “security guard” incident.

“But Mitch – why are you so intransigent a Second Amendment advocate?”

Glad you asked.

Growing up left of center as I did, the first real inkling I had that gun control was a stupid idea was reading about the Holocaust, and realizing that armed people don’t get shoved into boxcars.

And seeing the same story – modern Nazis trying to murder modern Jews – is a refresher.

Like this story, of three good guys with guns:

Seeing what’s going on in streets of the West today isn’t anything to make you feel like this sort of thing isn’t possible in the US.

Last month, as eighty years ago, the difference between death and at least a chance at life was having a gun.

From.

My.

Cold.

Dead.

Hand.

Someone walks up to you with a baseball bat. They say they want to kill you.

Your response is “no, I don’t want to get beaten to death with a baseball bat”.

Looks like you have a standoff. A controversy. A conundrum.

Someone else steps in and asks “How about we compromise? Will you settle for a traumatic brain injury?”

It’s the middle way, after all. The guy with the bat might even say “sure, I just wanna hit you, hard!“

You might respond “No – in fact, I don’t want anyone hurting me in any way. At all”

And the buttinski responds “Why won’t yiou compromise?”

Who’s right?

You?

The guy with the bat?

Or the person striving to find the middle ground between the two of you?

If your response is “I’m putting my foot down; nobody is hitting me with a bat for any reason at all“, and the other to ask “why do you hate the guy with the bat?“, does that change anybody’s mind?

Point being, sometimes the middle path, the compromise, is not the most moral path forward.

Joe Doakes, formerly of Como Park, emails:

The Minnesota Court of Appeals issued an opinion which clarifies the duty to retreat in defense-of-others cases.

Let’s imagine a situation where Lilly is the Victim lying on the ground, Trevon is the Assailant kneeling astride Lilly beating her with a baseball bat, and Tom is the Rescuer, a lawfully armed citizen who sees the situation.  Tom determines that Lilly is likely to suffer great bodily harm or death if Tom does not intervene using lethal force to stop Trevon’s attack.  If Tom shoots Trevon, can Tom claim he acted in self-defense?  In the past, we often heard that the Rescuer steps into the Victim’s shoes.  If the Victim could use self-defense, the Rescuer could, too.  But there was no case which clearly said so.

We know that in defense-of-self cases (if Trevon was attacking Tom), Tom must retreat if he can do so safely, before using lethal force.  That’s not the situation here.

The State was arguing that in defense-of-others cases, Tom as Rescuer must also retreat if he can do so safely, leaving Lilly, the Victim, to die.  It’s more important to prevent a shooting than to save a life.

The Court of Appeals decided that was wrong.  The duty to retreat is the duty of the VICTIM to retreat, not the duty of the RESCUER.

If Lilly could not safely retreat, then Tom might be justified in shooting Trevon to stop the deadly attack.

Of course, Tom is taking a risk in doing so.  The other rules of self-defense still apply.  Lilly may have initiated the confrontation, Trevon may be using a bat to stop Lilly from stabbing him with a knife again, Tom is still stuck in Lilly’s shoes for those elements of the defense.  But at least the leave-her-to-die argument has been laid to rest.

So that’s good news.

Joe Doakes, no longer in Como Park

It’s about time.

The FBI has a long history of underreporting defensive gun use by civilians.

Foir example, in the early 1990s, when criminologist Gary Kleck was estimating civilians used firearms for legal, justified, defensive purposes between 500,000 and 2,000,000 times a year – roughly 99% involving no shots fired. At the same time, the FBI’s estimate was closer to 80,000.

Chalk it up to reporting, or bureaucratic “conservatism”, or a statistical model that demanded a fairly high standard of confirmation for unreported episodes (like this one). Heck, even ascribe bad motives, like “trying to convince people that armed resistance to crime is counterproductive and futile” – although this was long before federal law enforcement (outside the BATFE) was widely presumed to be in the bag for the Democrats.

But some things never change:

The shooting that killed three people and injured another at a Greenwood, Indiana, mall on July 17, 2022 drew broad national attention because of how it ended – when 22-year-old Elisjsha Dicken, carrying a licensed handgun, fatally shot the attacker.

While Dicken was praised for his courage and skill – squeezing off his first shot 15 seconds after the attack began, from a distance of 40 yards – much of the immediate news coverage drew from FBI-approved statistics to assert that armed citizens almost never stop such attackers: “Rare in US for an active shooter to be stopped by bystander” (Associated Press); “Rampage in Indiana a rare instance of armed civilian ending mass shooting” (Washington Post); and “After Indiana mall shooting, one hero but no lasting solution to gun violence” (New York Times).

The FBI reports that armed citizens only stopped 14 of the 302 active shooter incidents it identified for the period 2014-2022. The FBI defines active shooter incidents as those in which an individual actively kills or attempts to kill people in a populated, public area. But it does not include those it deems related to other criminal activity, such as a robbery or fighting over drug turf.

But as with all information from government and media “experts”, the standards is “distrust and verify – and, almost invariably, distrust some more”.

Because the facts are a lot more interesting:

Evidence compiled by the Crime Prevention Research Center shows that the sources the media relied on undercounted the number of instances in which armed citizens have thwarted such attacks by an order of more than ten, saving untold numbers of lives. Of course, law-abiding citizens stopping these attacks are not rare. What is rare is national news coverage of those incidents. Although those many news stories about the Greenwood shooting also suggested that the defensive use of guns might endanger others, there is no evidence that these acts have harmed innocent victims.

The errors in the FBI’s stats are legion, and egregious. For example – remember this case? I sure do.

The FBI? Enh:

For example, the Bureau’s report about the Dec. 29, 2019 attack on the West Freeway Church of Christ in White Settlement, Texas, that left two men dead does not list this as an incident of “civic engagement.” Instead, the FBI lists this attack as being stopped by a security guard. A parishioner, who had volunteered to provide security during worship, fatally shot the perpetrator. That man, Jack Wilson, told Dr. John Lott that he was not a security professional. He said that 19 to 20 members of the congregation were armed that day, and they didn’t even keep track of who was carrying a concealed weapon.

It’s not just a few case:

Seriously. The undercount is egregious.

If the CPRC is correct – and it always is – citizens respond effecivelty to, not 4%, but rather to almost 36% of active shooter situatons.

The whole thing is very much worth a read.

And as always, repeat after me. Disturst and verify.

And, usually, distrust with greater vim and vigor.

Democrats warned me that if we voted GOP, we’d have fascism in the US.

And they were right:

Last Friday, New Mexico governor Michelle Lujan Grisham, a Democrat, announced a 30-day ban on the right to carry open or concealed firearms in public. She and the state health secretary, Patrick Allen, declared, “Gun violence and drug abuse currently constitute statewide public health emergencies,” and that provided sufficient justification for the governor to repeal the concealed-carry law, first passed in 2001, as well as the state’s open-carry law.

In New Mexico, about 46 percent of adults have at least one gun in their home.

The New Mexico state legislature is not under fire, missing, or incapable of performing its duties. It adjourned on March 18, and is scheduled to begin its next session January 16, 2024. The state legislature meets for a 60-day regular session in odd-numbered years, and for a 30-day regular session in even-numbered years. The governor can call a special session to deal with emergency legislation that needs attention before the next regular session; the state legislature can also declare its own “extraordinary session” and meet outside of the normal session, if three-fifths of each chamber agrees.

No Democrat can be allowed to live this down.

The Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus has one at least one level of its case to legalize citizens ages 18 to 20 for carry permits.

Keith Ellison, being Keith Ellison, is fighting them:

So just so we are clear on this: in the state of Minnesota, if you’re a 10 year old who has decided they want to get themself chemically castrated, you have full legal standing.

If you’re a 20 year old veteran of the Armed Forces who wants to defend themselves, you are not only not old enough, you are an unperson.

This may be the perfect metaphor for the state of Minnesota today.

NOTE: Nobody of any age should write blog posts using “voice to text“ without taking the time to edit.

When the left talks about gun control / “gun safety”, it’s talking about you.

Not them..

During the relevant time frame, the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office rarely issued [carry permits]. Indeed, the office’s practice was to not even process an application for a CCW license absent a special instruction to do so…

…Thomas Moyer is Apple, Inc.’s head of global security. The company’s executive protection team is under his supervision. In 2016 and early 2017 the team began receiving more serious threats against Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, and became concerned about its ability to respond to these threats. As a consequence, in early 2017, Apple decided its executive protection team should be armed and began taking steps to obtain CCW licenses for team members…

…two Apple officials—David Gullo, senior director of global security, and Eric Mueller, senior director of operations for the security team—met with Undersheriff Sung [whose boss was running for re-election] to discuss CCW licenses…On March 26, 2019, members of Apple’s executive protection team were told to pick up their CCW licenses, which they did at the Sheriff’s Office…

Government licensing is a wealth transfer – on the table, or under it.

SCENE: Mitch BERG is getting canning supplies at Fleet Farm, when Avery LIBRELLE walks round the corner.

LIBRELLE: Merg!

BERG: Fuc…crying out loud, Avery, how are you?

LIBRELLE: Shut up. We figured out how to get white ammosexuals like you to support common sense gun safety regulations.

BERG: I can’t wait.

LIBRELLE: Give guns to black men!

BERG: Like this guy…

…who’s been getting universal, comprehensive praise from gun owners of all ethnicities?

LIBRELLE: No, no. I mean if we gave stereotypical black men guns and got reactions from stereotypical white ammosexuals.

BERG: That…is, uh, ,probably factual. and uncommonly frank of you. Did you just have a wisdom tooth pulled?

LIBRELLE: They did just legalize weed in Minnesota.

BERG: Aaaaah ,yeah. Hey, look!

(BERG points at…something, LIBRELLE slowly ambles around in the other direction, at which point BERG makes his escape).

And SCENE

A friend of the blog emails:

ATF Form 4473 question 21.g reads:

“g. Are you an unlawful user of, or addicted to, marijuana or any depressant, stimulant, narcotic drug, or any other controlled substance?
Warning: The use or possession of marijuana remains unlawful under Federal law regardless of whether it has been legalized or decriminalized
for medicinal or recreational purposes in the state where you reside

Yes No”

If your neighbor routinely sees you setting on your deck smoking weed and you come home one day with a terrifying AR-15 does the inference that you lied on your Form 4473 justify them invoking one of Minnesota’s Red Flag laws to have the authorities take away all your guns?

I am no lawyer – I will await input from one of them – but I suspect “It depends on how much your county attorney hates law abiding gun owners” is at least part of any correct answer.

It’s this blog’s considered position that DFL politicians can say pretty much anything they want; they know that the typical DFL voter, while invincibly smug about their education, is incredibly badly informed and, being a trained regurgitator of dogma, has no capacity for critical thought. They also know that the Twin Cities’ subservient news media – being mostly from that same population – won’t do anything to fix that.

Which is why Melvin Carter can write bilge like this:

Now, you know gun store owners aren’t clairvoyant. And I know it.

And so does Melvin Carter.

He knows that a “straw buyer” is someone who:

1. Uses his or her clean criminal record – with no indication they might be a probem, and
2. Knowingly sells or gives guns to criminals.

And Mayor Carter also knows that neither the Hennepin nor Ramsey County attorneys, going back decades, is especially enthusiastic about going after straw buyers. Nobody ever got elected Senator by putting a gang-banger’s girlfriend in jail.

But they typical DFL voter? Someone who learned their law enforcement from a video game or an episode of “Criminal Minds?” They likely do think there’s some way for a gun store worker to tell if the person showing their ID is one of the 99.999% of gun buyers who are legit, or that other one who’ll sell a gun to a ne’er do well who goes on to shoot up a bar in Saint Paul.

And they just don’t care that much anyway.

I’m never going to be the one to pile on someone who freezes up at the thought of charging toward mortal danger.

It happens to the best of people; trained cops and soldiers freeze solid when the immediate threat becomes real. Even soldiers who’ve been there, over and over, will freeze up – think of the Gunner Sergeant from Percy Sledges memoir The Old Breed, who fought through battle after battle against the Japanese, only to freeze up in his final battle.

Nobody can predict how they’d do.

Of course, there are still consequences. They may even be just consequences.

Of course, we know a couple things about spree killings: left unchecked, they rack up horrific death tolls. And the best way to end them is to respond with immediate lethal force .

Something that cops have been taught, now, for a few decades.

I’ll let God decide whether Scot Peterson – the cop who busied himself searching the buildings on the Parkland campus that didn’t have gunfire coming from inside during the Stoneman-Douglas High School massacre – is truly culpable for freezing up, not “under fire” but under the threat of it. He was 56, nearing retirement, probably not too unlike Danny Glover’s character in the (fictional) Lethal Weapon series, and just “too old for this s**t”.

Because due to double jeopardy, that’s the next judgment that matters. Because a jury acquitted him of culpability in those deaths last week:

“If they need to really know the truth of what occurred… I’ll be there for them,” he said.

Mr Peterson, 60, put his head in his hands and began sobbing as the verdicts were read out in court in Fort Lauderdale.

After the verdict, Mr Peterson told reporters that he would like to talk to the parents of the students who were killed.

I am not the one to judge.

But I’ll defer to someone who is (emphasis added by me):

But Tony Montalto, whose daughter Gina was one of the students murdered, said he continued to blame Mr Peterson for not trying to stop the shooting.

“His inaction contributed to the shock, the devastation of students and teachers at that school,” Mr Montalto told reporters. “We don’t understand how this jury looked at the evidence that was presented and found him not guilty.”

“All I can say to the members of the jury is: ‘I think your school should hire him to protect your children,‘” he said.

The person who should be at trial, Sheriff Scott Israel, who held his officers back from confronting the maniac who murdered 17, and spent the rest of his disgraceful career as a gun control activist to deflect away from his own uselessness, has not been charged with anything. I don’t suspect he can be.

It’s a shame.

Fantasy: Group of mewling progressive soft (among other things) racists “plan” to “buy every eligible black American an AR-15”:

Progressive activists concerned about gun violence are launching a campaign to drum up the support they need to pass more restrictive gun laws. The group plans to purchase an AR-15 for every eligible black American to scare Republicans into backing stricter regulations on firearms.

“We’ve known for a long time that racist Republicans are terrified at the thought of black men owning guns,” said Shelby Harris, chief operating officer of “Unpull the Trigger,” a non-profit anti-gun group. “By making sure every black man has a rifle, we can finally get Republicans to support universal background checks, gun buybacks, and confiscation of assault weapons.”

Dubbed the “Scare the Racists Straight” initiative, this controversial proposal is intended to get Republican politicians and their conservative constituents on board with the effort to limit gun ownership as much as possible.

“It’s a really exciting project,” said Tiffany Petit. “When these racist rednecks see video after video of black men shooting assault weapons at the range and carrying them in public, they’ll get on the phone immediately to tell their Congressperson to support more gun control pronto!”

Reality: a day at the range is more egalitarian than almost anything in modern society…

…especially a DFL executive meeting of any kind.

Also – let the record show that “23 and Me” says I have a black ancestor in the past 6-7 generations. Please make mine a .300 Blackout if you’d be so kind.

Democrat have been trying to wedge hunters apart from other gun owners for decades.

And they’re not happy that its not working.

“Jilted”

Oddly, that’s not the word the Strib used when Klink refudiated his “A” rating with the NRA. I’d use “stabbed in the back”, personally.

Anyway – welcome to the party, deer hunters.

Rep. Andy Smith, wannabe kommissar and ultraprogressive rep from Kim Norton’s side of Rochester, seems to see himself as a left-of-center Steven Crowder. Or at least, that’s how he comes across.

Here’s his ode to enabling Munchhausen Mommies:

He truly is one of Minnesota Progressivism’s intellectual thought leaders.

Anyhoo, yesterday was his birthday:

I celebrated by tripling my monthly donation to the MN Gun Owners Caucus.

I invite you to do the same.

And anyone who wants to challenge him? I will give you whatever airtime it takes.

To: Senator Klobuchar
From: Mitch Berg, Obstreperous Peasant
Re: Hire A Better Social Media Intern

Senator,

I’m not sure if you left your social media feed with your remedial intern last week, or if you – a former prosecutor – actually wrote this:

So let’s get this straight – you want to write a bill to “stop dangerous conversions”…

…that have been illegal on the federal level for nearly 90 years?

Just a quick reminder as to the level of intellectual acuity the DFL is bringing to this session.

…that nobody’s coming for your guns!

And if you say they are, you’re a white supremacist [1]

Not gonna prevaricate: This kid had me pretty depressed (in a “howling with laughter” kind of way) last week:

This young lady was the perfect antidote:

Let the Great Sort continue!

Everyone’s got something to kvetch about in the Daniel Perry case.

The usual crowd on the left is whinging that a white guy, just convicted of murdering a BLM “protester”, is getting pardoned by Governor Abbot.

Another, much smarter, crowd is reminding the world, “uh, the ‘protester’ was being ‘mostly peaceful’ by pointing an AK47 at Perry”.

For my part? While I don’t know all the specifics, it’d seem the main factor in Perry’s conviction – in Austin, at the hands of a Soros prosecutor, naturally – apparently happened not because of what he did during the incident, but because of what he said before:

Perry’s defense team argued that he acted in self-defense, but prosecutors contended that Perry instigated what happened. They highlighted a series of social media posts and Facebook messages in which Perry made statements that they said indicated his state of mind, such as he might “kill a few people on my way to work. They are rioting outside my apartment complex.”

While I don’t know the details, a zealous prosecutor can use such statements to impeach your “unwilling participant” status. It appears similar to the case of Alan Scarsella, who did many stupid things after shooting at people pursuing him and his friends at a BLM protest outside the Fourth Precinct in Minneapolis in 2015, but who appears to have gone to prison mostly because of a video he posted on the way to the event bragging about mixing it up with protesters. A good attorney could have possibly suppressed that “evidence” – but he had a public defender, so he might be out of prison now.

Which brings us to the proposed Berg’s Law of Armed Self-Defense:

“The first rule of armed self-defense is, you never talk about armed self-defense.

Don’t joke about it with your friends. Don’t brag about it on social media. Don’t have an angry outburst about protesters or rioters where unfriendly ears might hear you.

Keep it, like your firearms, hidden under the proverbial bushel basket.

Like I would, if all my guns hadn’t fallen into Mille Lacs. Which is fine, because guns terrify me and I’d never use one on a fellow human.

The Vice President flew to Nashville…

…to support the three legislators who bum-rushed the House floor to demand legislation against the law-abiding gun owner who had nothing to do with…

…the Nashville massacre that Vice President Harris ignored.

Because the three representatives are the real victims…

Man tries to rob parking lot attendant in New York. Shoots him twice. Attendant nonetheless takes the gun away, and shoots the attacker.

Police arrest the victim, charge him with illegal gun possession. For taking the gun used to try to kill him.

[Attendant Moussa Diarra, age 57] was shot twice during a tussle with suspected thief Charles Rhodie at Carolan’s West 31st Street garage early Saturday before using the accused man’s weapon to shoot him back.

Diarra was initially charged by cops in the case, including with criminal possession of a weapon for having Rhodie’s gun at one point, but Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office Sunday dropped the raps. Rhodie still faces charges including attempted murder.

Bragg’s office dropped the charges after public outcry.

Let’s emphasize that properly – it took public outcry to get these morally depraved charges against an innocent man who defended himself dropped.

And just so I’m clear, by “depraved” i mean “evil”.

When governments goal is to make people more afraid of the consequences of protecting themselves than of being victimized, there is no other word for it.

It’s a gloomy, cloudy Monday morning.

And yet my heart is dancing.

Because it’s another day alive in God’s creation? Sure. Goes without saying, but needs to be repeated anyway.

But beyond that? There’s this:

It’s the Anoka County Attorney slapping down Jamie Becker-Finn over the proposed “safe storage” bill, which would have required all guns to be stored unloaded, with ammo locked up separately from the guns, and required a carry permit to have an uncased, loaded gun in the home, allowing police wide latitude to barge in and check on the above.

It’s fairly clearly a Fourth Amendment shortcut. It would disproportionately affect Black and Latino gun owners. It’s patently unconstitutional.

And any day that starts with Rep. Becker-Finn getting water squirted on her nose is a good, glorious day.

I’ll do my due diligence and make my usual reference to my self-coined but completely accurate dictum:

Berg’s Eighteenth Law of Media Latency

Nothing the media writes/says about any emotionally charged event – a mass shooting, a police shooting, anything – should be taken seriously for 48 hours after the original incident.  It will largely be rubbish, as media outlets vie to “scoop” each other even on incorrect facts.

I will continue to observe this law.

But to speculate just a bit? I’m going to go out on a short sturdy limb and guess mass shooting at the Covenant School disappears down the memory hole.

The shooter, y’see, is a former student who, while being almost universally “deadnamed” in the media by her original, female identity, seemed to be pretty actively presenting her…er, him…er, xheirself as (what biologists used to call) male:

That’s two spree killings in one. year carried out by gender-dysmorphic people. The avalanche of mental illness spurred on by the lockdowns and America’s general spiritual and emotional decline is paying dividends for those who benefit from both.

Darn that NRA.

And I’m sure various cultural cues, like this and this…

…were utterly unrelated.

By the way – like most spree killers, the murderer chose the target because there was less chance of resistance. The school was a “gun free zone”, and had other vulnerabilities that beckoned:

[Metropolitan Nashville Police Chief John Drake] answered, “Yes,” [that Covenant was the only school targeted] but noted there was another location the suspect considered striking as well. However, he said the suspect did “a threat assessment” of the other location and decided there was “too much security.”

Draw your conclusions. I certainly am .

Unlike the Uvalde shooting, initial reports indicated the police response was fast, violent and decisive – something that the Feds long ago determined was a key factor for dealing with spree killers, and that this blog has noted time and again and again and again and again and again is of paramount importance in containing and ending these shootings.

I did a prerecorded show, so I could attend the Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus’s annual (after a few years off) Rally at the Capitol.

Huge crowd.

Great speakers – Rob Doar, Bryan Strawser, Reverend Tim Christopher, and an array of pro-2nd Amendment legislators.

Rob – the MNGOC’s political director – was able to announce that most of the DFL’s gun bills – the semi-auto/”Assault Weapons” ban, the magazine limits, banning guns for people under 21 – are dead this session.

But Universal Registration and Red Flag Confiscation bills could still leak through. Hence the rally – and Rob’s injunction that “we need ten of you for every one that’s here”.

If you’re not in the MNGOC already, consider this your engraved invitation.

By the way: I’ve been to a lot of these rallies – like, all of them, ever – and I’ve never seen a police presence like I did on Saturday.

Rumor had it that the cops had been told to expect trouble. No specifics about who was going to cause the trouble, or who felt it; I suspect the Speaker of the House and the Governor indulged their base and wanted to put on a show of force.

Notwithstanding, ,the cops were universally friendly, even helpful. Not to project, but they knew that nobody was going to cause problems.