Big week coming up Saturday on the Northern Alliance Radio Network, so I thought I’d start talking about it now.

First, I’ll have Brian Strawser and Mark Okern of the Minnesota Gun Owners PAC, talking about their endorsement of Julianne Ortman and the year ahead in the legislature (hint: it’s going to be another doozy).

Then – Stewart Mills, CEO of Mills Fleet Farm and candidate for the US Congress in CD8, will join me to talk about his race.

Hope you can tune in.  Or join the show at 651 289 4488!

The gun-grabber movement is going to make a particularly insidious push to attack your second-amendment rights in the upcoming session.

The Minnesota Gun Owners PAC is launching an opening salvo, getting on the endorsement board for the upcoming Senate race and backing Senator Julianne Ortman:

 “Throughout her time in the Minnesota Senate, Julianne Ortman has been an energetic and consistent advocate for Minnesota’s gun owners, “ said Mark Okern, Chairman, Minnesota Gun Owners PAC.  “She has demonstrated a strong commitment to policies that protect the rights of Minnesotans to hunt, enjoy the shooting sports, and protect their families from violent criminals.”

The gun-grabbers are going to be doing a lot of talk about “common sense”. Ortman gets it – there is no “common sense” to the idea of the gun-show background check:

As a Minnesota State Senator, Julianne Ortman consistently opposed gun control measures that would have impacted the rights of law-abiding Minnesotans while having no impact on violent criminals.  Senator Ortman supported the Minnesota Citizen’s Personal Protection Act in 2003 and 2005.  She also supported Stand Your Ground legislation in 2012 that was later vetoed by Governor Mark Dayton.  Most recently, she was a strong and vocal advocate for gun owners as a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee during several days of hearings.

 “As United States Senator, we are confident Julianne Ortman will continue her strong support for Minnesota’s gun owners and be a leader on this issue not only for Minnesota but also for the nation, “ said Okern.

Ortman has gotten a mixed rap – but, I maintain, has done a good job of earning conservatives’ support, especially that of the communities that support the Second Amendment. She was vital in pushing the “Good Gun Bill” last session – a finger in the eye of the “Let’s Just Ban Something!” crowd.

I think it’s a good call .

Heather Martens (DFL 66A), on the line from fantasy-land:  “There is no history of [a citizen with a legally-carried firearm] being a meaningful deterrent or being able to stop an attack”.   (Star-Tribune, November 27, 2012).

Reality:  Man with carry permit thwarts armed robbers who’d pistol-whipped shopkeeper in Northeast Minneapolis:

Inside his neighborhood market, Mohamed S. Ahmed was screaming for help after a pair of armed robbers had left him bleeding.

They’d pistol-whipped him, pointed the gun at his face – and they weren’t done yet:

Outside the northeast Minneapolis store, two men pounded on the window, trying to get back into the University Market after Ahmed managed to lock them out.

“They seemed really agitated, super agitated,” said Matt Dosser, who was walking by about 9:30 p.m. Tuesday. At first, “nothing made sense, then I saw the gun.”

Dosser, who has a permit to carry a gun, reached for his own weapon.

One of the robbers “turned around and looked at me,” Dosser recalled. “He stared at me. I had my weapon up. I didn’t point the gun at the person. I had it at the ready, out of the holster.

The robbers scampered away like the cowardly pieces of demi-human garbage they are.

On Wednesday, police spokesman John Elder called Dosser’s actions “a noble thing. He acted honorably. Did this person possibly save [Ahmed’s] life? Absolutely.”

Why does Representative Heather Martens hate Arab grocery store workers?

UPDATE – And More Reality!:  Shelley Leeson sends another recent episode; an Uptown resident scares off a crowbar-wielding burglar. 

Why does Heather Martens hate construction workers and fathers?

Last year in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook shooting,  Wayne LaPierre of the NRA stated the best solution to school shooting sprees was armed staff – police on school service duty, security guards or teachers with carry permits – on school grounds.

The usual pants-wetting crowd on the left squealed like they’d gotten a knitting needle jammed in their eyes.

The takeaway from last week’s shooting at a school and “gun free zone” in Arapahoe County Colorado, where a committed leftist student critically injured a classmate before killing himself, was this; the incident lasted 80 seconds, because there was an immediate armed response by a school service officer.

The rampage might have resulted in many more casualties had it not been for the quick response of a deputy sheriff who was working as a school resource officer at the school, [Arapahoe County Sheriff Grayson Robinson] said…He praised the deputy’s response as “a critical element to the shooter’s decision” to kill himself, and lauded his response to hearing gunshots. “He went to the thunder,” he said. “He heard the noise of gunshot and, when many would run away from it, he ran toward it to make other people safe.”

That is, of course, the big takeaway from Columbine, from Sandy Hook, and a slew of other episodes; the best cure for a bad person with a gun is a good person with a gun.

Any other answer merely kills more innocent people.

And while I’m not sure that’s what the likes of Jane Kay, Representatives Heather Martens and Michael Paymar, and Michael Bloomberg want, it’s a simple fact that none of them have really thought about it in terms other than “stick it to the law-abiding schnook” before.

One of the tiny network of astroturf gun-grabber groups that’ve been trying to gut the Second Amendment in Minnesota is “Moms Demand Action”.   They are run by the rather overwrought-sounding Jane Kay.

So far, their main contribution to the anti-human-rights effort has been to make Heather Martens and “Protect” MN sound almost reasonable.  Oh, yeah – and generate Twitter spam for legislators.

Now, the Joyce Foundation has been spending big liberal-plutocrat bucks trying to get Minnesotans (outside of white, upper-middle-class Carlton grads in Crocus Hill and Kenwood) to take them seriously.

And so apparently they have a new PR angle – something to put a jaunty face on what had to be as humiliating a year for Moms Want Action as for all the rest of Minnesota’s anti-rights crowd.

Anyway – new branding!  They rolled it out last week!  Here it is!

From Rob D of GOCRA on Facebook:

When your group name already sounds like an x:rated website, circulating an image of a woman disrobing could be considered a marketing fail.

Right?  Like, do you need a credit card to use their website?

I worry sometimes that the anti-rights movement is floating people like Jane Kay and Heather Martens and groups like Moms Want Action! to lull pro-civil-rights Real Americans into a false sense of intellectual, rhetorical and political superiority.

Whether by design or not, I gotta admit – it’s working.

The media, especially NPR, ran wall-to-wall coverage of the first anniversary of the Newtown massacre over the weekend.

The media paraded bereaved parents before the media, as scholars and journalists and talking heads furrowed their brows and clucked in the way that they’ve become accustomed to clucking about the whole thing.

As a parent, I can relate.  Seeing peoples’ children being murdered is the mother of all gut-checks.  It’s impossible not to feel that overwhelming flood of parental dread, a wave of human compassion, and a twinge “there but for the grace of God…” at stories like that.

But I noticed something absent in any of the mainstream media’s coverage of “gun violence” over the past year-and-almost-a-week; while the media has spent countless hours memorializing the children of Newtown, we’ve seen scarcely a word about the children murdered in Chicago – the crown jewel of American gun control, and the community controlled by the pals of the current administration.

In 2013 – which roughly corresponds to the year since Newtown – there’ve been 395 murders in Chicago.  The toll is remarkable in that it is marginally a little lower than some previous years, but still a mind-numbing carnage.

And of those 395 murders, nine were of children under 12 years old.  And 40 more were of people from 13-17 years old.

Counting everyone?  That’s 16 Sandy Hook classrooms worth of carnage among children over the past year.

But the victims rated not a single day of national garment-rending.  Scarcely an askance mention on National Public Radio.

Why?

Because they had the misfortune to be murdered in a city that is completely strangleheld by Democrats?

Or because none of them look like the children of NPR executives or “Protect” Minnesota leaders?

I was going to write about the case of Army Lt. Colonel Robert Bateman, who’s become a bit of a mini-celebrity on the left for coming out espousing a very draconian raft of gun control laws.

But Joe Doakes beat me to it, and did it with style.

Joe’s piece is below the jump.

(more…)

I almost missed this one in the scrum of this past few weeks.

A couple of weeks ago, when Representatives Paymar and Martens tried to jam down a ban on law-abiding citizens carrying their legally-permitted firearms in the Capitol complex, the Strib’s Abby Simons wrote the paper’s follow-up piece.

It ended with a quote from Representative Martens; like most of Martens’ statements, it reeks of crap from rhetorical stem to stern.  But I’ll emphasize the part I want to focus on today:

Heather Martens, executive director [Ha ha ha! – Ed.] of Protect Minnesota, an organization geared toward ending gun violence [Ha ha ha! – Ed.] and an advocate for the ban, said the intimidation happens when a loaded firearm is worn openly, as it was earlier this year during a hearing.

“There is no history of someone like that being a meaningful deterrent or being able to stop an attack,” she said.

If you read this blog,  you are smarter than that. 

John Lott showed how “someone like that” – multiplied by millions – have deterred hundreds of thousands of crimes in shall-issue states, as compared with discretionary or non-issue states (back when there were more of both). 

As to stopping those attacks?  Well, we’ve been through this before.  Here’s a partial list of attacks stopped by law-abiding, non-police, private citizens with legal firearms:

• The Pearl, Mississippi school shooting, where a teacher grabbed a gun and stopped the two shooters.
• The Appalachian Law School shooting, where a would-be mass-murderer was stopped by a couple of armed students.
• A robbery that was devolving into a mass-shooting in Virginia was stopped by a CCW permittee.
• This episode in Texas recently
• An episode in Richmond, VA in the nineties where a shooter who intended to copycat the Luby’s Cafeteria massacre (in Killeen, TX) was stopped after killing one person, by another citizen with a legal handgun.
• The New Life Church shooting spree in Colorado Springs in 2007, ended by Jeanne Assam.
• This episode in Texas, where an armed man killed a mass shooter (and died, himself); it’s generally agreed he saved several lives in the process.
• An unknown “good samaritan” in South Minneapolis prevented himself from being murdered, two years ago. 
• A bouncer in Minneapolis prevented himself, and very possibly a number of other people, from being carved up like Christmas hams a few years ago. 
• Details are still sketchy, but it’s very likely one “VT” of Saint Paul prevented a murder – his – and possibly his friend’s a few weeks ago. 

If Heather Martens – or any of her supporters and employees – are talking, the rule of thumb is “assume they’re lying”.  Because they are.

To: Roger Goodell, President, The National Football League
From: Mitch Berg, Uppity Peasant
Re:  It’s Apparently Not ThePlayers

Mr. Goodell,

You run a tax-exempt “non-profit” that is the biggest license to print money in the United States.

Your organization regularly loots city and state treasuries to build your venues – including mine.  You’ve crudely extorted hundreds of millions of dollars from our idiot governor and from a bunch of legislators who should have known better, using tactics that well befit the mobsters that are among the main beneficiaries of your profits.

Your athletes have turned, over the past thirty years, from role models into reprobates.

But you turned down this Super Bowl ad, from Daniel Firearms?

(To whom I’ll be giving free advertising, today and on Super Sunday, and likely more than a time or two in between)

I’m picturing the reasons.

Because you’re worried about violence:  So are we.  Especially when I go into a bar or restaurant where there might be NFL players present. (Yep, I used to DJ at the old Eddie Websters.  To be fair, back then the biggest danger was being on the same stretch of road as a Viking after closing time).

Because you’re worried about the game’s image:  Right.  Hey, is that Miley Cyrus’ ass at the halftime show?

Because you’re in bed with a bunch of liberal metro-area politicians:  Oh.  Right.

I think you might just be creating some baseball fans out there.

This coming Saturday, Minnesota’s self-appointed gun-grabber elite are going to try to squeedge some more juice out of waving the bloody shirt of Newtown:  

To Remember: A commemoration of the Sandy Hook school victims, and all victims of gun violence — 9:30 a.m. at Westminster Presbyterian Church, 1200 Marquette Ave., Minneapolis. To RSVP, click here. Space is limited. This event is co-sponsored by Moms Demand Action, Mayors Against Illegal Guns and Organizing for Action.

They’ll then attempt to hold a meeting to promote more laws that would have had no effect on Newtown, or any other real-world gun violence. 

But there’s another anniversary this coming week; tomorrow, in fact.  And it deserves a memorial – because unlike every single thing proposed by “Protect” MN, Moms Want Action and the Felon Mayors, it actually saved lives. 

At around 3:25PM on December 11, 2012, Jacob Tyler Roberts walked into the Clackamas Town Center Mall in Portland Oregon.  He was wearing a ski mask, and carrying a stolen AR-15-pattern rifle with five magazines, a total of 150 rounds.  He donned the ski mask and carried the rifle openly; witnesses apparently thought it was a paintball outfit, and that the rifle was a toy.  One woman reportedly told Roberts to take off the mask – it looked “Creepy”.  Roberts didn’t respond. 

He walked to atrium in the middle of the mall, and started shooting.  He fired off his first magazine, killing two – Cindy Yuille, a 54 year old hospice nurse, and Steven Forsythe, a youth sports coach – and hitting15 year old Kristina Shevchenko in the chest (Shevchenko managed to walk out of the mall, and survived the incident). 

Then, as Roberts turned a corner and reloaded, he ran into Nick Meli, a citizen with a .40 caliber Glock 22 and an Oregon carry permit.  Meli drew – but didn’t shoot.  According to some stories, Meli froze; in others, he saw that there were civilians in the background that would be in danger if he missed.  Either is a fairly normal response under such conditions. 

But Roberts ran away.  He ducked into a JC Penney and ran into a storage corridor, where he pointed his rifle at Penneys employee Rok Sang Kim – but turned, ran down a stairwell, and shot himself. 

Drawn by reports of a mass shooting, dozens of ambulances turned out – but only Shevchenko was treated for any injuries.

The Lesson:  After the Columbine shooting – where a SWAT team waited outside the school for four hours before moving to engage the shooters – law enforcement went on a crash course of learning how to deal with mass shooters.  The lesson learned?  Don’t wait.  Get in, get at the shooter. 

It wasn’t about testosterone; examination of mass shooters showed that most of them are deeply narcissistic and intensely delusional.  In almost every case, the shootings were planned to a fine sheen, like a military operation, if the military were run by delusional people.

And that while the plans were intricate, the shooters’ mental state meant that any serious hiccup to the plan would send them off the rails.  And by “serious hiccup”, they meant “someone putting up meaningful resistance”. 

And so cops changed their tactics; rather than wait for SWAT, cops are now trained to get in, find the shooter, and put some lead on the target.   Because nothing disrupts a lunatic’s plan like having lead sailing past your head (to say nothing of through one’s chest). 

But here’s the little secret; it doesn’t have to be a cop doing the resisting.  History is full of examples of individual citizens putting up armed resistance to mass shooters, and ending the shootings:

• The Pearl, Mississippi school shooting, where a teacher grabbed a gun and stopped the two shooters.
• The Appalachian Law School shooting, where a would-be mass-murderer was stopped by a couple of armed students.
• A robbery that was devolving into a mass-shooting in Virginia was stopped by a CCW permittee.
• This episode in Texas recently
• An episode in Richmond, VA in the nineties where a shooter who intended to copycat the Luby’s Cafeteria massacre (in Killeen, TX) was stopped after killing one person, by another citizen with a legal handgun.
• The New Life Church shooting spree in Colorado Springs in 2007, ended by Jeanne Assam.
• This episode in Texas, where an armed man killed a mass shooter (and died, himself); it’s generally agreed he saved several lives in the process.
• Columbine itself was part of the lesson; it’s generally agreed that an armed sheriff’s deputy derailed the greater part of Harris and Klebold’s plans, firing off a couple of shots and deflecting the two shooters back to the library, fouling up their plans to set off bombs throughout the building and perhaps kill many, many more people. 

And of course the the Clackamas Mall shooting. 

Second-Guesses: There are those in the gun-grab movement who try to minimize, discount and ridicule the effect that an armed citizen can have in a mass shooting.  Some scoff that Roberts, and the shooter in the Colorado Springs episode, had jammed guns – as if clearing a jam is anything unusual (especially in an AR15) much less time-consuming to fix. 

But in both shootings, the jam was accompanied by a citizen facing the shooter down (and in Colorado Springs, seriously wounding him). 

The underlying point – mass shooters tend to abandon their plans when they’re faced with active, armed, potentially lethal resistance – stands.  Passive resistance – “lockdowns”, kevlar whiteboards – are better than nothing, provided the mass shooter allows them to be better than nothing. 

Consequences, Intended And Otherwise:  The Gun Control “Gun Safety” movement yaps a lot about “preventing gun violence” – while pushing policies that have never prevented and shall never prevent a single crime. 

And yet a year ago tomorrow, Nick Meli likely saved more lived that all of Michael Bloomberg, the Joyce Foundation, and Rep. Heather Martens’ efforts likely ever will, ever, for all eternity. 

And so for that, we should pay homage at 3:25PM tomorrow.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

House extended ban on all-plastic guns for another 10 years.  Meaningless gesture.  Nobody gets shot with them, banning them won’t stop people from making them any more than banning cocaine stops people from using it.  Posturing to divert attention from real government failures in every other area.

My grandson has a plastic gun.  He carries it in a holster on his cowboy belt when he rides his hobby horse.  I wonder if Rep. Paymar is intimidated by that, too?

Joe Doakes

Heather Martens will no doubt make them a priority in the next session.

To prevent them from “intimidating” other kids.

You think I’m joking.  But if I’ve learned anything living in a city full of liberals with no fear of being held accountable, today’s sardonic jokes are tomorrow’s laws.

Or yesterday’s laws, in some cases.

Remember – Berg’s Seventh Law has no known exceptions. 

When you have people like Heather Martens – who has never made a substantive true statement in her entire career – and Michael Paymar saying they feel intimidated by gun owners bringing legaly-owned, permitted firearms into the Capitol, you may be certain it’s to draw attention away from the American Left’s inherently thuggish approach to, well, everything. 

And you’d be right to assume it. 

Otherwise, it’d be called “Berg’s Seventh Theory”. 

One of “Protect” MN’s most insidious lies is that the Second Amendment and Gun Rights are affectations of white suburban males.

(I’m a honky, all right, but I do live in the city.  Your stereotype is null and void. But we knew that).

But the roots of gun control are, and have always been, utterly and corrosively racist.

This video – “No Guns for Negroes” – documents the racist roots of gun control.  It’s about twenty minutes, and it’s well worth the watch.

More than that?  It shows the effect that armed blacks had in deterring Klan violence.  The “Deacons of Defense” were an organized group of blacks, mostly veterans, who existed to deter Klan attacks against civil rights activities and black communities in the sixites.  The media – in the bag as most of them are for gun control – have pretty much buried that story.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Heather Martins talking.  Lying.  Same thing.

“There is no history of someone like that being a meaningful deterrent or being able to stop an attack,” she said.  Seriously?

Someone should inform Abby Simons, the Star Tribune journalist who wrote the article, of some facts about permitted carry holders stopping crime, just for the variety of citing actual truth for a change.

It strikes me:  Rep. Paymar says the presence of armed citizens in the legislative chamber intimidates legislators.  Pistols carried openly are intimidating. Really?  All of them?  How about when cops testify while in uniform, openly carrying their firearms, is that intimidating?  If so, then you should disarm everybody in the hearing room, which you’re not going to do because there’d be nobody to provide protection.

If openly carried pistols don’t intimidate you on a policeman’s belt, why not?  Cops shoot far more innocent people every year than permitted carry holders.  Why are pistols carried openly on cops’ belts not intimidating?  Because you trust cops implicitly but not citizens?  Why is that . . . and what does it say about your attitude toward the people you’re supposed to be representing?

Joe Doakes

If intellectual honesty and logical consistency were gasoline, Heather Martens couldn’t drive around the inside of a Cheerio.

Remember last year, when Representatives Michael Paymar, Heather Martens and Alice “the Phantom” Hausman copied and pasted gun-grab laws from New York, Colorado and California and tried to jam them down in the Legislature?

The orcs insisted “Nobody’s coming to take the guns of the law-abiding!”

We Real Americans knew better.  We always do.

And in New York, it’s happening even as we speak:

Of course, not one incident of “violence” will be prevented.  The criminals won’t be turning anything in.

But you – provided you’re a Real American – know that.  The orcs?  Heather Martens, Jane Kay, Michael Paymar?

Their ends justify their means.

And had Minnesota’s Real Americans not staged a cataclysmic turnout last spring, we could have had virtually the same law.

And if we take our eye off the ball in the coming session, we still could.

A Colorado Democrat Senator, faced with imminent humiliation at the polls for supporting Colorado’s wave of New-York-style gun regulations, jumped before she was pushed.

It wasn’t cowardice per se – more like Democrats manipulating the rules to stay in power:

Under Colorado law, Hudak’s successor will be a member of her own party.

 Hudak’s replacement would serve in the upcoming legislative session but would have to run for the seat in November 2014 to keep it. 

Hudak had done more than just infuriate the pro-rights crowd:

Conventional wisdom said Hudak couldn’t survive a recall: She had won re-election in 2012 by less than 600 votes, and her inartful questioning of a rape victim during a hearing on one gun bill had made her a national target of Second Amendment activists.

It wasn’t “inartful questioning” – Hudak’s thuggish, insensitive and ignorant grilling of rape victim Amanda Collins was  factually-vacant enough to have come straight from Heather Martens’ lips – but I have to believe even Martens wouldn’t be stupid enough to have done what Hudak did.  It even earned the scorn of the famously liberal Denver Post (although Hudak’s non-apology apology to Collins, arrogant and condescending enough to deserve being put on T-shirts by Second Amendment rights activists, didn’t earn specific condemnation).

In her resignation speech, Hudak said one of her key goals in resigning was to protect the gun-control legislation she and her fellow orcs passed last session.

Finishing off that seat is another item on the to-do list for second amendment human rights activists for next fall.

We’ve got a few of those in Minnesota.  Hopefully the GOP in Albert Lea has a candidate rarin’ to go to oust Shannon Savick…

The Select Committee on Capitol Security met yesterday. 

They moved to hire some new State Patrol and rent-a-cops.   There wasn’t a whole lot of controversy there, although Representative Woodard and Senator Ingebrigtsen noted that security in the parts of the Capitol that need it is already pretty good. 

But the reason reason people paid attention to yesterday’s meeting was because Rep. Michael Paymar intended to push his proposal to ban legally-carried firearms in Capitol complex buildings (the Capitol, the State Office Building and the Judicial building). 

 More than 800 Minnesotans have filed with the DPS to indicate that they have a permit to carry a firearm and may bring their pistol into the Capitol. Originally, the draft recommendation would have required gun owners to update that notification annually; at Ingebrigtsen’s urging, that timeframe was adjusted to renewing the notification every five years, and was adopted by the committee.

In other words, you renew your notification as often as you renew your permit.  Truth be told, I already thought I had to do that…

…if, hypothetically, I had a carry permit and desired to carry at the Capitol. 

After that bit of fairly sensible legislation, it was looney-time:

Paymar argued that the fact that the Capitol had so far been spared any violent altercations was not evidence that current safety measures are adequate.

“Having a ‘cross your fingers’ kind of policy coming out of this entity, which is charged with making recommendations about public safety on the Capitol complex, to me, is irresponsible,” said Paymar, who chairs the House Public Safety Finance and Policy Committee.

Mijnnesota’s carry-permit holders are the single constituency in Minnesota least likely to cause a problem , at the Capitol or anywhere else.  Ever  Period. 

No, seriously – Minnesotans at large commit murder at the rate a little over 2 per 100,000 people per year.  There’s been one unjustified homicide by a carry-permittee in ten years; the math breaks down to .1/5 million Minnesotans/year, or .002/100,000 annually.  That’s right around three orders of magnitude safer. 

Mr. Paymar would more aptly worry about one of his Saint Paul constituents – perhaps the many supporters of terrorist-accomplice Kathleen Soliah, who live in Paymar’s neighborhood and tacitly condoned her activities in the seventies – freaking out and killing people in the Capitol than the state’s legal carry permittees. 

No, this wasn’t done because of any danger, real or perceived or even fabricated.  This was done to try to try to salvage at least a smidgen of “Protect” MN’s narrative from this past session – the addlepated notion that legislators were “intimidated” by gun owners who carried openly and legally during last spring’s epic waste of taxpayer time hearings on Rep. Paymar, Hausman and Martens’ various gun grab bills.  The staff at Capitol Security refute that idea with prejudice; ask them for yourself. 

Emphasis added in this next bit:

Ingebrigtsen pushed back, and pointed out that Gov. Mark Dayton had already said publicly he does not favor a move to ban firearms in the Capitol.

“We’ve also got the governor saying the same thing,” Ingebrigtsen said. “[Dayton] doesn’t see anything wrong with law-abiding citizens carrying handguns on the Capitol complex.”

The vote fell, 2-2 (ties are counted as defeats); Lt. Governor Yvonne Prettner Solon (there’s a trivia question for you) and Paymar voted for it, Ingebrigtsen and Woodard voted nay, SCOM justice Lori Gildea abstained (she might have to hear a court case on the issue someday…)

…and Ann Rest, a DFL Senator from Plymouth who is as electorally bulletproof as an Armored Humvee, didn’t show up. 

Don’t think for a moment that was an accident.  Even safe DFLers are nervous about the Metrocrats’ insane obsession with disarming the law-abiding. 

Not that they’re going to stop them. 

No, that’s our job.  At the ballot box. 

(NOTE TO DFL LEGISLATORS:   If I had a carry permit, I doubt I’d ever carry openly.  It’s not my style.  But feel free to be intimidated – not by any gun I’d hypothetically carry, but by the fact that I can shred through every single actual factual assertion that Heather Martens and Richard Carlbom make about the gun control issue like a riding mower going through a daisy patch, and not break a sweat.  Be intimdated by the fact that if either Martens or Carlbom debated me, or any of 500 other gun rights advocates, in a face to face, open debate, I’d fold them up like origami swans and make them scamper away like scared bunnies.  Be intimidated by the fact that I, myself, have convinced liberal Democrats that you are wrong, and I’m just getting started.  Ignore any gun I might hypothetically be carrying.  Be intimidated by the weapon between my ears.  On this issue, your side is carrying a pellet pistol; I’ve got a .44 Magnum, and I don’t mean one of those wimpy four inch barrels, either)

This video – “And I Carry” – has been making the long-overdue rounds:

(Technical note: I don’t endorse carrying in one’s book bag. Too easy to steal…)

The surprising part? I actually found it on the MPR News site.

If you go to the little email widget that “Protect” Minnesota uses to try to spam legislators, you’ll see this text pre-filled.  I’ll highlight the money quote:

Minnesota is one of only a few states that allows private firearms to be carried at the state Capitol without screening. In addition, committee chairs don’t have the authority to keep people from carrying guns into hearings — no matter how volatile the topic of discussion.

At the Nov. 5 committee meeting, a public safety official described and example of a concealed carry permit holder expressing anti-government sentiment and a plan to bring a gun to the Capitol. Members of the committee who support gun carrying expressed their disapproval of such behavior.
But sitting right in the hearing room was a group aligned with the gun lobby wearing Guy Fawkes masks. Nobody on the committee appeared to realize that Guy Fawkes was known for his attempt to blow up the English Parliament, and a recent movie glorified Fawkes’ effort.

The safety risk of loaded firearms is known – but the use of guns for political intimidation is becoming more brazen every year. This is unacceptable in a democracy. Our public safety officials and legislators should be allowed to know when individuals are coming in with guns and keep guns out of all or part of the Capitol complex.
It would be irresponsible to wait for a tragedy to happen in Minnesota before making our Capitol safer. Please give law enforcement and legislators who run hearings the ability to protect our free speech and our safety at the Capitol.

I have to wonder – has Representative Martens actually been to an “Occupy” rally (back when the were still happening)?  The places were crawling with those creepy masks.

But let’s take Heather Martens at her stated word.  The legislature has to guard against “Anti-Government Sentiment?”

So now Rep. Martens is trying to gut the First Amendment, too!

Here’s the letter I sent back through their little email spam-bot widget:

Representatives,

This, like everything “Protect Minnesota” has ever written or said, is a lie.

Capitol Security staff are pretty clear about it; carry permittees are the most polite, least bothersome groups of protesters that ever show up at the Capitol.

By the way – the “anti-government sentiments” Ms. Martens is referring to was a guy in a Guy Fawkes mask. Ms. Martens is filling in the details about “blowing up the Capitol” – because, as usual, she’s lying.  And, apparently, she’s no more comfortable with the First Amendment than the Second.

Please stop wasting taxpayer time participating in Heather Martens’ Joyce-Foundation-funded charades.

Mitch Berg
Saint Paul

Not sure it’ll get through, but it was fun to write.

This email came out from Rep Heather Martens (DFLiar, HD66A) earlier this week:

Dear Friend,

Tomorrow at 10:30 am, the legislature’s committee on Capitol security will decide whether to continue to let people carry loaded guns in the Capitol.

At a meeting earlier this month, it became clear that some concealed carry permit holders have used their loaded guns for political intimidation.

And there’s your lie.

There was no “intimidation”.

Go check for yourself. Call the folks at Capitol Security. They’ll tell you the Second Amendment Rights crowd, guns or no, is the very best-behaved group of protesters that ever comes to the capitol. Friendly, polite to a fault, never even the faintest shred of a problem. Which is an amazing feat with group that always numbers in the hundreds every time they show up.

Not a single problem. Ever.

Martens – as always – is lying.

It’s The Bigotry, Stupid: Martens points out that there’s some fear, classism and bigotry at work here:

A legislator on the committee expressed disapproval of such behavior.

I don’t doubt that “a legislator” might have said something like this. Some DFL Metrocrat no doubt does have an aversion to guns, and people carrying them.

But why do we pay them any more attention than we would a legislator who was afraid of black people?

It’s entirely possible some ninny is afraid of people exercising their law-abiding rights.  People get intimidated by free speech, too.  Do we dignify it with a response?  Or do we call it what it is?

(Fact:  the only “intimidation” carried out by an unelected official during the gun hearings was the loathsome gun-grabber who walked up to the daughter of a GOCRA organizer and told her “you’ll be a better person than your father when you grow up”).

But he then said nothing should be done because nobody has been killed yet at the Capitol.

Nor will they ever be – by a carry permittee, anyway. Statistically, you are at greater danger of being shot by a Democrat legislator than by a legal carry permit holder.

I Gotcher Call To Action Right Here: Martens puts out a call to her anemic, arthritic, utterly white little legion:

Please contact committee members to urge them to take decisive action. They should allow security officials and legislators to limit where guns can be carried at the Capitol.

We can’t wait for something to happen in the Minnesota Capitol building in order to make the Capitol safe. And political intimidation should be unacceptable at our state Capitol.

Once more unto the breach, Real Americans.  It’s time to light up the switchboards.

Which ones?  For some reason, the members of the select committee on Capitol Security aren’t published (or at least five minutes of googling didn’t turn up a list).  Start with the Public Safety Committee.  You know the drill.

I’ve said this over the years, to a number of Second Amendment activists; if you’d have told me 25 years ago that the state of the Second Amendment would be as good as it is right now, in 2013, I’d have said you were nuts.

In 1987, when I first started as a pundit on the issue, Florida was the ninth “shall issue” state, and the first one with a large population.  Today, most of the country is “shall issue”, and the number of firearms has ballooned even as the crime rate has plummeted.

In 1988, it looked as if Minnesota’s pre-emption statute was in jeopardy, and that the Metrocrat autocracy would have free reign to act like pocket Daleys.

But for a view of how much things have really changed, and over how m uch time, a longer view is even more interesting:

What about the possession of pistols and revolvers — do you think there should be a law which would forbid possession of this type of gun except by the police or other authorized person?
The question was slightly changed over the years. Since 1980 it’s been:
Do you think there should or should not be a law that would ban the possession of handguns, except by the police or other authorized persons?
The current breakdown is just what Europeans would expect of Cowboy Nation. Only 25% of Americans say “Yes, should be” – versus 74% who say, “No, should not be.”

But if you think this reflects a long-standing American tradition, you’re dead wrong. Back in 1959, the breakdown was 60% yes, 36% no. Support for gun-grabbing fell almost non-stop during the ensuing decades, with just one odd reversal in 1979.

It’s too early to become triumphalistic; the seesaw can easily tilt the other way.

But it’s encouraging.

The “why” would be an interesting question to answer.  Plenty of speculation in the article, which you should read.

“…why do you care if Minneapolis creates a gun law more restrictive than state gun laws?”

Because of episodes like this, in Cleveland, which can write laws more restrictive – and idiotic – than state law.

Shelley Leeson represents Minnesotans for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms.

Here’s my piece on the Data Practices bust.

A little bird forwarded me this email from “Protect”MN to its mailing list.  I’ll add emphasis:

You are Invited!

What: A house party fundraiser with Protect Minnesota

When: Monday, November 25, 5:30-7 p.m.

Where: [Redacted] Fremont Ave., Minneapolis [And no, it’s not North Fremont.  Or north of 38th Street South.  If you catch my drift – ed.]

Why: To raise funds for a new campaign to change the conversation around gun violence prevention

 How: By creating a strong new campaign, we will be able to overcome those promoting a culture of gun violence

With comments from: Richard Carlbom, former campaign manager for Minnesotans United for All Families at 6 p.m.

Co-hosted By:

[Cohosts redacted]

Co-host levels available:

$250 – $500

Suggested minimum contribution: $40

And so the Carlbom era of gun control in Minnesota begins.

Before Richard Carlbom, the gay marriage debate in Minnesota was between people who believed in principle that marriage was a gender-blind civil right, and people who believed that it was a religious institution intended for the creation and raising of future generations.

After Carlbom, it became a battle between good, compassionate people who cared about rights, and evil bigots.

And that’s what the anti-civil-rights movement – and its highly-paid consultant, Carlbom – wants to do with the civil right of self defense; frame it as a battle between people who represent a “culture of violence”, and people who believe that with enough laws, we can create a violence-free utopia.

Like Chicago.  Or Washington DC.

“Protect”MN and Carlbom want the uninformed and gullible to conflate “armed self-defense” with gun violence; to lump people like this, this, this, this, this, these and thousands of others in with gang-bangers, thugs and spree killers.

Minneapolis has always wanted to roll back Minnesota’s “Pre-emption statute”, which prevents city governments from enacting gun laws different (especially more stringent) than state law.

And they’ve been lobbying to change that as long as I’ve been aware of the issue – and that’s getting to be a long time, now.

“Ron V” of the Minnesotans for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms blog notes that the City is not above lying through its teeth to try to do it.   Mr. V writes:

The (post Sandy Hook) Minneapolis City Council Legislative Agenda on Firearms recommendations were prepared by Melissa Lesch, Intergovernmental Relations Specialist, and WIFE OF REP. JOHN LESCH (66B DFL), who was one of the MN legislators leading the gun control charge in the Minnesota legislature post Sandy Hook.

[Minneapolis Police Department assistant chief Matt] Clark testified before the city council at the request of Melissa Lesch/IGR. Included in the recommendations from Melissa Lesch/IGR was full support for Obama’s extremist federal gun-grab agenda. The Legislative Agenda ultimately approved by the city council included:

–A plan to use the city’s weight to lobby the state legislature for the repeal of the state pre-emption provision currently included in Minnesota’s right-to-carry law (MN 624.714).

Meaning, the city of Minneapolis wants to be able to override state law and set its own ordinances in regard to permit holders and gun owners who live in, travel through or visit the city of Minneapolis by implementing ordinances to:

—-Require concealed carry and outlaw open carry by lawful permit holders within the city limits of Minneapolis;

—-Ban lawful carry from parks and public buildings within Minneapolis;

—-Ban common use semi-automatic firearms and standard capacity magazines within city limits;

—-Require that permit-to-carry applications be approved by local police chiefs (returning to arbitrary “may issue” standards);

—-Deny the 2nd Amendment rights of any person who has experienced a “mental health incident that required the intervention of law enforcement” or anyone who has ever been placed on a 72 hour hold;

—-Add additional regulations to the transfer of firearms;

—-And a number of other vaguely worded recommendations designed to allow infringement of 2nd Amendment rights

Nothing new, there.

Here’s the rub;  Minneapolis is lying, via its police department, about the data it’s using to try to convince the legislature.

Here are the verbatim statements made by asst. chief Matt Clark during the testimony:

—-“We’ve had incidents where handgun owners have had handguns taken away from them. Where they have lost those firearms because somebody knew they had them on their person, and they specifically took it away from those individuals.”

—-“What we’re looking for… is that if you have a permit to carry a firearm that it [be] concealed in public. We have a lot of calls from constituents, individuals, residents, visitors that are very ‘shocked and surprised’ to see a handgun on somebody out in the open…”

As to the latter?  In parts of this world, people are “shocked and surprised” to see same-sex couples, women without headscarves walking without male relatives, or Jews without Stars of David on their person.  We don’t dignify any of those, either.

But it’s the former that Mr. V went after:

Following those statements by asst. chief Clark in January, I immediately made several attempts to contact asst. chief Clark and chief Harteau, as well as the MPD public information officer, to request the data upon which Clark’s testimony was based…After multiple attempts over several months to get the information, I NEVER received a response from Clark or Harteau, and finally filed a Data Practices Request with the city of Minneapolis to get the information on which his testimony was based.

Mr. V requested the info and math behind the dates, places and case numbers of incidents where people openly carrying firearms had their guns stolen – and of course whether they were carry-permittees carrying legally at the time.

And the result?

In total, the response to my Data Practices Request for the cases used as the basis for Clark’s testimony to the city council includes 15 incidents between 2000 – 2012 where a firearm was taken during a crime incident, NONE OF WHICH INCLUDE an incident where a firearm was taken from a lawful permit holder while open carrying in a public place. The 15 incidents they tried to palm off as citations for Clark’s testimony include:

–Six (6) Robbery of dwelling (that’s NOT a permit holder lawfully open carrying in public…

–Four (4) Car-jackings (that’s NOT a permit holder lawfully open carrying in public…

–Two (2) Business robberies where a store gun was taken (that’s NOT a permit holder lawfully open carrying in public…

–Two (2) Random street robberies where one female had a gun in her purse, and the other, which made the news last spring, was a guy randomly attacked who had a permit but his gun was concealed in his pocket …

–One (1) incident where a holstered firearm was taken from a victim IN HIS OWN YARD BY SOMEONE HE KNEW (that’s NOT a permit holder lawfully open carrying in public…

If “ProtectMN” and its official minions couldn’t lie, they’d be silent.