Michael Paymar is leaving the House:

State Rep. Michael Paymar announced Wednesday he will leave the Legislature after his current term expires.

 

The St. Paul Democrat is the chairman of the House Public Safety Committee; his district is considered safe Democratic territory.

No.  New York under Boss Tweed was “safe Democrat territory”.  Michael Paymar’s Highland Park, a part of Saint Paul that ponied up seven figures in donations for Kathleen Soliah’s defense fund, is a whole level beyond that.  The DFL could endorse a bag of dog food and get 60% of the vote, and most of the voters would say the bag of dog food made perfectly good sense in the debates.

Paymar collided this year with his party’s leadership over whether to change Minnesota’s gun laws. His bill to expand background checks and restrict gun purchases stalled when House leaders declined to call a vote.

Well, no.  It stalled when Paymar’s (and Hausman’s, and Rep. Martens’) copy-and-paste gun-grab bills served their purpose to the people who paid for their offices.

Best of luck, Representative Paymar.

I was going to title the piece “Rep. Heather Martens:  Her Lips Are Moving” – but now that Protect MN has hired Richard Carlbom, the PR father of gay marriage in Minnesota, I have to upgrade my approach.

Because while Representative Martens has never made a substantive true claim in all her years of working for victim disarmament in Minnesota, it’s time to start tracking Carlbom by the same standards.

An email went out to “Protect”MN supporters the other day.  Here was the money quote:

Click here to sign the petition urging our lawmakers to renew the Undetectable Firearms Act before it expires on December 9…

… Guns without a certain amount of metal can slip by metal detectors in public places. There is no reason responsible gun owners would need to have unconventional weapons like these. The Undetectable Firearms Act keeps guns that evade critical security measures off the streets. The law is set to expire on December 9. We urge legislators to renew the Undetectable Firearms Act to keep these dangerous guns away from airports, courtrooms, and other public places.

Now, the fact is that no such weapons have ever been produced.

And not only does every single gun owner know it, but so do the Feds.  Neither the Departments of the Treasury or Justice have ever enacted any regulations pursuant to the “Undetectable Firearms Act”…

…because there’s nothing to regulate.

Zilch.

The “Undetectable Firearms Act” is an utterly empty gesture.  It affects no crime.  It affects no manufacturing.  It is yet another empty gesture that groups like “Protect”MN flop in front of their ill-informed followers to give their shapeless concerns some rallying point.

I responded to the petition:

It’s not. This is empty legislation – even the feds have not bothered to enact any regulations due to this “act”, because *it refers to weapons that don’t exist*. There ARE no “undetectable firearms”.

“Protect”MN is lying. Again.

I think that sums it up.

Government officials wouldn’t…lie to the public to try to whittle back the Second Amendment.  Would they?

Tune in tomorrow morning on Shot In The Dark.

Two of the gun-grabbers’ favorite conceits:

• It’s guns – not criminals – that make the “inner city” dangerous (this pronounced always by unctuous white liberals like Jane Kay and Representative Heather Martens, who live in places like Linden Hills and Crocus Hill after doing their stint at Carlton or Saint Thomas)
• Nobody ever foils a crime with a gun

Both lefty memes were, um, shot full of holes earlier this week:

The victim of an attempted robbery in St. Paul took action when one of the robbers pointed a gun at him, firing his own gun and wounding one of the robbers.

No, it’s not Mario Van Peebles gone terribly to seed. It’s Michael Galloway, alleged accomplice to robbery. Photo courtesy of the Saint Paul Pioneer Press.

One of the robbers [Marcel Lee Galloway] simultaneously fired in the direction of the victim, who was not hurt, according to a criminal complaint filed Tuesday.

Galloway was hit in the leg.

Yep – it was justified.  And in John Choi’s Saint Paul, you gotta figure the County Attorney’s office did its darnedest to prove it wasn’t.

The article relates that two men – listed as “VT” and “TG” – got off work in downtown Minneapolis, where they work as bar bouncers.  They drove to a check-casheria on University at Lexington, by the White Castle, around 3AM to cash their checks:

VT, who is 31, saw two males approaching them as he walked to the passenger side of the car and heard the sound of a gun racking a round. A man in a baseball cap, later identified as Galloway, pointed a gun at VT and told him not to move. VT told TG, who is 26, not to move because he feared they would be shot if they did.

The two scumbags lifted TG’s money.  VT hid his wallet before they could get to him.  The robbers frisked him, and found nothing – which has been known to make robbers upset.  I add a bit of emphasis:

“VT was afraid that he and TG were going to be shot” and reached under the passenger seat to grab his SIG Sauer P250 .45-caliber handgun, which he has a permit to carry, the complaint said. “VT feared the two men didn’t believe him when he said he didn’t have any money, and he was afraid they might come back.”

A SIG/Sauer P250 in .45.   Relatively inexpensive, reliable as the rising sun (like all SIG products), and – most importantly of all – at the scene.

The robbers crossed into a Dairy Queen parking lot and the man in the stocking cap raised his handgun and pointed it toward TG and VT.

VT then fired at the robbers, the complaint said, and the man in the stocking cap simultaneously fired once in VT’s direction. VT fired five times and his second shot struck Galloway.

The gunman ran off.  The police caught Galloway.

A couple of bets to place, here:

• The ninnies at “Protect”MN will list this as an example of “inner city gun violence” – even though it was self-defense.  Just watch.
• “VT” will turn out to be African-American, Latino or Asian.  And yes, there are Asian bouncers.

Any action on that bet?

By the way – while it wasn’t a “homicide” (Calloway will live) this is yet another defensive gun use carried out by Minnesota’s 160,000-odd carry permit holders.

Today is “Give to the Max” day.

It’s basically a fundraising event for non-profits.

“Someone” (a plutocrat with deep pockets) is matching the first $10k donated to “Protect MN” today. This is notable – if they get anything, it’ll be the first donations they’ve gotten from inside Minnesota. *

But the good guys are in the game. MNGOPAC – the MN Gun Owners PAC – is in action, raising funding for good, pro-2nd Amendment candidates.

And it’d sure be cool if the good guys beat the tar out of the orcs today.

Anyway, here’s where you can help out.

Support for the anti-rights “gun safety” agenda is a mile wide and an inch deep.

Support for gun rights is a mile wide and a mile deep.

Case in point:

Although Mayors Against Illegal Guns’ efforts helped defeat GOP gubernatorial candidate Ken Cuccinelli, no one seriously expected him to win. However, of the 67 Virginia House of Delegates candidates endorsed by the National Rifle Association and targeted by Bloomberg’s group, 65 won, according to the Washington Examiner.

That’s about a 3% win rate for the splashy anti-rights group – or alternately, 97% for the good guys.

It’s been a tough year for the splashy, big-bucks rights-grabbing group:

After December’s Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre, the group got behind President Obama’s call for sweeping gun control legislation. But negotiations between U.S. Sens. Pat Toomey, R-Pa., and Joe Manchin, D-W.V., yielded a mere milquetoast background check proposal.

Still, the Mayors Against Illegal Guns website reported that the group got firmly behind the bill and aired a new series of ads campaigning for its passage. When the measure came for a Senate vote, it went down in flames.

It wasn’t just legislation: 

The group then tried to prevent the recall of two anti-gun state senators in Colorado. Although a reported $2 million was spent to support the lawmakers, both lost their jobs, according to Reuters.

About 10% of the mayors are voting with their feet: 

Some 95 key members of the group that targets and criticizes lawmakers backed by the National Rifle Association are losing their title of “mayor.” According to an election review of Bloomberg’s membership list of about 1,000, three quit the group, 69 retired from their jobs, and 23 were rejected by voters.

And that doesn’t even count the ones that have left office for, er, other reasons.

And I bet Michael Bloomberg would call this next factoid an “unintended consequence”, if he were honest enough:

As for that Virginia election, the number of state lawmakers the NRA rated “A” actually grew from 63 to 65 as a result of Tuesday’s election.

More of this.

Last week, we looked at a troika of “gun rights” groups and their singular and plural records.

Last Tuesday, we showed you a fundraising letter for a group called Minnesota Gun Rights (MGR) that Minnesota Second Amendment activists have been getting.  In the letter – from “Minnesota Gun Rights” executive director Chris Dorr – the sky will fall if the reader doesn’t support the group.

Wednesday, we got a perspective from Iowa on the effectiveness of the Iowa Gun Owners (IGO), run by Aaron Dorr, the brother of MGR’s Executive Director – or, according to an Iowa legislator who’s seen it first hand, the lack of effectiveness.

Thursday we looked at the ties between the Dorr brothers and the scandal that rocked the Michele Bachmann campaign in Iowa – and to the National Association for Gun Rights (NAGR), a group that earned a reputation for having a big bark but not much bite for the relative impotence of its battle against the anti-rights onslaught in Colorado last session.  We also noted that “Minnesotagunrights.org” is actually registered in Van Meter Iowa.

Friday, we showed that an alarmist fund-raising letter aimed at Minnesotans from the NAGR’s Dudley Brown, that was wrong on nearly every possible point – almost too devoid of fact to have come from Heather Martens.

And today?

More on that in a moment.

In Defense:  Last week, a local Libertarian activist well-known for his involvement in the “Ron Paul” clicque takeover of parts of the MN GOP in 2012 posted the following on his Facebook page.  I won’t name the activist here; let’s call him “Paul Robertson” just to avoid confusion.

I’m adding emphasis:

I have met Chris Dorr and and have worked some of the people helping him on projects in the state. A recent hit piece from a Minnesota establishment blogger noted the connection Chris has to the National Association for Gun Rights.

I’m an “establishment blogger?”

Who knew?

I digress:

NAGR operations chief Dudley Brown is an effective political operative who, an as RNC Rules Committeemember, was a leader at the national convention fighting the establishment power grab. One gets onto the RNC Rules committee by earning the support of entire state and CD conventions, something that is impossible for sham groups to do.

And there’s the point, right there.

Forget for a moment that “Mr. Robertson” is referring to Mr. Brown’s role in the picayune rules battle at the last Republican National Convention that pitted “the establishment” against the thin coterie of Ron Paul delegates (a rules change I oppose, for what very little it’s worth).

The two responses to this are:

1. So What?:   The most we can take from “Mr. Robertson’s” statement is that Mr. Brown can organize caucusees into a group that creates a ruckus to no real immediate effect.
2. That’s What!:  Badda bing.  Re-read #1.

In party politics as well as gun politics, Dudley Brown of the National Association for Gun Rights would seem – by his record, even as emphasized by his local supporter, the pseudonymic “Mr. Robertson” – to be about making the big, “my way or the highway” policy pronouncements that drum up much noise but signify little-to-nothing.

Now, there’s nothing wrong with noise.  And Minnesota’s current gun-rights groups – MN-RKBA, GOCRA, and even the NRA (which for the first time in my 25 years of watching the issue in this state is finally starting to take an active role at the Capitol) create plenty of it.  Over this past session, they put thousands of people into meeting rooms, and mobilized tens of thousands of phone calls, emails and letters.  Minnesota’s legislators know where the people of Minnesota stand on the issue – which is why even though the DFL controls the legislature and the governor’s office, and their financial supporters are buying support in the mainstream media, the anti-rights agenda was humiliated this past session.

But there needs to be more than just noise.  If a group can’t deliver results at the Capitol in terms of bad policy shot down and good policy enacted, then why support them?

Minnesota’s gun rights groups – NRA, GOCRA/GOAL, MN-RKBA and the rest – have a record of not just making noise, but winning battles.  Of not just getting people riled up, but getting them focused in a direction that, in good times, expands the human right of self-defense.  Never forget – the battle for “shall issue” carry permitting lasted 10 years, from 1995 to 2005.  The goal was achieved not just by getting people riled up – but by focusing all that passion on results.  And frequently needing to do it against adversity; remember, the DFL controlled the legislature before 2002, and have held at least one chamber for all but two years in recent memory.  And we’ve had exactly eight years of conservative-enough governor in the past thirty (forget about Jesse Ventura).

The Challenge:   But there’s certainly a market for groups in any facet of politics, including Gun Rights, that lead with “death or glory”; “our way or the highway”.  Gun Owners of America (GOA) split off from the NRA 20-odd years ago because they thought the NRA wasn’t activist enough.  And they were right.  And the exodus of members concerned with gun rights spurred the NRA to more, more effective political activism.

But hard-line as they are, the GOA has actually had an effect on politics.  They’ve done things; mobilized voters, won some battles through their own lobbying and activism and shoe leather.

I’m not going to tell you what to think about “Minnesota Gun Rights”, the group we met last Tuesday via its alarmed-sounding fund-raising letter to Minnesota gun owners.

I am going to tell you to consider the evidence;

• “Minnesota Gun Rights” (MGR) is tightly related to “Iowa Gun Owners” – their directors are brothers, and both groups’ websites are registered in Iowa (here’s MGR, here’s IGO)
• As related by Iowa state representative Matt Windschitl – a pro-gun legislator – IGO has a record of being utterly useless in actually passing legislation, has actually hampered the passage of useful legislation, and claims credit for passing legislation in which they were utterly uninvolved.   You don’t have to believe me – listen to him yourself.
• The Dorr brothers were intimately involved in the scandal that has dogged Representative Bachmann – the payment-for-endorsement scandal that led to the resignation of an Iowa state Senator.  So someday if Chris Dorr testifies in front of the Public Safety committee, you think Doug Grow (of the Joyce-Foundation-sponsored MinnPost) won’t bring that up to discredit all gun rights advocates?   You think “Protect Minnesota’s” new PR guy Richard Carlbom won’t dangle that factoid in front of Tom Scheck and Pat Kessler?
• Both the Dorrs are closely involved with the “National Association for Gun Rights”, a group run by Dudley Brown.  NAGR – like Brown and the Dorrs – are closely aligned with the Ron Paul camp; that’s not a bad thing by itself, necessarily.  But it does tip you off to their “all or nothing” approach.   And whatever their political allegiance, while NAGR is long on uncompromising rhetoric, when it comes to the day to day politics of winning the legislative battle for our rights, their record gives the appearance of being all moo and no cow, or worse (to say nothing of willing to misrepresent current events and politicians’ positions here in Minnesota).

Let me be clear here, personally – when it comes to fighting the anti-rights orcs, as far as I’m concerned we should let a thousand lights shine.

But Iowa Gun Owners and the NAGR would seem to have a record of underdelivering on its overpromised rhetoric.  And MGR has no record at all, other than of association with the IGO and NAGR.

Ask yourself – should your hard-earned money be going to a run rights group that has an actual record of delivering people, votes, and policy?  Minnesota already has several of those.  We could use more – as many as it takes to get every possible Minnesota shooter to the polls, and toss every possible orc out of the Legislature and the Governor’s office.

Is there any evidence that Minnesota Gun Rights, Iowa Gun Owners or the National Association for Gun Rights have done anything documentably useful?  Bills passed (through their efforts)?  Lawsuits won?  Chambers packed?  Legislators elected?

I’m waiting to see it.

But it’s your call.

Moms Want Action is, apparently, a national thing.

Who knew?

Anyway – “Think” Progress, the national left borg site, claimed to be onto something; a photo of gunnies intimidating a Moms Want Action meeting in Texas.

Now, what have we told you before?  Whenever the left says anything about guns (and, pretty much, everything else)?

Distrust, then verify.

Then, almost without fail, distrust some more.

Because what the group looked like depended on the angle; what from one angle could be teased into looking like a group aggressively intimidating was, from the actual intended angle, a group portrait:

That sums it up well.

Any anti-gun-rights voices, whether activists, media (ptr) or punditry, will be presumed either liars or misinformed until proven otherwise.

And they are almost never proven otherwise.

…guns serve no useful purpose in civil society.

None.

Nosirreebob.

I’ll be back with the wrapup of my “Carpetbaggers” series tomorrow.

Tuesday, we showed you a fundraising letter for a group called Minnesota Gun Rights (MGR) that Minnesota Second Amendment activists have been getting.

Wednesday, we got a perspective from Iowa on the effectivess of the Iowa Gun Owners (IGO), run by the brother of MGR’s Executive Director.

Yesterday, we looked at the ties between the Dorr brothers, Aaron (of the IGO) and Chris (of MGR) to the scandal that rocked the Michele Bachmann campaign in Iowa – and to the National Association for Gun Rights (NAGR).  We also noted that “Minnesotagunrights.org” is actually registered in Van Meter Iowa. 

We’re going to look more into the NAGR today.

Interpretations:  Last year, Minnesota Second Amendment activists hailing from a variety of groups got together and pulled off an amazing feat; in a state government completely controlled not only by Democrats, but dominated by extremist, gun-hating Metrocrats, managed to completely shut down a concerted anti-Second Amendment attack, in the wake of one of the most horrific school massacres since the 1920s.

It took a lot of work; painstaking mobilization of thousands of activists, fundraising, intensive lobbying of legislators, communications both on Capitol Hill and all across Minnesota.

Most of all, it took coalition-building.  Gun rights advocates from all groups had to build working relationships with legislators from the famously gun-unfriendly DFL, because – in case you missed in the first time – the DFL had complete control of the legislature and the Governor’s office.

Remember – the DFL started with a raft of bills; expanded gun-free zones, magazine restrictions, bans on weapons that looked cosmetically “assault”-y, handing control of carry permit applications over to the police (who unlike the sheriff do not answer to voters, ever), and a good half a dozen other noxious provisions.

Minnesota’s Second Amendment community had to get legislators on both sides of the aisle to agree to push back against the gun grab bills.

Remember – if Minnesota Democrats had merely closed ranks behind the Metrocrat hamsters that control most of the party’s agenda, today Minnesota’s gun laws would look like New York State, Colorado or California.

Politics – especially when you’re in a minority – is always a matter of give and take.  And yet Minnesota’s Second Amendment movement gave much worse than it got – in large part because of the tsunami of popular support they mustered, week in week out, and kept in legislators’ faces.

Here’s the important part:  the victory (and it was a victory) was won not by “stating a principle”, turning off the phone and chanting like a robot.  It was won by knowing the principle, (“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed”) and fighting a sharp, well-organized political battle to build a diverse coalition that would, via acceptable compromises, ensure the actual policy that got enacted didn’t violate the principle, if not reinforcing it. 

And in a session where the worst was not only possible, but in terms of absolute political numbers very, very likely, the mainstream Second Amendment movement won a victory.  No, not a “victory” in the sense that we dragged Heather Martens and Michael Bloomberg onto the deck of the USS MIssouri to sign articles of surrender.  More like Keith Park winning the Battle of Britain.

Which, whether your opponent controls all of Europe or all of the apparatus of Minnesota government, is a win. 

Alternate Reality:  Dudley Brown is in charge of the National Association for Gun Rights (NAGR).  The group bills itself as the conservative alternative to the NRA, which it regards as squishy moderates and accomodationists.  The group is closely tied with the Iowa Gun Owners (IGO) group, which we showed yesterday is closely tied with Minnesota Gun Rights (MGR).

And I think it’d be fair to sum up NAGR’s philosophy is “better to lose a symbolic battle for perfection than win battle for good if imperfect policy”. 

It’s a philosophy shared by not a few very ideological activists – pro-lifers, pro-abortionists, Libertarians, you name it. 

And during Minnesota’s gun debate last session, Brown sent an email to his group’s supporters in Minnesota about the Hillstrom gun bill – which I called “The Good Gun Bill” on this blog, because it focused on criminals and bad behavior, rather than attacking the law-abiding gun owner (which is something many Second Amendment supporters call “the goal”). 

Here’s the text of the bills in both the Senate and the House.  You be the judge.

I’ll include the email from Dudley Brown in its entirety below the fold – along with some commentary where called for.

(more…)

On Tuesday, we showed you a fundraising appeal from a group, “Minnesota Gun Rights” (MGR).  MGR is making an entry into the Minnesota Second Amendment battle.

Yesterday, we talked with an Iowa State Representative, Matt Windschitl, who pointed out that a group called the “Iowa Gun Owners” (IGO) had been talking big talk, but not delivering much – indeed, making things worse in terms of practical, day-to-day pro-Second-Amendment legislation.

As Representative Windschitl pointed out, the leader of IGO was an Aaron Dorr.

And as we saw from the fundraising letter, the Executive Director of MGR is Chris Dorr.

Who are the Dorrs?

To introduce the Dorrs and their group, we’ll start in the Minnesota Sixth Congressional District.

Your Niche Is On My List:  Few outside the world of professional and semi-pro wonkery really understood the scandal involving Rep. Michele Bachmann and former Iowa state senator Ted Sorenson.  There were allegations of payments to support Bachmann (and Ron Paul).  Eventually, the allegations led to the Iowa Senate Ethics committee investigating Sorenson, and finally his resignation from the Senate.

Aaron Dorr – the leader of the IGO – was, according to this piece in the Iowa Republican, intimately involved in the deal to buy Sorenson’s support away from Bachmann and for Ron Paul.  I’ll add some emphasis:

New information has been provided to TheIowaRepublican.com that details the courting of Sorenson by the Paul campaign, which began in October 2011, long before his public endorsement of Congressman Ron Paul on December 28, 2011.  The documents also show that Sorenson was negotiating with Ron Paul’s national campaign chairman, Jesse Benton, who is now running Mitch McConnell’s 2014 re-election campaign in Kentucky, and John Tate, Paul’s 2012 campaign manager.

Also involved in the elaborate scheme to persuade Sorenson to defect from Bachmann to Paul is Aaron Dorr, the Executive Director of Iowa Gun Owners Association.  Dorr served as an early negotiator between Sorenson and the Paul campaign.  It was Dorr who drafted a three-page memo outlining Sorenson’s financial demands to get him to jump ship from the Bachmann campaign.  This memo not only discloses the financial compensation Sorenson sought to obtain, but also details his financial agreement with Bachmann.

In addition to the alleged payoffs, Bachmann’s angle involved allegations of stolen mailing list of Iowa homeschoolers,  provided to the Bachmann campaign by – according to the Strib – Chris Dorr was the one who nabbed the mailing list:

In a recent affidavit, [here] Sorenson aide Christopher Dorr acknowledged going into Heki’s office and downloading a database from her computer in the belief that it was a campaign e-mail list. “The office maintained an open environment,” he said. “There was never a need for stealth activity.”

Dorr’s account, however, contradicts a 2012 affidavit from former Bachmann campaign manager Eric Woolson, who said Sorenson told him “we took ” the list and that those involved “stood watch” while Heki was out of the office.

Campaign insiders have suggested that the NICHE list was important to help Bachmann check the momentum of GOP rival Rick Santorum, who was making inroads with Christian conservatives on his way to winning the Iowa caucuses.

Waldron, who has also given an account to investigators, said he told Bachmann about the incident on December 18, 2012, but that the campaign took no action against Sorenson, who later defected to the Ron Paul campaign.

Both of the Dorrs, by the way, are the sons of longtime Iowa political consultant Paul Dorr, who in all honesty I need to point out is not only a scorched-earth political absolutist, but the winner of a lawsuit that is very important for gun owners – and especially skeptics of gun owners’ “slippery slope” – to be familiar with.   The elder Dorr is a longtime Liberty activist.

So – who are the Dorrs – leaders of the Iowa Gun Owners (Aaron) and Minnesota Gun Rights (Chris)?  You be the judge.

The Faint Smell Of Scorched Earth:  One more thing – the Iowa Gun Owners is closely affiliated with the National Association of Gun Rights (NAGR), a national group led by Dudley Brown.  NAGR posits itself as a conservative counterpart to the National Rifle Association, which it constantly portrays as a bunch of squishy, anti-gun accomodationists – rhetoric very similar to that used in Chris Dorr’s fundraising letter, which Representative Windschitl noted looks nearly identical to NAGR’s fundraising boilerplate.

NAGR seems to spend as much time fighting the NRA as they do the gun-grabbers.

And – like the IGO’s counterproductive grandstanding that Rep. Windschitl noted yesterday – when it comes to the politics involved in actually getting legislation passed that actually protects gun owners and the Second Amendment, they can be frightfully amateurist.

How does this relate to Minnesota, and the MGR fundraising letter we talked about on Tuesday?

More tomorrow.

I Mix Them Up Myself:  By the way – as one might expect, the “Iowa Gun Owners” website is registered in Iowa.

And so is the site for Minnesota Gun Rights; Chris Dorr registered the site in Van Meter, Iowa.

There are a lot of Second Amendment groups. .

Some – the NRA, the GOA, the Second Amendment Foundation – are big national groups that’ve been fighting the good fight for decades.

Others are laser-focused on state-level Second Amendment issues.

Others?

———-

Gun control is a big issue these days.

Oh, not with most of the American people, it isn’t.  In fact, that’s the big problem gun-grabber groups are finding; while many Americans claim to support gun control, it’s not that big a deal to the vast majority.  In the meantime, Second Amendment Rights supporters consider the issue one of their short list of issues for which they donate time, passion and, occasionally, money.

It’s more accurate to say the left wants to make gun control a big issue among the 30% of the American people who might be inveigled to support it.  And they’re willing to pay big bucks.

The left?  They’ve got money.  The Joyce Foundation and Michael Bloomberg are pouring tens of millions into the issue, largely supporting astroturf groups and buying friendly media coverage around the country (as they’ve done with ProtectMN, Moms Want Action, the MinnPost and MPR here in Minnesota).

And when there’s money, there’s consultants.  “ProtectMN” has hired Richard Carlbom, the guy who ran Public Relations for the Gay Marriage campaign.  It’s not that Carlbom is necessarily a big anti-gunner; nobody I know has run into him in re the issue.  But he’s got a consulting company, and he’s looking to burnish his (well-earned) reputation as a messaging Hessian…

…and there’s just so freaking much money being poured into Minnesota to support stifling liberty, he’d be stupid not to try to grab a piece while he can.

Money brings them out of the woodwork.

———-

There’s not nearly as much money being tossed around Minnesota on the other side, the Human Rights side. But it’s out there. A lot of Minnesotans, concerned about the extremist Metrocrat gun grab agenda that surfaced this past session, are starting to vote with their pocketbooks, as well as their feet and their, well, votes.

Every pro-second-amendment group is courting members very aggressively.

That’s where the story starts.

———-

A few weeks ago, Minnesotans active in Second Amendment issues got this package.  It was led off by a cover letter from Glenn Gruenhagen, a Minnesota state Representative  – who, I stress right now and up front, is one of the absolute best in the Legislature on gun rights, and is utterly solid on the gun rights issue.  Gruenhagen is one of the good guys. 

The entire package – with the recipient’s name redacted – is shown below:

MGR_letter (1) (1).pdf

The package introduces us to “Minnesota Gun Rights”.  They’re soliciting donations to fight the battle for gun rights.

Now, I keep my finger in the air about gun rights in Minnesota. I stay familiar with the players on both sides.

I’ve never heard of Minnesota Gun Rights.

Who is this group?

We’ll come back to that.

———-

Who are the “Iowa Gun Owners” (IGO)?

They make big claims.  The National Association for Gun Rights – which has itself come under, er, fire for barking more than it bites, and is itself under investigation for various ethics complaints – said:

On the local level, NAGR has assisted various grassroots state organizations in everything from helping form the group to professional and financial assistance. These groups include: Wyoming Gun Owners, Iowa Gun Owners, South Dakota Gun Owners, & New Hampshire Firearms Coalition, to name a few. Many of these groups are truly on the front lines when it comes to defending individual’s rights in their home states.

 

For example…Iowa Gun Owners has been working diligently to get a true Concealed Carry law passed.

The group claims…:

In Iowa, NAGR’s boots-on-the-ground ally Iowa Gun Owners (IGO) introduced the bill in 2011 and came within 2 votes of passing it.

Let’s look at Iowa for a moment.  This video is of Iowa state rep Matt Windschitl.

Windschitl:

“This morning I saw an email from a so-called Second Amendment organization.  That organization, in a roundabout way, was trying to take credit for helping to get this [pro Second Amendment] bill to the floor and working it through the process.  It’s not the first time this organization has done that.  I want to be clear to Iowans – I want to be clear to anyone that’s watching this video right now; that organization’s executive director is Aaron Dorr; he’s the executive director of Iowa Gun Owners. Here’s the message; he did not lift a single finger to move this [pro second amendment] legislation forward. In fact, he never even chose to register on the original house file, House File 81. And he did not choose to register on this [pro second amendment] legislation before us now. The organizations that have brought this legislation to us today, to protect Iowans, are the National Rifle Association, the Iowa Firearms Coalition, the Iowa State Sheriffs and Deputies Association, and the Iowa Police Association. Those are the organizations that have spent time and effort to make sure we’re doing right by Iowans. So for those Iowans out there who have been getting these deceptive, misleading emails, rest assured – we are doing your business in an up front, honest manner…

So what?  It’s Iowa, right?

He’s talking about the group “Iowa Gun Owners”.

Yep.  Totally Iowa.

More tomorrow.

———-

UPDATE:  Corrected a couple of typos.  It was early.

There’s been very little talk about Paul Ciancia in the mainstream media, compared to most of the major spree shootings.

Perhaps it’s because “only” one person died.  Maybe it’s because the shooting spree was ended before it really got started by good guys with guns.

Or maybe it’s because Paul Ciancia’s story ties in nicely with the NRA’s line on mass shootings; it’s not the gun, it’s the mental illness:

The chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee said on Sunday the suspect’s “mental illness” was a chief reason behind the shooting at Los Angeles International Airport.

Of course, there’s been no dispositive diagnosis yet – but if I were a gambler, I’d go long on “crazy” in this case.  As I have in every recent mass-shooting incident.  And won.

Of course, there’s a problem:  mental illness data isn’t getting to the NICS system, the national database that provides the “go/no-go” answers on disqualifications for buying guns.

The data Minnesota reports, in particular, has gaps in it – gaps that were supposed to be fixed over a decade ago. The DFL – which has controlled the process one way or another that entire time – has dragged its feet on improving the system.

Most recently, the Metrocrat Extremists – Representatives Martens, Hausman and Paymar and Senator Latz – blocked the “Good Gun Bill”, which would have fixed the gaps in Minnesota’s data reporting.

Before that?  Governor Dayton – who, let’s remind you, ran as a “Second Amendment Friendly” governor (with a pair of .357 Magnums in a gun safe, doncha know) vetoed Tony Cornish’s “Stand Your Ground” bill, which would have likewise fixed the gaps in the data we report.

So why do Democrats support mass murderers?

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Media is identifying this as the LAX shooter’s rifle.

What is it? The long bare snout looks like an M1 Carbine that my Dad carried in Korea:

. But it has a pistol grip the M1 didn’t have.

The body looks like wood, which nobody uses for modern assault rifles, they’re all black plastic, and the receiver is the same size as the fore-grip.

It doesn’t have the huge carrying handle of an AR-15 or a rail to attach scopes, etc.

Weird. What is it?

Joe Doakes

I’m gonna place it as a “Tacti-Cool” modified Ruger Mini-14. In its original form, it’s one of the most popular working guns in rural America…

…an excellent varmint gun, built on the legendary M-1 Garand operating system (which was adopted by the M-14 service rifle – hence the name “Mini-14” – it’s basically an M-14 chambered for 5.56x45mm (like the AR-15/M-16/M-4 series) instead of the much more powerful 7.62x51mm round.

With some “tacti-cool” accessories added – as not a few police departments have done – it does a passable “assault rifle” impression:

That’d be my guess.

Any other takers?

Speaking of the LAX shooting – how about the absolute dearth of details about the alleged shooter?

…sorry.  It’s getting so thick, I’m getting just a tad punchy.

There’s an election coming up.  And the Democrats are going to need to need all the racial tension they can generate.

And their wholly-owned subsidiary at NPR is there to help them – in this case, in a story about Senate hearings on “Stand Your Ground” laws helpfully entitled “Senators bicker over state ‘stand your ground’ laws”:

The 2012 shooting death of Martin, 17 and unarmed, [provided you leave out “fists” and “bulk” – Ed] and the acquittal this year of neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman stirred racial tensions and sparked debate over stand your ground laws in Florida and at least 21 other states.

Well, no.

The case itself stirred no tensions to speak of – until the Obama Administration, desperate to get out the black vote, turned Martin into a campaign stage prop, with the willing and unseemly connivance of the mainstream media.

Now, if you recall the piece on “ProtectMN”‘s “strategy” for the coming year, one of their goals is to emphasize emotional stories.  This is a common debate technique, of course; as my lawyer friends tell me, “when the facts are against you, argue law; when the law is against you, argue facts; when both are against you, argue like hell” – which means “emotions”, when you get right down to it.

And the media aren’t going to do anything about it.

Case in point:

Lucia Holman McBath, the mother of Jordan Russell Davis, implored the Senate to resolve the nation’s debate. 

[I’m going to hold out on the actual incident that led Ms. McBath to testifying in the Senate for just a bit, here]

“You can lift this nation from its internal battle in which guns rule over right,” McBath told the panel.

Ms. McBath lost a 17 year old son to someone who shot him in “self-defense”.

So what was the miscarriage of justice that led to Ms. McBath’s son’s killer walking away based on a “Stand your Ground” claim?  I’ll add emphasis:

Her 17-year-old son was shot and killed nearly a year ago when Michael David Dunn, 46, allegedly opened fire on a Dodge Durango with four teenagers inside after complaining of their loud music and saying he saw a gun and thus a threat. Jordan had been inside. Authorities never found a gun in the vehicle, the Florida Times-Union reported.

And, may I add…:

Dunn’s trial is set for next year.

So Mr. Dunn hasn’t even been tried yet?

We do not know the facts of the case that NPR hasn’t deigned to report…

…well, yes. We do.  We’ve looked at this case in the past.  Dunn would seem to have done just about everything possible wrong for a “self-defense” case.  Is he claiming “stand your ground?”  Sure.

And if he’s found guilty – as I’d imagine he will be – of some degree of homicide or another?  It’s irrelevant to “Stand your Ground”, because every other factor of the shooting that would lead to a self-defense claim would seem to have been wrong.

The fact that he claims “Stand your Ground” in a shooting that is otherwise wrong in every legal particular is not a reflection on the Stand Your Ground law.

Not that NPR will tell you that.

If you’ve wondered if there’s a way you could put your money where your mouth was in support of the Second Amendment – well, here you go (emphasis added):

The Minnesota Gun Owners Political Action Committee was formed following the end of the 2013 Minnesota legislative session, “ said Mark Okern, Chairman. “Over multiple days of hearings, law abiding gun owners heard proposal after proposal that would have taken away their ability to protect themselves, hunt, and enjoy the shooting sports while having no impact on gun violence.”

The Minnesota Gun Owners Political Action Committee will mobilize Minnesotans to support pro-Second Amendment candidates through grassroots efforts. The PAC also plans to endorse and financially support candidates in the primary and general elections in Minnesota’s 2014 elections for the legislature and statewide offices.

And unlike Common Cause, MN GOPAC really is non-partisan!

In the past week or so, the news got out that “ProtectMN” – the astroturf group almost entirely funded by Joyce Foundation – is getting some big-name help.

Richard Carlbom, the PR whiz behind the “Vote No” movement re the Marriage Amendment, has started his own consulting operation. 

And as all consulting operations do in every industry, Carlbom and his consultancy are going where the money is. 

Michael Bloomberg is going to spend a metric ton of money on attacking the Second Amendment.  And the Joyce Foundation is picking up the pace in its campaign to fund grassroots astroturf anti-gun groups, buy friendly media and media coverage, and gin up junk-academia to attack gun violence gun ownership.

And Carlbom is bellying up to the fiscal bar; he’ll be working with “ProtectMN”, Rep. Heather Martens’ astroturf gun-grabber group – a relationship made possible by the Joyce Foundation’s grant, reportedly, of $100,000 to “ProtectMN” (via an intermediary cut-out group). 

This is on top of Joyce’s purchase of $50,000 worth of the MinnPost’s “Journalism” on the subject (to say nothing of their sponsorship of Minnesota Public Radio coverage of the issue), and sponsorship of a network of other liberal “community organizer” groups like “Take Action MN”, who share resources with the gun-grabbers. 

Nobody knows if Carlbom has any actual passion for the gun issue.  He could well be just an ideological Hessian.  But if so, he’s a Hessian that “ProtectMN” desperately needs; Heather Martens may be the most inept community organizer in Minnesota political history.  It’s bad enough (for the orcs) that every single substantive thing Martens have ever said is a lie; it’s worse (for them) that pretty much everyone with a right to an opinion knows it.  So Carlbom getting into the issue may or may not be a game-changer – but it’s a line-up change that the orcs have needed to make for over a decade. 

Here’s The Important Part:  Liberals with deep pockets will always fund gun-grabber groups.  They’ll try to put different shades of lipstick on the pig that is suppressing our human right to self defense; they’ll change their spokespeople and their tactics, trying to create something – popular support for gun-grabbing – from nothing. 

There are very few conservatives with deep pockets supporting our human right to self-defense.  And much as the Good Guys would welcome their involvement (and money), it’s not what the issue will turn on.

But with the addition of Carlbom, the gun-grabbers now have several people working full-time to try to sway not just legislators, but your neighbors. 

Against that, the good guys have a bunch of plucky volunteers. 

If every single Minnesotan with a carry permit, all 160,000 of them, would donate $1 a year to the Gun Owners Civil Rights Alliance – the group that organized the entire grass-roots “Shall Issue” movement in Minnesota – the group could not only fund itself, but have at least one, probably two people working the issue full-time.  Lobbying, building infrastructure, investigating the orc groups, and above all making sure the grass roots – you and me, the Real Americans – can focus our efforts as effectively as possible.

Working together as volunteers, we Real Americans are more than a match for Michael Bloomberg, Representatives Martens and Hausman and Paymar, Senator Latz, Jane Kay and all the rest of the orcs. 

With the aid of a couple of people working the issue for a living?

We could stomp them flat and keep them flat. 

A buck a permit a year. 

We gotta make this happen.

This past Friday, I talked with Susie Jones, a reporter from WCCO Radio, about the Gun Grab Summit in North Minneapolis. 

Now, I’m stuck in a bit of a conundrum, myself.  On the one hand, I do seek a civil, grown-up dialog.  As a gun owner, I have a vested interest in making sure my “tribe” – the law-abiding gun owner – acts in a way that credits the responsibility that God gave us and that our Founding Fathers recognized in the Constitution (a responsibility that the record shows we’re really, really good at meeting). 

I also have kids.  And a granddaughter.  Violence is an awful thing.  Protecting against violence is one of the reasons I would be a gun owner, hypothetically.

So curbing violence – with guns, knives, axes, fists, cars, sex organs and every other kind – is Job 1 for me, and for every law-abding gun owner I know. 

On the other hand?  It’s hard to stay adult and civil when dealing with “ProtectMN”, the Joyce-Foundation supported astroturf group that has been campaigning against guns – as opposed to violence – under several names for a couple decades now. 

Part of it is that the group – its’ leader, Representative Heather Martens (DFL HD 67A), speaking as a leader and as an individual – has never, ever uttered a solitary substantive word of truth on the gun issue.  Ever.  Seriously – you can tell Ms. Martens is lying when you see her lips move.  She is the most disingenuous person anywhere in Minnesota public life. 

Yes, worse than Carrie Lucking. 

We are constantly reminded that we need to have a “Dialog” about gun violence. 

And “Dialog” requires honesty.  So I’m going to be honest. 

Monologue And Backstory:  The key to “Dialog” is, of course, discussion between two divergent-to-dissenting points of view.  Otherwise, all you have is a monologue. 

Now, in his conversation with WCCO’s Jones on Friday, “ProtectMN”s Leroy Duncan flatly denied that anyone was told not to show up at the event. 

But at least one executive from the Gun Owners Civil Rights Alliance responded to ProtectMN’s invitation to Friday’s event; I reprinted Heather Martens’ response to that GOCRA offical here the other day. 

Now, this is what ProtectMN put up on their Facebook page the other day.  Read it and tell me…:

“It’s time to stop letting our critical national debates be handled by lunatics, and by corporate lobbyists. It’s time for us to take up the mantle of civics and citizenship again, beyond our narrow self-interest.

We need to have a real discussion about the civic duty of gun ownership sooner, rather than later. It’s time for the grownups to start talking, and more importantly, to take action.”

The MN Gun Violence Summit will consist of “grown-ups” talking about how to make our communities safer and reframe the debate about gun policy.

…if all of that Alinskyite framing (“lunatics”, “grown-ups”) sounds like someone looking for a dialog? 

Class Warfare:  Jones noted in her conversation with me that some of the people at the “summit” had complained that the issue was a matter of the plucky, put-upon inner city versus the smug, complacent suburbs – and that shooters just don’t understand life in the inner city.

I refuted them thusly; me.  I live in the Midway.  I’ve had a drive-by shooting in front of my house.  I had a break-in when I was in my house, once upon a time; the sound of my own firearm ended the incident.  Senseless violence?  A four-year-old girl was murdered half a mile from my house, right about the time I had two kids in her age bracket. 

Gun violence affects my city.  My quality of life.  My property value.  Just as much as it does yours, and more than it does those of any of the leadership of “ProtectMN” and “Moms Want Action”. 

And – this is the important part -not a single proposal they’re making, or have ever made, would affect gun violence in the least.

So, Mr. Duncan, please spare us the BS and never, ever play that crap with me. 

And the fact is, many shooters live in the suburbs because decades of DFL mismanagement have left the cities much more dangerous than the subs, the exurbs or Greater Minnesota. 

Indeed, given that Minneapolis and Saint Paul have the lowest incidence of civilian gun ownership in the State and the highest crime rates, perhaps it’s time we considered whether owning guns is a better deterrent to violence than banning them. 

The Potemkin Mission:  But “ProtectMN” isn’t about curbing violence.  Not even a little bit.

Proof:  In the legislative session just passed, most of the Legislature got behind a bill, HF1325, sponsored by Rep. Hilstrom (DFL, some godforsaken Western suburb). The bill would have added mandatory penalties for using a gun to commit a crime, and improved the state’s reporting to the national background check database (a ball the DFL has been dropping for over a decade now)…

…y’know – things that have a record in curbing violence. 

That’s the mission – right?

Not for “ProtectMN”.  They – Martens and the Metrocrat DFLers who controlled the Legislature – fought like hell against the bill that would address violence with measures that have actually worked around the country, claiming it was “The NRA’s Bill” (which was written by a rep with an “F” rating from the NRA, but whatever).  Instead, they fought for useless fripperies like magazine size restrictions, and yapping about cosmetic features of different guns – things that don’t and have never had the faintest impact on violence at the very most.

Zero.

Nada.

Zilch.

So I ask you – who is actually “dealing with violence”?  And who is acting out a fetish over metal objects?

The Takeaways From The “Summit”:  I’d like to address this to my brothers and sisters, my fellow human beings in places like North Minneapolis and the lower East Side. 

There is a “dialog” to be had about gun violence.  And we, your fellow Americans and Minnesotans of the Second Amendment community, are more than ready to have exactly that.  We, like you, want to make your streets, neighborhoods and homes safer – because they’re our streets, neighborhoods and homes, too.

“ProtectMN” doesn’t care about “violence”.  They froth and fume about guys in Lakeville with AR15s – and you know as well as I do (and Heather Martens does not) that they and their guns aren’t the problem. 

It’s the criminals.  The people who couldn’t pass a background check when they were 18, and sure as hell can’t pass one now.

And let the record show that Protect MN fought against the legislation that would attack them, in favor of attacking the law-abiding, in the past session.

And starting in January, they’re going to ramp up that attack. 

More later.

Today at 10AM, “Protect Minnesota” and a coalition of mostly white, mostly upper-middle-class, entirely left-of-center groups will meet, as we discussed yesterday, to try to figure out how to suppress the Second Amendment for the law-abiding Minnesotan. 

Yesterday, we discussed the invitation – and how they’re really not interested in any solution that doesn’t involve infringing on the law-abiding, having rejected the RSVPs of Second Amendment activists.

But what about the agenda itself?

The invite – from “Protect Minnesota” The Brady Factory – says:

Find out what’s next in this important work and what your role can be. Sessions include:

— Changing the narrative around gun violence prevention

— Developing effective media strategy

— A deep dive on gun policy in Minnesota

— Grassroots lobbying

— Creating change with personal stories

What are they talking about?

Let’s turn this into real English:

Changing the narrative around gun violence prevention:  Whose narrative are we talking about, here?  The one in the media?  That one is certainly gun-grabber friendly.  Or are you talking about the one out there in the larger society – the one that keeps answering “guns in the hands of the law-abiding are a good thing” at the ballot box?

Developing effective media strategy:  I presume this means “expanding on their current strategy of having their plutocrat benefactors sponsor friendly media and pay for sympathetic “news” coverage”.

A deep dive on gun policy in Minnesota:  “Deep Dive?”  You don’t need no stinkin’ deep dive.  I’ll tell you what you need to know; for the past 40 years, our self-appointed “elites” have been trying to set gun policy.  From 1974 through 1994, it worked.  Then Minnesota’s gun owners got organized.  Since then, the “elites” have been shut down, and haven’t won a battle that wasn’t handed to them by a judge.

Take that time you were going to spend in your “deep dive” and do something useful.  Maybe take a walk.

Grassroots lobbying:  This should be a fun session.  The gun-grabbers have no “grass roots”

White, upper-middle-class, NPR-listening, Volvo-driving, free-range-alpaca-wearing, white-liberal-guilt-stricken perma-scowling Saint Olaf alums from Linden Hills, Crocus Hill and Saint Louis Park. These are the closest the gun-grabber movement gets to “grass roots”.

They have astroturf.  They have a few activists (see photo above) and a lot of money from liberals with deep pockets.

And that’s it.

Creating change with personal stories:  Go ahead.  Bring your personal stories.  We’ll bring ours.

The meeting should be fun.  And by “fun”, I mean “clogged with self-righteous but badly-informed bobbleheads”.

If any of you Real Americans attend as ringers, please send me your report.

In the previous piece about tomorrow’s “Gun Violence Prevention and Safe Communities summit “, I said “You’re invited”, sort of.

It’s not actually true.  A number of members of the Twin Cities’ human rights community responded to the invitation on Facebook – because the meeting invitation noted that “We all have to step up”, and nobody, but nobody, wants to curb gun violence more than the law-abiding, responsible gun owner [1], and so a number of Second Amendment human rights activists did step up, and RSVPed to the invite. 

And some of them have been getting responses:

“Dear [Redacted]

I am writing to inform y ou that the meeting on Friday, for which we received your RSVP, is not open to you.  If you come, you will be asked to leave.

Regards,

Heather

Presumably that’s Heather Martens, “Executive Director” and sole member of “Protect Minnesota’. 

So apparently when they say everyone needs to “step up” to prevent “gun violence”, they only mean “people who want to ban guns in the hands of the law-abiding citizen”. 

I wonder if theMinnPost,or Minnesota Public Radio, both of whom are sponsored by Joyce Foundation, the group of liberals with deep pockets who are “ProtectMN’s” only real source of money, will note that in what will no doubt be their embarassingly effusive coverage of the “event?”

[1] As evidenced by the fact that it’s us law-abiding, responsible gun owners that actually point out that the bulk of the gun carnage is being carried out by criminals, and most of the innocent victims are black children in places like Chicago.  The Twin Cities gun-grabber movement, being almost exclusively upper-middle-class white liberals (and, in terms of positions of power, white as the driven snow), seems only to concern itself with the deaths of children who look like their parents are NPR executives.  I’m sure that’s just a coincidence.

The Twin Cities’ assembly of gun grabbers is having a meeting tomorrow.  And you’re invited!

Sort of.  More on that in a bit.

Anyway – if you’re out and about tomorrow (Friday) morning (and it always seems these anti-gunners are unemployed, work for non-profits or retired, and have ample weekdaytime to devote to attacking other peoples’ civil rights), it might be fun to drop by.

Here’s the invite, and the agenda, more or less:

———-

Dear ***********,

It’s happened again. In Nevada, a 13-year-old brought a semiautomatic handgun to school, killed a teacher and wounded two students, and then killed himself.

This can’t keep happening — and it won’t stop on its own. We all have to step up.

On Friday, Oct. 25, Protect Minnesota is hosting a Gun Violence Prevention and Safe Communities summit for all who want to create safe, peaceful communities free of gun violence. Can you be there? Click here to RSVP**

Where: Shiloh Temple International Ministries, 1201 W. Broadway, Minneapolis

When: Friday, Oct. 25 from 10 am – 3:45 p.m., with lunch provided.

Find out what’s next in this important work and what your role can be. Sessions include:

— Changing the narrative around gun violence prevention

— Developing effective media strategy

— A deep dive on gun policy in Minnesota

— Grassroots lobbying

— Creating change with personal stories

Together, we can change the conversation around gun violence at this critical time in the history of gun violence prevention. Click here to RSVP.

The Vice President on home security:

It’s even funnier than Heather Martens endorsing the Colt .45.

Ted Nugent, famous gonzo guitarist and gun nut, says that armed, law-abiding citizens are likely the only coherent way that open societies have to protect against “soft target” terror attacks like the massacre Westgate Mall in Nairobi:

“Societies have to think about how they’re going to approach the problem,” Noble said. “One is to say we want an armed citizenry; you can see the reason for that. Another is to say the enclaves are so secure that in order to get into the soft target you’re going to have to pass through extraordinary security.”

Noble’s comments came only moments after the official opening of the 82nd annual gathering of the Interpol’s governing body, the General Assembly. The session is being held in Cartagena, Colombia, and is being used to highlight strides over the last decade in Colombia’s battle against the notorious drug cartels that used to be the real power in the country.

The secretary general, an American who previously headed up all law enforcement for the U.S. Treasury Department, told reporters during a brief news conference that the Westgate mall attack marks what has long been seen as “an evolution in terrorism.” Instead of targets like the Pentagon and World Trade Center that now have far more security since 9/11, attackers are focusing on sites with little security that attract large numbers of people.

Wait – “Noble?”  I thought it was Ted Nugent…

…oh, I can’t keep a straight face.  It’s not Ted Nugent.  It’s Ronald Noble, who is in charge of Interpol. 

And if Interpol – an agent of international statism – is finally twigging to the idea that the citizens are their own best last line of defense (short of absurd levels of “security”, which we all know means “Security Theater”, and for the most part immense sacrifice of freedom. 

Your choice.

We’ve written before about “Moms Demand Action”, the gun-grabber astroturf group financed entirely by liberals with deep pockets, and “run” (and, I suspect, almost solely inhabited) by Jane Kay, a woman whose hatred of the law-abiding firearms owner is so toxic as to frankly make me worry about her well-being.

Jane Kay (l) with Rep. Heather Martens (DFL – 67A) and Rep. Michael Paymar, at last spring’s gun grab hearings.

Mama Jane has a website, now.  And through the miracle of Web 1.0 technology, it gives the Moms and the group’s “member” their sympathizer or two the ability to put lies, long-debunked research and bobbleheaded long-discredited scare stories out in front of Congresspeople via Twitter in bulk loads.  Sort of the “Ugly Black Gun” of Twitter interfaces, designed to spit out untruths as fast as a group of orcs can click.

Or to put it in IT terms, a Spam Generator.

They’re using the #gunsense, #Savethe9 and of course #momsdemandaction tags.

If #MomsDemandAction had more than a few members, it’d be fun to jack the hashtags.

But of course, the point of groups like Moms Demand Action and “Protect Minnesota” isn’t getting members, or even producing social media.  It’s getting the compliant media (like the MinnPost, which is sponsored by the same groups that sponsor both of the gun grab groups) to present them as if they’re real groups, to gull the gullible into believing that there is an organized, organic gun-grab movement.

There isn’t.  But you’ll never hear it from Doug Grow.