The problem with “mass shootings” is there are just too many of the to cover ZOMG!

There are too many mass shootings for the U.S. media to cover. This year has already seen, by one count, more than 320 mass shootings.

News organizations must make agonizing decisions about which shootings warrant on-the-ground reporting and for how long. https://t.co/X4x0I2F3qZ

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) July 10, 2022

“Agonizing decisions”.

We’ll come back to that.

Until then, let’s define our terms.

A “Mass Shooting” is any shooting with 3+ victims, whatever the motive. It might be a school rampage, true – but it also covers botched robberies, sicarios executing suspect mules, a drive-by shooting indiscriminately into a crowd sending 3-5 people to the hospital, a murder/suicide – even self-defense.

A “Spree Killing” or “Rampage Killing”‘s only motive is killing for its own sake, and no other motive – not even terrorism. It includes episodes like Uvalde, Sandy Hook ,the Buffalo grocery store, and of course one that were ended by good guys with guns before they turned into “mass shootings” (thus ensuring no media interest).

There may well have been 320 “mass shootings” – many or most of them in places like Chicago, Baltimore, Saint Louis and Newark, with a few very notable spree killings distributed among the list.

And for some reason, the “agonized decisions” seem to involve ignoring “mass shootings” where the victims don’t look like the relatives of network executives.

The news last weekend was enough to make your teeth vibrate with rage.

New York bodega owner Jose Alba – a Dominican immigrant, a citizen, and by all rational accounts the good guy – got stabbed by a woman who was irate over her EBT card getting rejected.

Then, her boyfriend – Austin Simon, an ex-con with a violent record – took over.

It went downhill for both men after that. Alba faces murder charges. Simon, for his part, now knows what a pin cushion feels like:

This is yet another case of a Soros-funded district attorney – Alvin Bragg, Manhattan County’s DA, and a man who makes Keith Ellison look like Barry Goldwater – taking the side of the criminal. Bragg initially got $500,000 cash bail – eventually reduced to a $50K bond, even though Alba had a spotless record

Even New Yorkers – well, the ones who go to bodegas – aren’t amused:

The handling of the case has prompted local New York City Council members from both sides of the aisle to demand that the embattled Manhattan DA dismiss the charge. Prominent criminal defense lawyer Jeffrey Lichtman has offered to represent Alba for free. 

Now, in carry permit you’re told that if you use lethal force in self-defense, even if the case is utterly justified, you should expect an arrest, and very likely charges; the bluer the district, the more likely you’re up against a prosecutor who wants in principle to make an example of the law-abiding schnook. Examples to the contrary are often astoundingly unpredictable.

But if you look at the criteria for self-defense – in New York as well as Minnesota – to me the five criteria for self-defense break down like this:

• Reasonable Fear of Death: Seeing what I saw? Absolutely.
• Immediacy: Simon didn’t look like he was waiting for anything.
• Appropriate Force: He used lethal force until the threat ended.
• Innocence: He certainly wasn’t the aggressor.
• Duty to Retreat: I suspect this may be the weasel Bragg’s theory; you have to make every reasonable effort to get away. You see the video – there is no reasonable escape. But using a knife requires one to attack; it’s a much more active act than shooting. It’s an academic distinction when you’ve got someone behind the counter with you – but to a weasel like Bragg, it’s a hook.

I don’t think should have been arrested, much less charged. Hopefully a Manhattan jury agrees.

So – what to do about metastatic legal tumors like Bragg?

A National Review editorial hopes for an electoral solution to the problem of Alvin Bragg:

Bragg is a disgrace, the biggest threat to law and order in Manhattan in decades. The unjust prosecution of Alba is merely the latest example of how recentering the justice system around “equity” amounts to coddling career criminals at the expense of upstanding citizens such as Alba. In a one-party city, Bragg effectively won his office when he secured the Democratic Party’s nomination last June with just 85,000 votes, a margin of only 9,000 over his nearest challenger. Unless Zeldin this fall upsets the liberal Democratic governor Kathy Hochul, who is unlikely to do anything about Bragg except make a few concerned noises, New Yorkers are going to suffer for at least three and a half more years from the disastrous consequences of not bothering to stop Bragg in that low-turnout primary election last summer.

If there isn’t – and the dumping of Chesa Boudin in San Francisco shows that people in progressive cities can be pushed too far – then the alternative is people will start handling self-defense off the books.

And thats going to get ugly.

First things first: my thoughts and prayers to Armani Hyde, a 14 year old Saint Paul boy shot in the head last week. As this is written he is in critical but stable condition.

Now, The Nine ran this story over this past weekend. The whole story is worth a watch…

…but I particularly draw your attention to 1:45 – Mr. Nasiy Narir X of the Lion of Judah Armed Forces.

The LOJAF is noted as an offshoot of the Black Hebrew movement; it’s nothing if not militant; their firearms are a casual part of their presentation; check out their videos. A casual look at at least the material on the Facebook page shows they are especially interested in stopping the black community from killing itself. But they also have a radical streak that they feel plenty emboldened to flaunt.

That’s all well and good – I care no more about law-abiding black citizens exercising their right to keep and bear arms, or dress up as an army, than I do anyone else’s.

But I have three questions:

1. If a group of white guys were to dress up in army uniforms and walk around with guns, Twin Cities progressives would be projectile-crapping; the media would treat it as a sign of the impending collapse.
2. Speaking of which – all of the above, times twenty, for “Moms Want Action” and “Protect” MN. What gives, ladies? If an “Oath Keeper” group were to parade in front of a courthouse and promise “Revenge” for Derek Chauvin while open-carrying, would you be this sanguine?
3. I was reliably informed that if black guys were to be seen walking around open-carrying, the cops would exterminate them on sight. This doesn’t seem to have happened. Note to my culitural betters: please advise. TYVM.

Me? Every law abiding citizen who follows the rules has the same rights as every one else – Second, First and all the other Amendments.

Fearless prediction: the DFL will come out with legislation to go after “paramilitary groups”. Who are all “white supremacist”, natch.

Democrats, nationwide and in Minnesota, are fixated on “Red Flag Laws”. In the wake of Uvalde, it’s become the flavor the the month for the grabbers, yet again – part of the endless cycle that the gun control movement has become.

Now, it’s hypothetically possible to create a Red Flag Law that could work. But it won’t, and can’t, be the Red Flag bill that the DFL keeps dragging out in the Minnesota legislature, which:

1. Lets pretty much anyone turn in anybody, for reasons legitimate or malicious. Various Twin Cities anti-gun groups have already promised to use the measure to “SWAT” Minnesota Second Amendment activists if it passes, which they can certainly do, since nothing about the bill prevents it.
2. Leads to the cops driving away with someone’s guns – but leaving them in a home full of knives, rope and propane.
3. Perverts dues process, with a low standard of evidence to take the guns, and a much higher one to get them back.

All that is bad enough.

But once you get to that, you come to the inevitable realization that if our mental health system can’t effectively intervene in a tragedy like this horrific s**t-show earlier this month, what do you think they can do about cases that present much more subtly, or with much more backstory ?

SCENE: New York governor Kathy HOCHUL is meeting with members of the state assembly.

HOCHUL: The Supreme Court just said we can’t tire person‘s right to keep in bear arms to a completely subjective evaluation of their reasons to want to carry one.

We need to devise a less subjective and arbitrary system.

We need ideas. Go!

ASSEMBLY: how about we have state bureaucrats browse through applicants social media records?

HOCHUL: that sounds like it will be a slow, completely subjective and arbitrary bureaucratic nightmare that will wind up as yet another losing court case.

I love it!

And SCENE.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Nut with a gun shoots crowd at parade in affluent Chicago suburb. Once again, every Liberal gun-control nostrum failed:

AR-15 style rifles have been banned in Highland Park for a decade (buyer purchased in a different city). Gun ban didn’t work.

The rifle was factory-made, not a ‘ghost gun’ built in the garage. Ghost gun ban didn’t work.

The buyer needed a reference to obtain his Permit to Purchase (his father lol signed). Requiring references didn’t work.

The buyer was over 18 at time of purchase. Raising the minimum age didn’t work.

The buyer passed the background check. Background checks didn’t work.

The buyer planned farther in advance than any ‘cooling off’ period. Waiting period didn’t work.

The buyer threatened to kill his family but his family refused to press charges or commit him to a mental institution (it was handled by a mental health worker). Outpatient mental health treatment didn’t work.

Firearms ownership is a fundamental right guaranteed by the Constitution, but not everyone is entitled to enjoy that right. Historically, criminals, children, and the insane were prohibited. This guy falls into the third category but Liberals have so badly messed up civil commitment law that we can’t stop crazies from buying guns.

We don’t need to take the rifles off the streets, we need to take the crazies off the streets. Time for another look at how mental health treatment is failing in America.

Joe Doakes

There are two different supplies of shooters in this country; crazies, and habitual criminals.

The solution for one has nothing to do with dealing with the other.

And none of them will be solved by disarming the law abiding citizen.

On the one hand, last week‘s Bruen ruling at the Supreme Court wasn’t the “Jericho bringing down the walls of Canaan” moment that a lot of us gun owners have been hoping for all these years.

On the other hand, if you’re not a lawyer, some of the effects seem a little inscrutable; slapping New York California, Massachusetts and a few other “may issue” states on the wrist seems like aiming just a little low.

But there is a lot more to it than that:

Moreover, gun carry is only the beginning. The Supreme Court’s ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen is going to influence many more gun laws throughout the nation and could even bring about the downfall of the most contentious ones, because it sets up a new standard for deciding gun cases at all levels of the federal court system.

“When the Second Amendment’s plain text covers an individual’s conduct, the Constitution presumptively protects that conduct,” Justice Clarence Thomas wrote for the Court. “The government must then justify its regulation by demonstrating that it is consistent with the Nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation. Only then may a court conclude that the individual’s conduct falls outside the Second Amendment’s ‘unqualified command.’”

In other words: “hell, yeah, The founding fathers were referring to putting muskets in the hands of individual people. And those muskets were the “assault rifles“ and “military weapons“ of their day.“

A series of cases already pending before the Court will give insight into the effect of Bruen in other areas of gun law. Bianchi v. Frosh, for example, is a case involving Maryland’s “assault weapons” ban. It has been upheld by the Fourth Circuit using the now-defunct two-step standard. In Duncan v. Bonta, a California magazine limit was upheld by the Ninth Circuit under the same two-step standard. ANJRPC v. Bruck deals with the same magazine question and was similarly upheld in New Jersey. Young v. Hawaii deals with what amounts to a total ban on gun carry in Hawaii, which is likely the most vulnerable state law in the wake of Bruen.

Watching DC, California and New York State after the upcoming successive series of legal beat downs is going to be a little like Sylvester Stallone looked in the last five minutes of the first Rocky.

Minneapolis delivery driver with a (apparently) permitted handgun gives carjackers a significant emotional growth experience.

The driver was making a delivery to one of the Abbott buildings at 29th and Chicago, when the ne’er-do-wells made their move:

“My dad was making a delivery at Allina hospital earlier today and almost got carjacked, the suspects got scared and ran when my dad pulled his gun on them. One of them had a pistol and was tapping his gun on the passenger side window while his friend was trying to force open the door. [I’m] glad I convinced my dad to carry especially with how crazy crime is.”

The video leaves a bit to the imagination.

The part I’m having the most fun imagining…

SPOILER ALERT

…is the discussion the two punks had with the getaway driver who peeled out and left them running on foot away from an armed man.

But it’s fun to imagine.

Not to sound cynical about big media – good heavens no, not me – but when I see the New York Times reporting on active shooters, I pretty much expect their “reporting” to either lie, or to hide the accurate conclusion in plain sight.

And they’ve done that.

They include a snazzy, Edward Tufte-style graphic to explicate their case – and they reached this conclusion:

“It’s direct, indisputable, empirical evidence that this kind of common claim that ‘the only thing that stops a bad guy with the gun is a good guy with the gun’ is wrong,” said Adam Lankford, a professor at the University of Alabama, who has studied mass shootings for more than a decade. “It’s demonstrably false, because often they are stopping themselves.”

So let’s look at the graphic:

So let’s take a look at the numbers.Out of nearly 250 mass shootings that ended before the police arrived, nearly 10% ended with the assailant being shot by a “bystander“ – A “good guy with a gun“. That’s nearly 10% of spree shootings, ended before the cops arrive

(That is, of course, presuming the media actually recognizes the episode. For example, they studiously ignored this recent incident .

Even so, that is actually a tad higher than I’d have figured; given that spree killers tend to pick targets where nobody is likely to be able to resist them, and nowhere near 10% of the population at large generally carries a firearm, that’s actually a better result than one might rationally expect.

But now, let’s look at the other resolutions.

Of the 249 mass shootings that ended before the cops arrived, nearly 80% end with the killer either leaving the scene or committing suicide.

And the devil with these shootings is in the details. Some of the spree killers do leave the scenes of their crimes on their own two feet. But others “leave” because a citizen threatened them with immediate death – as in this case four years ago, where two good guys with guns changed a would-be racist spree killer’s plans, one with the threat of death, one with gunfire, causing him to run away. He was apprehended later.

One that killed himself, did it after killing two people – before a good guy pointed a gun at his head. He ran into a nearby store, and killed himself.

Or this case, where a church “security guard” (a volunteer with a carry permit) shot a spree killer who’d murdered four people already. He killed himself, it’s true – after his plan had been fatally derailed by a good gal with a gun.

So what’s my conclusion?

You can tell Big Media is lying about guns when their lips are moving, or their fingers are touching keyboards.

Same as it ever was.

None of the Twin Cities major media covered this story: carjackers attack woman in Northeast Minneapolis.

The surveillance video caught the episode, outside Tony Jaros’s River Garden:

That man then threw her to the ground in the parking lot, cocked the gun, beat Marlo, and pistol-whipped her across the head. Marlo said it appeared the gun jammed. His accomplice then walked over. It’s when Marlo says the bar’s cook just happened to be outside on a smoke break when he heard the commotion and came to her rescue.

They all tussled on the ground before one of the masked men knocked her keys away and attempted to get into the car. Marlo again got up to stop them from driving off. A group of men from the bar also joined the fight and another man pulled up in a pickup truck to help.

The men all dragged the driver out of the car and onto the ground. The two thieves eventually ran off.

I can not be the only one wishing the locals would have kept stomping when they got the punks on the ground.

It’s gonna happen someday, if the Hennepin County Attorney and the Minneapolis City Council don’t start taking this seriously.

The Supremes have struck down New York’s “Show Cause to Carry” law:

The state law at the heart of New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen required anyone who wants to carry a concealed handgun outside the home to show “proper cause” for the license. New York courts interpreted that phrase to require applicants to show more than a general desire to protect themselves or their property. Instead, applicants must demonstrate a special need for self-defense – for example, a pattern of physical threats. Several other states, including California, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, and New Jersey, impose similar restrictions, as do many cities.

Clarence Thomas, God bless him, wrote the majority opinion (joined by the entire conservatie majority – Roberts, Coney Barrett, Kavanaugh, Alito and Gorsuch:

“The constitutional right to bear arms in public for self-defense is not ‘a second-class right, subject to an entirely different body of rules than the other Bill of Rights guarantees,’” Thomas wrote in the opinion. The exercise of other constitutional rights does not require individuals to demonstrate to government officers some special need. The Second Amendment right to carry arms in public for self-defense is no different. New York’s proper-cause requirement violates the Fourteenth Amendment by preventing law-abiding citizens with ordinary self-defense needs from exercising their right to keep and bear arms in public.”

I’m no lawyer, but this part – from the text of the ruling – appears to be important:

Says Rob Doar from the MN Gun Owners Caucus:

https://twitter.com/robdoar/status/1539990799815000065

It’s a great day in America.

Updating this post as events warrant.

UPDATE:

The Progressive world as of 6/22: “Anyone who distrusted the Constitutional process in any way – say, on 1/6 – is a TRAITORRRRRRR!

The Progressive world on 6/23:

It has become necessary to dissolve the Supreme Court of the United States.

The first step is for a state the "court" has now forced guns upon, to ignore this ruling.

Great. You're a court? Why and how do think you can enforce your rulings?#IgnoreTheCourt

— Keith Olbermann (@KeithOlbermann) June 23, 2022

Why is it that “political commentators” whose sole background in life is yapping about grown men chasing balls around fields – Ed Schultz, Mike McFeely, Keith Olbermann – always so invincibly stupid?

UPDATE 2:

Democrats say things like this, thinking they’re making a great point:

KATHY HOCHUL: "I would like to point out to the Supreme Court justices, that the only weapons at that time were muskets. I'm prepared to go back to muskets." pic.twitter.com/xGoYKGE6g0

— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) June 23, 2022

Also in 1789, there was no internet, television, linotype, radio or morse code…

…but the smart people already know this. They’re not the people that the likes of Hochul are talking to.

UPDATE 3:

Inside baseball from Charles CW Cooke.

One of Big Left’s favorite bits of ignorant slander: “If black people start buying guns, wypipo will suddenly favor gun control”.

Looks like we’ll get to test that. Black Americans are the fastest growing population of shooters:

Further, in the first quarter of 2021, another [National Shooting Sports Federation] report revealed 90 percent of gun retailers reported a general increase of Black customers, including an 87 percent increase among Black women…The foundation said 40 percent of the overall gun sales in 2020 were to first-time gun purchasers. Black gun owners, old and new, say the rise is a byproduct primarily of a heightened fear they could be targeted like those in Buffalo or at Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015, when nine Black church members were killed by a white supremacist.

Or, y’know, the “white supremacists” that destroyed East Lake Street and University Avenue.

#snork

Back on topic: I’ve been looking for those honkies demanding gun control that I’m assured really most sincerely exist…

Rabidly pro-gun Pennsylvania governor Tom Wolf sticks a fork in the idea of Red Flag laws, showing their complete absurdity.

Can you spot the problem, here?

Red flag laws allow us to take action when someone who has a gun begins to act erratically.

Red flag laws still require due process, and any removal of weapons is temporary. pic.twitter.com/IVPHgbrvhD

— Governor Josh Shapiro (@GovernorShapiro) June 16, 2022

No, it’s not the lack of an adversarial hearing, where “Randy” and his lawyer can argue his case. Although there’s that.

It’s not the fact that the standard of evidence to seize the guns (“clear and convincing evidence”) is vastly lower than the standard “Randy” must meet to get his property back (“preponderance of evidence”). Although it’s that, too.

It’s not even the fact that the police in step 6 drive away with the guns and leave “Randy” in, er, crisis. Although that’s also reason enough to balk.

No – it’s step 2, where “Jane” notices..pictures of guns.

As Wolf – who is to the right of Ted Nugent on guns – rightly points out, this is literally what Seoond Amendment people have been warning about for years; antis using any sign of sympathy for gun rights as grounds for harassment, using sympathetic, often Soros-funded prosecutors.,

And so I thank the radically pro-gun Governor Wolf for his public service.

---

UPDATE: I’m informed that Governor Wolf is an anti-gun Democrat, and that this cartoon was intended as a defense of Red Flag laws.

I regret the understandable confusion .

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

The Chief of Police speaks, giving  a completely different take on Uvalde.

So maybe our new School Security Plan – in addition to keeping outside doors locked and having an armed resource officer on the scene – includes changing the locks?  There ought to be one master key to open every door and the cops ought to have access to it (how about storing it in a lock-box on scene, like the fire department does).

I have trouble understanding why it was possible to bust windows in neighboring classrooms to evacuate those children, but not to bust the window in this classroom to shoot the gunman.

I have trouble understanding why firemen couldn’t use the jaws of life to open the classroom door.

I have trouble understanding why everybody stood around outside waiting for an hour as the Chief waited in the classroom corridor until the Border Patrol eventually stormed the shooter.

I have trouble understanding why it took the Chief so many days to tell his side of the story.

Unless . . .

. . . he lawyered up and this is the best story they could concoct. 

Yes, I am that cynical.

Joe Doakes

By this point, if you’re not cynical, you’re not paying attention.

Oh, yeah – what if the door wasn’t locked at all?

This has become one of my pet peeves:

https://twitter.com/heather_edelson/status/1529438236845740032

That one, there.

Would you say “I’ve got a right for my kitchen not to catch on fire?”

Only if you’re an idiot. You have a right to a kitchen. You have a responsibility to keep it from catching on fire.

Would you say “I’ve got a right not to have my house hit by a tornado?”

You could. It’d be absurd. You do have a responsibility to watch the sky, turn on the radio, and look out for your and your family’s safety, though.

So – is there a “right to safety?”

No. Adults have a responsibility to protect children.

And literally none of the things Rep. Edelson is demanding will ive up to any part of that responsibility.

To: Governor Walz

You – or one of your social media smurfs – tweeted this over the weekend:

Lawmakers must be brave enough to come together and pass common sense gun safety laws – our children’s lives depend on it.

— Governor Tim Walz (@GovTimWalz) June 11, 2022

I caught the subtle gaslighting; in Democrat communications lately, upporting your current flavor is “courage“. I’m sure that will log roll at least a couple of gullible people who don’t think that hard.

But since The laws we already have, against straw purchases and trafficking guns to known felons, and using guns to commit crimes, and for that matter shooting up a car with your family in it, aren’t being enforced in cities run by your party, how about you have the “bravery“ to do the executive branches enumerated job, and enforce the laws we already have?

It’s a little harder than gaslighting the Republican majority in the Senate and a state full of gun owners, but it is your job.

Or lieutenant governor Flanagan‘s job, anyway.

That is all.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Doctors say gun violence is a public health issue, an epidemic. Here we go again, another round of the same tired lies.

Can we please acknowledge some obvious and simple truths? Guns don’t shoot people. People with guns shoot people. But not all people with guns shoot people, some of us have owned guns for decades without shooting anybody. And sometimes people shooting other people is perfectly justified and should have happened sooner, as in that Texas school.

The problem is bad people with guns shooting people. That means the real problem is not the guns; the real problem is the bad people. Take away the guns and they’re still bad people, still willing to do bad things.

Bad people are not an epidemic. There is no treatment. There is no cure. Best we can do is remove Bad People from society, keeping the rest of us safe.

Long term imprisonment. Death penalty. Vigilante justice. The old remedies are the only effective remedies for bad behavior committed by bad people. And everybody knows it, whether they’re willing to admit it, or not.

Joe Doakes

This, in fact, may be the most exhausting thing about being a gun rights activist; the population of gun grab activists (below the national level) recycles every 2 to 3 years.

And so every few years, you get to Saint deal with the same lies, clichés and emotion driven fallacies all over again.

Including this one.

Senator Ron Latz went to Harvard. Did you know that?

Anyway – here he is, talking about the new “public safety” / gun grab bill.

Well, sort of:

SHOCKING VIDEO:
Senator Ron Latz says that those who oppose gun control are "EXACTLY THE ONES" that government needs to worry about. pic.twitter.com/zsocQKmrvE

— MN Gun Owners Caucus (@mnguncaucus) June 7, 2022

Dear Democrats: it’s your duty to run on this, this fall. Every candidate, every race.

Seriously: Republicans, statewide: somebody needs to put this on signs, buttons and t-shirts. The good guys and gals need to hammer every Democrat with this, every appearance, every race, between now and November.

The lions lie down with the lambs.

Bill Maher is the grownup in the room:

On Friday, HBO’s Bill Maher made clear the Uvalde school attacker’s advantage was not the type of gun he used but the amount of time he had to use it.

Maher said, “I mean, this kid was in the room for 40 minutes before anybody came in. It wouldn’t have mattered what kind of gun he had. Any kind of gun could do any amount of damage in that time.”

Grandpa’s break action double barrel shotgun, A colt single action revolver, or with an average of one shot every two minutes, a muzzle loading musket would’ve all had the same affect as the shooters AR15.

In his, er, “speech” last night, President Dementio McGropey opened by saying what every “progressive” says: “I’m not coming for your guns” [1]

He then went on to say:

We need to:

Ban assault weapons — and if we can’t, then we should raise the age to purchase them from 18 to 21.

Ban high-capacity magazines.

Strengthen background checks.

Enact safe storage laws and red flag laws.

Repeal gun manufacturers’ immunity from liability.

— President Biden Archived (@POTUS46Archive) June 2, 2022

So…they’re not taking guns, except for the ones they’re taking?

But go ahead, Democrats: Ignore the economy, inflation, war, shortages of essentials, the collapsing supply chain, the housing shortage and the collapse of the middle class (even more than you already do).

Focus on guns this fall.

I beg of you.

---

[1] The actual quote is irrelevant, it’s always the same idea.

“…and if you say we are…

https://twitter.com/robertopedia/status/1531637140563668992?s=21&t=nUdqpKy3CJ5oo5AVQaQOXQ

“…you’re a liar”

SCENE:  Mitch BERG is at the Mississippi Market co-op buying catnip.  His head on a swivel to try to avoid progressive crazies, he’s trying so hard to be careful.  But despite his best efforts, he walks around a corner and practically runs into Avery LIBRELLE.

LIBRELLE:  Merg!

BERG:  Oh, for fuuuuuu…ll disclosure, Hi, Avery…

LIBRELLE:  Yet another mass shooting.   It’s time for a conversation about guns.

BERG:  Uh, you mean “monologue”, right?

LIBRELLE:  Ha ha.  The problem is, the right never offers any alternatives.  That’s our big frustration.

BERG:  I see your “frustration”, and raise you one; the frustration on the right is that the left keeps saying “the right offers no alternatives”.   Fact is, we offer them constantly. The left refuses to discuss them honestly.

LIBRELLE: Prove it.

BERG: You asked. Here we go.

For starters: enforce existing laws – especially the ones that are objectively proven to work. Putting gun criminals in jail deters more gun crime. Yet here in the Twin Cities, the two big-county prosecutors have *never*, not once, used the sentencing enhancements that statute allows for gun crimes. *Not once*.

Second: Intervene with youth at risk of getting sucked into gangs.

Third: Fire the US Attorneys that refuse to prosecute straw purchasers. There are *many* of them. Chicago’s already bad violence became much worse after the USA for Northern IL publicly announced he didn’t care to prosecute straw buyers. “Entrepreneurs” shortly started making a pile of money buying guns in Wisconsin and Indiana and selling them to bangers. These USAs need to be fired (that’ll take a GOP president, of course).

Fourth: Start talking honestly about empirical evidence. For example – in 1,000 school districts nationwide that *allow* teachers and staff to bring their own firearms to school, strictly concealed, there has never been a shooting on school property during school hours. This responds to the *fact*, determined by the Secret Service after Columbine, that spree killers very intentionally avoid targets where people unknown to them (i.e. not security guards or cops) can resist them; there’s no way to plan around them. The left reacts with horror – “teachers are about *teaching*, not KILLING”, but they miss the point; not a single teacher or principal or janitor needs to carry single gun; the threat alone is the deterrent. The only response is pure emotion – as if living in an oppressive state of panic about potential spree killers is better than the notion that somewhere on campus, someone with a clean criminal record and decades of incident-free carry might have a gun on ’em. That’s just one of many.

Another thing we learned at Columbine – the best thing to do with a spree shooter is to resist, as lethally as possible, immediately. (It doesn’t in fact matter if that resistance comes from a cop, a guard or a good guy with a gun – but SOMEONE has to put a threat of death in the shooter’s face asap). As we saw in Uvalde (and at Parkland before it), not all cops got the word. Waiting around for a spree killer to negotiate doesn’t work. (Salutory fact; when a spree killer has 20 minutes as at Parkland, or an hour as at Uvalde, the AR15 doesn’t matter; someone could kill 20 people in an hour with grandpa’s break-open shotgun, a cowboy six-gun, or a muzzle-loading musket). Anyway – push policies that favor aggressive self-defense and police response.

Fifth: You want a “red flag law”? Do one in good faith, one that involves more than an easily abused ex parte hearing that serves mostly as a medium for ex-spouses’s revenge, one that allows the subject to defend themselves, with results more useful than taking a suicidal or dissociative person’s guns and leaving ’em alone,

Those are things that people on the right *constantlty* reiterate, and have for decades. I’ve been an activist on this issue for almost 30 years, and our line *has not changed*.

And yet people on the left keep repeating “if only the right had any alternatives”.

All due respect, it’s not true, and it’s getting old.

LIBRELLE: (Mock sleeping, Librelle makes an elaborate show of waking up). Like I said, no alternatives.

BERG: Exactly.

And SCENE

Joe Biden is a terrible president – he’s passed Jimmy Carter as the worst of my lifetime, and if his (or, let’s be honest, Obama’s) agenda follows through, could pass Woodrow Wilson as the worst ever.

But let’s talk a little compassion, here, first.

My mom passed away at the end of April, as wrote earlier this month. As I noted at the time, she had Alzheimers.

We first started noticing her memory issues around the end of 2016. It started out with little things – not being able to find her purse over and over, mistaking who she was talking with, that sort of thing. It progressed, slowly and yet inexorably and all too fast at the same time.

Biden reminds me of my mom in early 2017.

The sinister element behind all this is that my mother was not simultaneously at the head of the world’s most powerful bureaucracy and military, and a talking head basically parroting the words put in front of her on a teleprompter.

LIke this:

“A .22 will lodge in your lung; a surgeon can fix it. A 9mm blows your lung out”.

If Biden is going off-script, he’s babbling. If he’s repeating a chanting point fed to him by a Democrat messageer who can count of Democrat voters not being critical enough a bunch of thinkers to see through the BS, then he’s still babbling.

Inflation is off the charts.

Crime is exploding.

Our debt is going to crush us, sooner than later.

Americans hate each other, and are sorting themselves out ever more strictly.

And we’re led by a muppet.

To: “Amy”, timeless genius

From: Mitch Berg, irascible peasant

Re: This Changes Everything!

Yes, you are the first person in the history of the subject of gun control, and indeed of rhetoric itself, to ever come up with this “argument“

Having an AR-15 doesn't add inches to your dick.

— Amy Lynn🐇💀 (@AmyLynnStL) May 28, 2022

And can I just say, it’s such a pleasure to meet a fellow true, rigorous Socratic.

That is all.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

I convinced my wife to get her Carry Permit a few years back. I hoped the class would teach her something about the law of self-defense. She said later, “All those rules. What’s the point of having a gun if you can’t use it?” I think she watches too much television – she doesn’t want a permit to carry, she wants a license to kill. And that was before things got so bad we moved out of the city.

She can shoot okay, though. We went to my gun club to brush up in preparation for her renewal class. The shots in the upper diamond were from her .38 Special revolver, 21 feet, standing, iron sights, slow fire. The shots in the middle circle were rapid fire.

Granted, the burglar isn’t going to stand around for five minutes while she wakes up, finds her glasses and locates the gun, cocks, aims, and fires. Taking her to the range to shoot for this photo is probably only giving her false confidence. But same is true for you and me and anybody else who doesn’t sleep with a gun under the pillow like the guy who died in that no-knock raid in Minneapolis. If we have time to get woke up and organized, he’s in deep doo-do. If not, we’re no worse off than before.

Now I need to find ammo to replace the rounds she shot. No .38 SPL at Fleet Farm or Cabella’s. The shortage is over for limited calibers and selections, but the shelves are not groaning like the olden days.

Liberals are trying their hardest to provoke a civil war. I expect more riots this summer, drumming up outrage to get out the Democrat vote. Even if you lost all your hardware in a tragic canoe accident, Bill’s Gun Shop will rent you a pistol when you pay for the shooting lane. When’s the last time YOU were at the range?

Joe Doakes

Last time I was at the range? Last week.

But since I lost all my guns in the lake, it was just to read the articles.