A bit of legal background first:  A Minnesota carry permit isn’t a “Concealed Carry” permit. It allows a permittee to carry a firearm, either concealed or openly.   Now, most permittees carry concealed; partly because there’s no sense in showing a criminal who it is that might oppose them, and partly because we live in a society where some people become fairly unhinged around guns.

And by “a society”, I mean “modern, NPR-listening, Volvo-driving, St. Olaf-attending, upper-middle-class white-as-the-driven-snow urban America”.  People who’ve never had to learn to deal with cognitive dissonance, because they’ve experienced so little of it.

By the way – if I did have a carry permit (or a handgun, for that matter), I doubt I’d ever find an occasion to carry openly;  in Saint Paul, there’d be too many people getting erroneously exercised over it.  I like to pick my battles.  In other parts of the state, it’d be less of a battle.

Pick Your Battles

That is, in fact, one of the most important lessons from carry permit training; the best way to use your permitted firearm is not at all.  Never.  Using a handgun is, at best, the second-worst possible outcome to an altercation.

And if you talk with most carry permittees, you find that that lesson has sunk in.  When someone flips them off in traffic, they don’t flip back; they “wave with all five fingers”, as a carry permit instructor of mine advised.  More so?  If they see a dangerous situation brewing – a bar fight, a skeevy situation – they make themselves scarce.

Because nothing is harder to talk your way out of than a shooting.

A permitted firearm is there only for when the battle picks you, and there’s nothing – nothing! – you can do about it.

And Minnesota permittees are pretty good about picking their battles.  In ten years, there has been precisely one unjustified homicide carried out by a permittee.  That’s a murder rate a couple of orders of magnitude below the rate for the general population, and bordering on “infinitely”.

Avoidance

Earlier this week, a group called the Minnesotans for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms decided to try an awareness raising event; holding an “Open Streets – Open Carry” event at an “Open Streets” event in Southwest Minneapolis.

The “Open Streets” events are, of course, a metro-wide series of glorified block-club parties.

Twin Cities’ gun groups have, of course, done open carry events for years; most notable were the “Open Carry Picnics” at Lake Harriett.  You may have heard about them – but not because anything untoward happened there.

The intention?  Have a picnic.  Pull up a grill and some lawn chairs and socialize.

Period.

Unfortunately, MNRKBA picked the one in Southwest Minneapolis – a neighborhood full of Saint Olaf/Carlton liberals who are not well disposed to cognitive dissonance.  They called in their connections.

And Don’t You Dare Call The Media Biased!

The Strib and the City Pages covered the story…

…well, no.  The two papers served as PR agents for the neighborhood’s indignant.

“Gun Rights Groups Plan To Pack Heat At Open Streets” read the City Pages headline.

“Pack Heat” is one of those things reporters write about carry (open or concealed) when they don’t really understand it, but know they feel contempt for it anyway.

As to the Strib?  “Gun Owners Target Twin Cities Street Fairs For Coming Out Party“?   If you think the title is loaded, go ahead and count the number of times writer Mary Lynn Smith uses the phrase “gun-totin'” in her article.

Loaded much?

But it’s not just the articles that are the problem.

Catnip For Ninnies With Authoritarian Streaks

Check out the comments.

Especially the ones threatening violence.   Anonymity and a public forum certainly brings out the online courage in a lot of people, doesn’t it?

Over on the MN-RKBA Facebook page, one woman stated she’d go out of her way to pick a fight with an open carrier, and then lie to the police to try to get the carrier arrested (the comments were deleted).

There were just too many people expressing an intent to cause some sort of mischief, legal or otherwise…

…over something that is every Minnesotan’s legal right, should they choose to exercise it.

Battle Picked

With the threats, and remembering the basics – avoid dangerous situations – the MN-RKBA decided to call off the open carry events.

Not because they were asked to, nicely or not.

Not because they didn’t have every legal right to be there, just like any other community group.

Because a bunch of wannabe thugs threatened to create a thing all responsible carry permittees always avoid; a situation.

I Did Say Ninnies, Didn’t I?

Of course, Heather Martens and “Moms Demand Action” – who are as devoid of “victories” as they are of any history of factual statements on the issue – are trying to claim this as a victory for the gun-grabber movement.  Both are apparently try to exploit this event as a “win” for their hapless groups.

And there’s one more ninny.  Indeed, the big kahuna of Twin Cities lefty ninnies.  More at noon.

Martens and Jane Kay are, as usual – as always – lying.  Neither “Protect MN” nor “Moms Demand Action”, nor any “organized” anti group, had any role or say in this.  Nor a case.

No, the entire decision was over the obvious potential for trouble.

And anyone who claims otherwise is lying, or trying to gin up drama for their personal, political or PR gain, or both.  Most likely both.

But again, more at noon.

In the wake of the Newtown/Sandy Hook massacre, as America’s political class and educational-industrial complex spun themselves into paroxysms of anxiety working out non-solutions (ramping up regulations on the law-abiding) and anti-solutions (useless fripperies designed to increase the theatrical “sense” of security without actually making anyone safer from the kind of atrocities that happened in Newtown)…

…one Minneapolis teaching assistant, actually did something useful; she brought her legally-permitted gun to school. 

As cops are teaching themselves – and others who are at liberty to use the knowlege – the best way to respond to an active mass shooter is immediately, with lethal force.  It’s ended not a few potential mass shootings, notably the shooting in Portland three days before Newtown, where a citizen pointing a gun at a man who’d just murdered two and still had hundreds of rounds of ammunition was all it took to break the killer out of his fantasy – which is the key step.  Mass-murderers are delusional narcissists lost in a fantasy world; interrupting the carefully-planned fantasy is the key to ending the shooting (at least before the plan reaches its end). 

But that’s just too practical a solution for the Minneapolis school system, or any other, apparently:

A Minneapolis education assistant has been put on a year’s probation and remains on unpaid leave after bringing a loaded handgun to Seward Montessori School the week after school shootings grabbed national attention in December.

The district identified the aide who brought the .357 Magnum gun to the school as Kathleen E. Scozzari, in response to a Star Tribune data practices law request. She is a 21-year district employee.

The 59-year-old northeast Minneapolis resident has been on leave without pay from her $19.90 per hour job since the Dec. 19 incident, in which her gun was recovered from her locked locker in a staff room. The incident occurred a week after the mass school shootings in Newton, Conn.

“She was immediately cooperative. She explained her motives to the police right away,” said attorney Sarah MacGillis, who represented Scozzari. “Her principal concern was protecting the students.”

Kudos to Ms. Scozzari for her motives.

Of course, it’s against the law – and against policy, which is that your children must be compliant, orderly victims, the better to be used as a helpless dependent in life, and posthumous political cudgel.

Provided your children look like the children of NPR executives. 

The story doesn’t mentioned how the staff detected Scozzari’s pistol.  Scozzari has a carry permit.

And I suspect there are not a few other teachers out there, in the wake of Sandy Hook, doing the same thing, only more quietly.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

They must have mis-understood the question or the results would not have been so dramatic.

Joe Doakes

Como Park

He’s talking about the poll results in the linked article.

And given the publicity that, er, certain sociological statistics supposedly emanating from the problem that the “bill” would address have gotten in the US (I’m working hard not to give out any spoilers), the result is doubly interesting.

I’ve added a new corollary to “Berg’s Law” – especially in light of events of this past seven months and the doddering, bobbleheaded liberal punditry to which Real Americans have been subjected.

It’s the “Fugelsang Corollary to Berg’s Seventh Law of Liberal Projection” (Berg’s Seventh reads “When a Liberal issues a group defamation or assault on conservatives’ ethics, character or respect for liberty or the truth, they are at best projecting, and at worst drawing attention away from their own misdeeds.”)

It reads as follows:

The Fugelsang Corollary To Berg’s Seventh Law – a liberal who uses “I’m happy with my penis size” as a conclusion to a debate on the Second Amendment doth protest too much.

The thing about Berg’s Laws are that they are, in actual practice, absolute and inviolable.

Joe Doakes from Como Park writes about this piece (which started as a monologue on the NARN a few days before the blog post was published).

———-

Your end-of-show reading of Rep. Paymar’s column got me to thinking: we know background checks won’t work, but saying so doesn’t make it so. Can we better explain to Low Information Voters WHY they won’t work? Some thoughts for your future columns:

Background checks stop people from committing violence with guns, but only if (a) the shooter submits to the background check and (b) the database is accurate.

There are at least five kinds of gun violence. They occur for different reasons so they have different solutions.

Enterprise Violence is a business decision. When Al Capone found Bugs Moran taking over saloons to sell bootleg liquor in Capone’s territory, Capone didn’t have the option of bringing a lawsuit to restrain his competitor, as Microsoft might do today. He didn’t have the option of buying a city council members to grant him a city-wide franchise, as the cable company might do today. Capone was left with “alternative dispute resolution” to handle competitors: he shot them. Drug dealers today have the same business problem – illegal product, no recourse to courts – so when they have problems with competitors, they use the same business model that has proven so effective for the last 100 years: they shoot them.

Drug dealers by definition routinely import, manufacture, transport, buy and sell illegal items. If they’re successful, it’s because they have learned how to avoid law enforcement. Buying illegal guns presents no different logistical problems from buying illegal drugs.

The employee who pulls the trigger won’t be the guy who submits to the background check. Instead, the gang will use a person with a clean record – a new hire, or perhaps a wife or girlfriend – who can pass the background check to buy the weapon then hand the weapon to the eventual shooter. These “straw man” purchases will look completely legal on paper and even if law enforcement catches them, they’re just little fish, quickly replaced.

One solution to Enterprise Violence committed by dealers in illegal drugs may be the same as the solution to illegal liquor: repeal Prohibition. Background checks is not a solution.

Idiot Violence. Nizzel George was a 5-year old boy in North Minneapolis. He was sleeping on his grandmother’s couch when 17-year-old Stephon Shannon and 16-year-old Julian Anderson walked up the sidewalk and fired 10 shots from .40 caliber handguns at the house. One of the bullets punched through the siding and hit the sleeping child in the back. Shannon said he was a gang member and that he shot at the house in retaliation for the earlier shooting of a fellow gang member. He didn’t mean to kill Nizzel, didn’t even know he was in the house.

Hadiya Pendleton was a 15-year old girl from Chicago. She was an honor student and majorette who performed for President Obama’s inauguration. She was chatting with friends in Harsh Park on January 29, 2013 when she was struck by bullets fired by Michael Ward, age 18, also of Chicago. Ward and his getaway driver, Kenneth Williams, age 20 of Chicago, told police the shooting was in retaliation for earlier gang violence but Hadiya’s group was not the intended victims, her group was mistaken for other people.

President Obama mentioned Nizzel George and Hadiya Pendleton as reasons why new gun control laws are needed, including universal background checks but that makes no logical sense.

You must be 21 years old to buy a handgun. None of these shooters should have had one. Plainly, they didn’t submit to a background check. They most likely obtained their weapons the same way the Enterprise does – theft or straw purchase. They used guns to redress insults because that’s how things are done in their violent little sub-culture.

The solution to Idiot Violence may require massive social change to eliminate that violent sub-culture. Certainly, background checks alone won’t make any difference.

Mental Illness Violence. The Aurora Theater, Newtown School and Accent Signage shooters had histories of mental health problems but had not been formally committed. You cannot commit someone to a mental institution based on gossip or rumor or even the parent’s concerns because being committed for mental illness means the patient is locked up as securely as if he were being sent to prison. The law requires a judge to rule that the person is a danger to himself or others at that moment, based on admissible evidence from the patient’s history. Fear that the patient might someday snap is not admissible evidence. This sets a high standard of proof to deprive a person of his liberty and makes civil commitment difficult.

The background check database includes people who already have been committed for mental illness but these shooters hadn’t been committed so they wouldn’t be in the system. A background check would not have stopped them from buying weapons.

The solution to Mental Illness violence involves an overhaul of the mental health treatment system and re-evaluation of commitment law, none of which was included in Rep. Paymar’s proposal.

Suicide By Gun. There has been an increase in rates of suicide committed by middle-aged White men who are not drug dealers or gang members and had no prior history of mental illness. Nobody knows why although armchair psychologists speculate losing their life savings in the housing crash or job in the Recession make that generation of men feel like failures, or perhaps something unique to Baby Boomers (who already have higher rates of depression than earlier generations), or maybe a “tough-it-out” cultural reluctance to seeking mental health treatment. Since guns are the tool used, gun control advocates seek to control guns to reduce suicide rates.

The background check database does not include people who lost money or jobs. It does not include people who are depressed and decline treatment. Most middle-aged White men who commit suicide by firearm have owned their guns for years. The solution to Suicide By Gun might be similar to that for Mental Illness, but background checks won’t help.

Government Violence. Andrea Rebello, a 21-year old Hofstra University student, was being held hostage by a man who broke into her home when she was shot in the head by a cop, killing her instead of the man holding her. Ibragim Todashev was shot dead by an FBI agent in Orlando just as he was about to confess to helping the Boston Bomber commit murder.

Jeff Johnson, a laid-off employee, shot Steven Ercolino, the vice-president of the company, outside the Empire State Building. Police pursued Johnson and shot at him 16 times, killing Johnson and also wounding 9 innocent bystanders when bullets ricocheted off the stone building.

After Chris Dorner shot an off-duty cop in Los Angeles, police officers fired approximately 100 shots at a blue Toyota pickup truck in which Margie Carranza and her 71-year-old mother, Emma Hernandez, were delivering newspapers. The officers mistook their truck for the gray Nissan Titan Dorner was believed to be driving. Hernandez was hit and Carranza suffered injuries from flying glass. On the same morning, Torrance police opened fire on the truck of a surfer headed for the beach.

Vang Khang’s family counted 22 bullet holes when police raided the wrong home in Minneapolis in 2008. Roberto Franco’s family lost their dog and nearly a daughter to a diabetic reaction when police raided the wrong house in St. Paul in 2012, shot the family pet, handcuffed the children and denied the diabetic girl her medicine. When Alden Anderson killed a police dog named Toby earlier this year, St. Paul police shot Anderson to death.

Rodney Balko at Cato Institute has an interactive map online showing botched paramilitary raids are an epidemic and innocent deaths are frequent. If it were occurring in any other country, we’d be aghast at the level of violence government directs at its own people.

The solution to Government Violence probably involves de-militarizing ordinary police, ending the War on Drugs and extending personal liability to careless police officers, but none of these shootings would have been prevented by background checks.

I’m sure you can think of more categories and examples but perhaps the mental exercise of breaking gun violence into small units will make it easier to explain why a universal blanket solution not only won’t solve the problem, it will divert attention from real solutions.

Cuomo ratchets up gun control.

Bloomberg leads a group of mayors in a battle against the Second Amendment (when they can spare time from their own criminal defenses).

New York, mostly placid since the Giuliani years, erupts in gun violence:

Violence surged like the mercury Sunday, with three more fatalities from gun violence — and eight others wounded in shootings — bringing the total number of bullet-riddled in the city to 25 in less than 48 hours.

Only Staten Island was safe from the wide-ranging spray of gunfire and sickening weekend bloodshed. At least 12 people were blasted in Brooklyn, eight in the Bronx and another four in Queens. The sole person shot in Manhattan took several slugs to the chest and perished in broad daylight.

Of course, Chicago has the “toughest” gun laws in the country, and is a cesspool of violence.  Washington DC is right up there on both counts.  Connecticut had “tough” gun laws before Sandy Hook, and has ratcheted them up since – but in what state did Sandy Hook happen, again (all notwithstanding the fact that guns are absolutely illegal in schools to begin with)?

I know – correlation doesn’t equal causation.

But there’s just so much correlation.

Sometimes the wrong people get hold of them, and do stupid things, and then all sorts of innocent people get hurt.

A liberal acquaintance of mine on Twitter told me yesterday that this bit spelled out the case against the NRA “in a logical way”.

@tjswift2 @mitchpberg Reading the piece actually makes the point quite logical. Even if you don’t agree with it. @jruha

— John Shannon (@JohnTShannon) May 28, 2013

It’s by John Fugelsang.  Now, I do try to seek civil conversation, but Fugelsang is becoming to the left what Bob was to Baghdad; people who quote or cite Fugelsang are justly derided as ninnies; he’s best ignored completely, or as we conservative bloggers say, “Billied”.

But since the lefty tweep took the trouble, let’s show all the ways in which this piece (transcribed below) does not lay out any case with any logic.

It’s almost too densely-misguided to even “fisk” in the classical sense.  For starters, let’s stick with calling out the individual misstatements, evidence-free chanting points and distortions in blue.  Like this:  {Chanting Point!} 

Maybe you’re someone who, like the majority of Americans, supports the Second Amendment’s right to bear arms, but you feel kind of creepy about the weapons-grade cretins who run the NRA and do all they can to keep Americans {Ad-hominem – name-calling!} safe from any gun laws that might keep Americans safe.  {Assertion made without evidence; not a single gun law proposed would have “kept” a single American “safe”}

Well, you’re not alone. And this is why: loving the Second Amendment while opposing the NRA is every bit as natural as loving Jesus while opposing Westboro Baptist Church.

Let’s take a break here.  This is straight out of Saul Alinsky.  Linking a mainstream organization of regular Americans – five million of us – with the “God Hates Fags” church?  Seems a stretch.

In fact, Wayne LaPierre’s fake constitutional rights lobbying group  {Perhaps Fugelsang would favor us by telling us how the lobbying is “fake”?} that gun manufacturers use to buy off congressmen actually has quite a bit in common with the revoltingly fake Christians of Westboro.   {The “Buy Off” meme is an interesting one; we’ll come back to that…} 

You see, Westboro is to Christianity what Jesus was to ignorance, hatred and inbreeding. They travel the country holding these vile, un-Christian protests at the funerals of anyone evil enough to live in a land that doesn’t stone gay people to death, Leviticus-style. They don’t want to hate gays — they’re just doing it because God commands them and they’re only following orders. It’s like Nuremberg, but with very bad teeth.

There’s a sign that Fugelsang’s piece is targeted at the insufficiently bright; he has to explain who Westboro – the church that pickets soldiers’ funerals – is.

These guys don’t picket outside gay bars or gay bathhouses or gay dance clubs or Lindsey Graham’s Senate office. Just places guaranteed to cause the most outrage possible – like funerals. Then when someone tries to stifle them, they engage in First Amendment lawsuits.  

Then you’ve got the NRA. And please understand, when we talk about the NRA, we’re not talking about their members. {Oh, heavens, no!} In Frank Luntz’s 2012 poll of NRA members, 87 percent said they believed Second Amendment freedom went hand in hand with preventing gun violence. That’s responsibility.

But you wouldn’t know that from the group’s leaders. Under the stewardship of Wayne LaPierre, or as I call him, “Il Wayne,” the NRA has become the front for gun manufacturers, the guys who’ve cashed in big time since Newtown.

So much “wrong” packed into two paragraphs.

Where precisely does Fugelsang think the NRA gets its leadership?  Who does he think elected, and re-elected, LaPierre?  The members – whom current events show to be among the most engaged, informed voters (especially on gun issues and the NRA itself) out there.

And the “Front for Gun Manufacturers” meme is one that the left bruits about without ever showing what the problem is.  It’s as if gun manufacturers, staring at legislation that would in many cases actively destroy their market – between the various confiscations, limits and price hikes that the bills would impose on the law-abiding and the law-abiding alone, don’t have a right to take up common cause with the biggest nationwide organization that’s on their side?

If someone tried to ban NPR, you don’t think Volvo or Patagonia or Starbucks would pony up for the defense?

They’re the reason why in America it’s now easier for a civilian to buy lots of weapons designed to kill lots of people really fast than it is for you to remember your old MySpace password.  {What the hell is he talking about?  This is just barking lunacy} 

But while they’re protecting profits, they’re also juicing up profits through fear-mongering mailings about how Obama’s coming to confiscate your weapons.

Here’s a little tip, Skeeter: The fact that you’re able to heavily arm yourself while publicly calling Obama a gun-grabbing tyrant is pretty much proof that he’s not.

And there’s your proof that liberal never have to learn how to debate conservatives.  I’ve heard that last bit countless times, even here in Minnesota during the session; if a noxious provision – a useless and price-gouging background check, a magazine restriction with a confiscation provision – hasn’t been signed into law yet, it doesn’t exist, so shut up about it.

But only if it’s about guns.  Not like abortion, or defunding NPR, or defending traditional marriage, the very whisper of which is cause to rally the liberal troops.

By opposing background checks at gun shows — checks supported by 90 percent of Americans — the NRA guarantees that guns can be legally bought through the gun-show loophole by felons or third parties who sell to felons. And then those legal guns just kind of disappear, get sold a few more times, and when the cops recover those weapons years later from a killing that wiped out a playground full of kids, the NRA can say, “Look, illegal guns! Background checks wouldn’t have stopped anything.” See, who needs the black market when you’ve ensured that bad guys can get guns freely on the open market?  {In junior high writing class, the story would then end “And Then I Woke Up”.  The scenario exists only in John Fugelsang’s imagination} 

Background checks only infringe on your Second Amendment rights if you’re a felon, a terrorist or criminally insane. And if you’re all three, you probably already work as an NRA lobbyist. {Not just an ad-hominem, but a really stupid one} It’s all about the money.

Westboro ignores the teachings of Jesus and takes one line of Leviticus out of context to justify their homophobic evil.

The NRA ignores the Second Amendment’s “well regulated militia” part and takes one line out of context to justify their blood-soaked greed.

The NRA ignores nothing – “well-regulated” meant “can hit what it shoots at” in 1787, and it still does.  But Fugelsang, like every liberal who skis this well-worn rhetorical slope, ignores the whole “right of the people” bit.   In his blood-soaked ignorance.

OK. It’s time for the home stretch.  The part where Fugelsang – who has become one of the  lefty alt-media’s name-brand public intellectuals, their sine qua non of debate – closes his case with eloquent logic, a command of fact, and calm reason:

Homophobia is an insult to God, and opposing gun safety is an insult to living people.  {That’s right!  If you smear the label “gun safety” on a polished turd like Michael Paymar’s background check bill – which will never deter a single crime – you love death!}

These groups are both rackets and they’re both doomed. Because the WBC has made untold Americans realize, “Hey, I don’t want to be like that.” {The NRA’s membership has increased by over a quarter since Newtown} 

And now, the deal closer – the all-important final sentence: 

And Wayne LaPierre’s complete indifference to the consequences of gun proliferation makes more NRA members realize every day, “Dude, maybe I’m OK with my own penis size.”

All that buildup…for a dick joke?

(I could throw in a “Berg’s Seventh Law” reference here, but that’d be gratuitous)

Here’s the scary part:  it’s no dumber than most of the left’s arguments.

But John Fugelang?  Not so much.

“Protect Minnesota”, the checkbook advocacy group run by Representative Heather Martens (DFL-HD66A), usually complains that gun control is supported by the vast majority of Americans and Minnesotans; that they are the real majority.

They put out this graph showing what groups spend what:

And it sure looks like the pro-gun groups outspend the orcs, doesn’t it?

But what does the graph not tell you about political spending on this issue?

The NRA gets get the uncountably vast majority of its funding from individual members; the orcs like to complain that they’re funded by the firearms industry – as if that were in and of itself a black mark against the group, even if it were true in any meaningful context.

I’m not familiar with the NSSF’s funding, and I know the GOA is even more grassroots than the NRA.

As to the Brady Factory and the VPC?  Both are funded by the Joyce Foundation.  As to “Mayors Against Illegal Guns?”  It’s largely funded by big-government utopian plutocrat Michael Bloomberg and his circle, and most of that money seems to go to paying the group’s members’ bail and legal costs.

Just think how much worse this story would be if Britons had the means and legal right to resist violent crime.

When American gun-grab advocates talk about the UK’s crime rate, they gloss over the fact that general violent crime in the UK Is higher than in the US.

Someone tell Representative Martens.

Senator Dave Osmek (R, SD33) emailed (with emphasis added):

You will note some GOP opposition to[this past week’s] Latz gun bill. While I asked some pointed questions in debate of the bill, I came to the same conclusion as many GOP senators: Even though it’s a bill we can support, we do not feel any need for a gun bill this year, particularly in light of the fact that we do NOT have even ONE omnibus budget bill to keep the State running. We need priorities, not distractions.

The bill didn’t pass.   And we still have no actual budget.

Just a bunch of crib notes the DFL is claiming are close enough for government work.

Gun rights people, listen up and pass the word.

There’s an email going around from a “gun rights” group from out of state, soliciting donations and stirring the pot against legislators, including several who were invaluable in the session’s real big news – no gun control bills passed the legislature this session.

Here are some excerpts from the email:

After House Speaker Paul Thissen (DFL – Minneapolis) declared that there would be no gun bill a couple weeks ago, suddenly one anti-gun bill was rushed through the Senate Finance Committee…this anti-gun bill passed the State Senate with the blessing of key Senate REPUBLICANS.

It’s SF-235 by anti-gun State Senator Ron Latz (DFL – St. Louis Park)…some supposedly “pro-gun” Minnesota lawmakers, including State Senator Julianne Ortman (R – Chanhassen) have already called for much more draconian anti-gun laws.

Ortman, herself was even an original co-author of this DFL led bill until mid-February…Now, we’re hearing cries for “fixing” this bill in Conference Committee. That’s code for tacking on as much gun control as they can get away with in the waning days of session.

And thanks to a few compromise-loving Senate Republicans, they have every reason to believe they can do it…worse yet, Ortman, along with other committed “moderates” like Sen. Julie Rosen (R – Fairmont) led A STAMPEDE of RINOS in the Senate who voted for this anti-gun bill yesterday…if the gun-grabbers have already corrupted even supposedly “pro-gun” Republican Senators into PROPOSING and VOTING for this nonsense, mark my words, virtually no Minnesota House member’s vote is off the table.

For Freedom,

Dudley Brown

Executive Vice President

National Association of Gun Rights

If you’ve never heard of the NAGR – join the club.  I’m not aware that they have any actual membership, had anyone at the Capitol, or mobilized any of the avalanche of Real Americans’ phone calls that stalled the orcs’ gun-grabs this session.

And it’s for sure that “Dudley Brown” hasn’t a clue what actually happened; the attacks on Representative Hilstrom and Senator Ortman alone show you they don’t know what they’re talking about.

The Gun Owners Civil Rights Alliance – who actually did put boots in the Capitol, organize cataracts of public feedback, and negotiated with real legislators for real policy improvements – sent out this email in response, listed below in its entirety:

There is an inflammatory email being sent to Minnesotans by an out-of-state individual who has never actually accomplished anything for Minnesota gun rights (or those of any other state that we can see).

The real purpose of this email is the same as all the rest of the emails this individual sends: to solicit donations.

GOCRA and its friends in both the House and the Senate, including long-time gun rights champions Sen. Warren Limmer and Rep. Tony Cornish, as well as gun rights bill sponsors Sen. Julianne Ortman and Rep. Debra Hilstrom, spent hours in good faith negotiations with SF235’s author, Sen. Ron Latz.

The result was a delete-all amendment that completely replaced the original bill, substituting a very different bill that was deserving of GOCRA support.

SF235 has no gun control. It does not send “mental health” data or gun owner fingerprints to the Feds. To say that it does, one must be dangerously ignorant, or a liar.

GOCRA, the group that brought Shall-Issue carry to Minnesota, has been protecting and extending gun rights in Minnesota for a quarter century.

We were at the Capitol for the whole session, and our lawyers (with a combined 70+ years of proven gun rights advocacy in MInnesota) carefully scrutinized every word of this legislation, as well as the more than a dozen bills we sent to defeat this session.

These Second Amendment supporters — DFLers Hilstrom and Saxhaug, as well as Republicans Ortman, Limmer, and Cornish — deserve your support. They’ve earned it with their actions.

Who you gonna believe?  The real thing, or a donation-sucking carpetbagger?

The Gun Owners Civil Rights Alliance sent out a press release yesterday:

Senator Ron Latz (DFL-St. Louis Park) announced last night that he intended to resurrect a gun bill this morning, after the leadership had announced that there would be no gun bills heard this year..

We were able to mobilize a quick reaction from our Facebook page (www.facebook.com/gocra), and we worked this morning with Latz and other legislators to ensure that only good language got through the House finance committee.

We are at the Capitol this afternoon, keeping an eye on things and making sure nothing bad gets added in conference committee.

I’m going to interrupt here.

Know how all those idiot liberals say “You gunneez don’t want ANNY gun laws?”   Of course, you know it’s BS; we support laws that punish criminals, or prevent them from getting guns.  I’m at a loss to think of a single “gun law” anywhere in the country that works (defined as “reduces violent crime”) that wasn’t supported the the Second Amendment movement.

No exception here:

 The streamlined bill contains some genuinely positive improvements to the NICS system, which should help ensure that prohibited people are actually entered into the national system — and removed when their prohibitions are over.

The fact that the Sen. Latz and the committee voted only for a bill that met with GOCRA approval is a testament to the influence that YOU have at the legislature. Your voices, emails, calls (and maroon shirts!) reminded our civil servants who they work for!

I want to give this extreme emphasis:

In a session where the DFL has complete control, and the Metro DFL had the power to steamroll anything they want if people just stayed asleep, the Gun Owners Civil Rights Alliance was among very few groups to stop the orcs cold.

As a result, Minnesota’s gun laws improved in spite of the efforts of the Metro DFL, the astroturf “gun safety” lobby, and Rep. Heather Martens.  (Presuming, of course, the Latz bill is passed and signed).  All of the “gun safety” lobby’s stupid, fascist gun-grab noodling was defeated.  Humiliated.

This is what grassroots politics is all about; regular schnooks beating back the plutocrats, the Kenwood condo pinks, the Washington special interests.

It was done with a staggering amount of work, and a whole lot of commitment by a whole lot of people.  And they need more.  If you can, join the Gun Owners Civil Rights Alliance.

Because while the earth opened up to swallow the orcs in Lord of the Rings, here we’ve gotta beat them the old fashioned way.

In Eric Black’s three part series about the Second Amendment a few weeks back (part 1, 2 and 3), Black – writing in the MInnPost, which operates in part through the generosity of a big grant from the anti-gun zealot Joyce Foundation – notes the not-exactly-earthshaking conclusion that the Second Amendment can confuse people.

Ooh! Confederates! That must mean the MinnPost is writing about bitter gun-clinging Jeebus freaks again!  Seriously, MinnPost – I’m never letting you live this down.

And the underlying themes of his series were – as I read ’em – that the Second Amendment is:

1. Linguistically and legally inscrutable
2. Confusing
3. Obsolete.

We’ll address the first two of these today.

Black notes the definitions that vex a surface-level reading of the Second Amendment:

What’s a militia? If you aren’t in a militia, does this have anything to do with you? Or perhaps (and this is roughly the current Supreme Court interpretation) what if “militia” is just an 18th century word for all the able-bodied males in a state who had better have access to arms in case their state needs them to secure its freedom…But if “militia” doesn’t refer to an organized group, what’s “well-regulated” doing in there?

It’s a good question.  But it’s hardly a new one.

For much of US history, it didn’t need an answer – since hardly anyone questioned the notion that Militia meant…

…both.  The Militia Act of 1903 codified what had been followed in practice since the Militia Act of 1792; the the Militia was composed of…:

• The Organized Militia – the National Guard and the Naval Militia, and…
• the Unorganized Militia – every able-bodied male between 17 and 45 years of age who wasn’t a member of the Organized Militia.  In other words, everyone.  Including Eric Black.

But even answering “it’s in the law!” misses the most important point.

The answer to the question “What does the Second Amendment really mean?” started taking its currently definitive shape with the publication, about 20 years ago, of “The Embarassing Second Amendment“, by Dr. Sanford Levinson.  At the time, Levinson was a professor at the U of Texas School of Law; the article appeared in the Yale Law Review.

Levinson was and is an arch-liberal with portfolio, who described himself then and now as a card-carrying ACLU member who was very uncomfortable around the notion of civilians owning guns.   He’s no mossy originalist; he’s called for a Second Constitutional Convention.

The article – about 80 pages, half of them footnotes – is a highly detailed analyis of the textual, historical, structural, doctrinal, prudential and ethical history of the Second Amendment, its related case law, and analysis of all the above.

And the conclusion was all wrapped up in the title; Levinson, unabashed anti-gun liberal that he is, is embarassed to conclude that the “NRA” was right, and the gun-grabbers were wrong.

It came out a solid decade and a half before the Heller decision, but it was one of the key waypoints on the path between the silly, collectivist post-Miller-decision miasma and the Court’s curent stance on the issue.  It was the argument that started even arch-liberal Laurence Tribe on his path from dismissing the originalist interpretation (as Levinson notes in the article) to acceptance that the Amendment is in fact a right “of the people”.

The road to Heller and McDonald started with Levinson’s article.

And he started from the same question Eric Black did: what does “well-regulated militia” mean?

In textual terms – the strict reading of the words?  Not much help there: “The text at best provides only a starting point for a conversation. In this specific instance, it does not come close to resolving the questions posed by federal regulation of arms. Even if we accept the preamble as significant, we must still try to figure out what might be suggested by guaranteeing to “the people the right to keep and bear arms;” moreover, as we shall see presently, even the preamble presents unexpected difficulties in interpretation.”

But in historical terms?   Things are clearer:

Consider once more the preamble and its reference to the importance of a well-regulated militia. Is the meaning of the term obvious? Perhaps we should make some effort to find out what the term “militia” meant to 18th century readers and writers, rather than assume that it refers only to Dan Quayle’s Indiana National Guard and the like. By no means am I arguing that the discovery of that meaning is dispositive as to the general meaning of the Constitution for us today. But it seems foolhardy to be entirely uninterested in the historical philology behind the Second Amendment.

I, for one, have been persuaded that the term “militia” did not have the limited reference that Professor Cress and many modern legal analysts assign to it. There is strong evidence that “militia” refers to all of the people, or least all of those treated as full citizens of the community. Consider, for example, the question asked by George Mason, one of the Virginians who refused to sign the Constitution because of its lack of a Bill of Rights: “Who are the militia? They consist now of the whole people.” 48 Similarly, the Federal Farmer, one of the most important Anti-Federalist opponents of the Constitution, referred to a “militia, when properly formed, [as] in fact the people themselves.” 49 We have, of course, moved now from text to history. And this history is most interesting, especially when we look at the development of notions of popular sovereignty. It has become almost a cliche of contemporary American historiography to link the development of American political thought, including its constitutional aspects, to republican thought in England, the “country” critique of the powerful “court” centered in London.

One of the school’s most important writers, of course, was James Harrington, who not only was in influential at the time but also has recently been given a certain pride of place by one of the most prominent of contemporary “neo-republicans,” Professor Frank Michelman. 50 One historian describes Harrington as having made “the most significant contribution to English libertarian attitudes toward arms, the individual, and society.” 51 He was a central figure in the development of the ideas of popular sovereignty and republicanism. 52 For Harrington, preservation of republican liberty requires independence, which rests primarily on possession of adequate property to make men free from coercion by employers or landlords. But widespread ownership of land is not sufficient. These independent yeoman would also bear arms. As Professor Morgan puts it, “[T]hese independent yeoman, armed and embodied in a militia, are also a popular government’s best protection against its enemies, whether they be aggressive foreign monarchs or scheming demagogues within the nation itself.” 53

Which gets us into the third of Black’s conclusions, which we’ll come back to later in the series.

As to the notion that the “Right of the people to keep and bear arms” refers to a National Guard that the founding fathers didn’t envision:

Consider that the Fourth Amendment protects “[t]he right of he people to be secure in their persons,” or that the First Amendment refers to the “right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” It is difficult to know how one might plausibly read the Fourth Amendment as other than a protection of individual rights, and it would approach the frivolous to read the assembly and petition clause as referring only to the right of state legislators to meet and pass a remonstrance directed to Congress or the President against some government act. The Tenth Amendment is trickier, though it does explicitly differentiate between “state” and “the people” in terms of retained rights. 42 Concededly, it would be possible to read the Tenth Amendment as suggesting only an ultimate right revolution by the collective people should the “states” stray too far from their designated role of protecting the rights of the people. This reading follows directly from the social contract theory of the state.( But, of course, many of these rights are held by individuals.)

(If you haven’t read Levinson’s entire piece – you need to.  It’s one of the most politically influential law-review articles in recent history – and it’s not a bad read, either).

As to “well-regulated?”    Levinson doesn’t address it directly – in the parlance of the 1790s, it meant “can do the job”, or “can hit their targets”, a definition that’s changed in the past two-odd centuries -because it’s irrelevant.  It’s a right of the people, necessary to the preservation of a free state.  It’s a secondary question at most, in the lee of the real question “what is a right of the people?”.

As noted in Heller, it’s not an absolute right; states can ensure that people who aren’t good citizens, felons and the like, don’t get guns.  They can legislate the types of guns, within reason; the whole “can you get a flamethrower or a cannon” argument is a strawman, although it’s worth arguing on its own merits (if I’m a law-abiding schnook with a .380 or a shotgun, why wouldn’t I be with a howitzer or a bomb?).

The “What does the Second Amendment Really Mean?” argument – like the “The Second Amendment existed to protect slavery!” argument we dispensed with a few months back – is a manufactured controversy, a re-hashing of questions that were answered literally decades ago among those who pay attention to the issue.

But the gun control movement rarely makes its appeals to people who pay attention to the issue.

Up next – probably Tuesday – the notion that the Second Amendment is just plain obsolete.

As yesterday’s vote in the House showed, Minnesotans don’t tolerate putting civil rights through popularity contests.

The message was loud and clear – if you oppose civil liberty (even for something that’s not a civil liberty, but a private contract that society has over the years turned into an entitlement), you are a bigot, and will be called a bigot until you shut up and go away.

Excellent!

Now that all you newly-minted libertarian absolutists have won your battle, you’ll need something to occupy all that energy; you’ll need new targets for they keen-eyed intellectual nimbleness you’ve developed over the past 18 months of shouting over your opponents that they are bigots.

There is a small minority of Minnesotans who, operating from a racist, sexist, paternalistic, authoritarian notion of the social order, have been working to systematically working to deny Minnesotans of a vital civil right that is not only enshrined in the constitution but one that we were all born with an instinct to practice, one every bit as powerful as the instinct to procreate, and much stronger than the urge to mate – self-defense.

These bigots – whose intellectual lineage traces back to the slave-owners’ desire to neutralize his property – want to force you to deny how you’re born.

So I urge you to join my new group, “Minnesotans United For All Liberties”, and help drive bigotry from our state.

Will you join?

Or are you a bigot?

(Written with a nod to Dave Thul, whose wisecrack sent me off to write this…)

Joe Doakes from Como Park writes:

Is it morally wrong for a company to take advantage of school boards by selling them Bulletproof Whiteboards that are impractical if not outright dangerous?

Joe Doakes

Como Park

He’s talking about this little number here:

…which, I have to admit, I thought was  hoax.  Between the cop who looked like he was doing a bit on Reno 911, to the notion of confronting violence with an hand-held shield – an idea the real world gave up during the Renaissance, I thought it was maybe a Daily Show spoof mocking people who think it’s possible to stand up to shooters, when I saw the video of it being rolled out at Rokori high school, west of the Twin Cities.

It’s apparently not:

You’ll notice that an 18″x20″ whiteboard will only cover part of the head and torso of even a relatively petite teacher like the one in the photo. An active shooter would have no trouble at all shooting over, under, or around the armor, easily killing the person holding the armor with any firearm.

From the manufacturer’s website.

In the bizarre and unlikely event that an active shooter didn’t just simply shoot around the whiteboard, there is an apparent assumption that a teacher or administrator holding the armor would be capable of retaining it as it is struck by the impact of a bullet or a shotgun blast. Do we really expect that an average teacher or administrator is going to be able to handle the concussive force of a bullet and to retain the whiteboard in a defensible position?

It is far more likely the board would simply be shot out of their hands or the teacher knocked down with the first or second shot, if the shooter doesn’t simply opt to shoot around the 18″x20″ panel. If a shooter armed with a shotgun loaded with slugs or buckshot were to fire at close range against the whiteboard, there is the distinct possibility that the whiteboard would be ripped from the defending teacher’s hands and turned into an injury-producing projectile itself.

Then, there is the problem of the armor not actually being bulletproof.

As noted on the Hardwire LLC website, the armor is rated NIJ 3A, which will in carefully controlled conditions stop a majority of pistol bullets and shotgun blasts. However, this armor class will not stop intermediate-caliber rifle rounds as small as .223 Remington, much less have the desired effect on more substantial rifle rounds.

The whiteboard concept, allegedly inspired by the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT, would not have stopped or even slowed down the shooter in that instance. He was armed with a rifle chambered in .223 Remington that would have sliced through the armor.

It’s a risible idea – another example of “security theatre”.

As John Edwards used to say, there are two Americas when it comes to dealing with mass shooters in schools; the not-serious America, which yaps about lockdowns and “ballistic blankets” and hand-held kevlar whiteboards and everything but the only thing we currently know that stops active shooters – a person resisting with lethal force – and serious America, which is confronting the ugly reality of mass shooters with the sobering reality that once the shooting starts, armed resistance is the only answer.

Crime in general – especially crimes committed with guns – is down over the past 20 years.

Not just down.  Down drastically.  As in “the kind of thing that should be provoking celebrations in the streets”.

And yet Americans think crime is rising (emphasis added):

The number of gun killings dropped 39% between 1993 and 2011, the Bureau of Justice Statistics reported in a separate report released Tuesday. Gun crimes that weren’t fatal fell by 69%. However, guns still remain the most common murder weapon in the United States, the report noted. Between 1993 and 2011, more than two out of three murders in the U.S. were carried out with guns, the Bureau of Justice Statistics found.

But is the word getting out? 

Despite the remarkable drop in gun crime, only 12% of Americans surveyed said gun crime had declined compared with two decades ago, according to Pew, which surveyed more than 900 adults this spring. Twenty-six percent said it had stayed the same, and 56% thought it had increased.

And how does that happen?

It’s unclear whether media coverage is driving the misconception that such violence is up. The mass shootings in Newtown, Conn., and Aurora, Colo., were among the news stories most closely watched by Americans last year, Pew found. Crime has also been a growing focus for national newscasts and morning network shows in the past five years but has become less common on local television news.

There’s nothing “unclear” about it.

On a non-partisan level of cynicism – crime makes for ratings.  If it bleeds, it not only leads – it sells papers and gets people to tune in.

The fact that the “guns are out of control” narrative supports the Administration for which the mainstream media serve as a Praetorian Guard?  Two hits for the price of one.

Joe Doakes emails:

Pointing this out is, without a doubt, racisssss

Click the image to go to the original article.

Joe Doakes

The article from which the map came notes that Democrats are busily trying to recruit stolid pro-gun candidates in red states, even as they work to try to attack the Second Amendment at the national level.

The answer? Maybe ban guns in the hands of Democrats?

Nah.  Maybe Democrats need to realize not only that their party are hypocrites on this issue (in Minnesota and nationwide), but that guns are the least of the issues where that’s true.

As I noted about a week back, being a Second Amendment activist for any length of time – I started in the late eighties – is a little like being Bill Murray’s character in Groundhog Day; every time the argument cycles, you wind up answering exactly the same questions.  Over and over and over.

Some of the questions -“aren’t you compensating for something?” – are stupid conceits.  Some – “isn’t a gun in the home many times more dangerous to the owner or people he knows than to criminals?”, or “wasn’t the Second Amendment put in place to protect slave holders?” – are well-worn, long-debunked tropes that keep coming back, just like the villain in the last two minutes of a monster movie.

And others?  Well, despite both sides’ oversimplifications, they keep coming back because the Second Amendment is a complex issue, full of historical, linguistic and legal nuance.

Notice I said “complex”.  Not “inscrutable”.  Because it’s Groundhog Day, and everything, including answering nearly all the questions, has happened before.  Maybe several times.

Eric Black – one of the phalanx of deans of Minnesota political journalism – wrote a series a few weeks back at the MinnPost (which is the recent recipient of a big grant from the Joyce Foundation, an anti-gun group that lavishly funds anti-gun astroturf groups around the country).  The first of the three parts, “The Second Amendment is a Mess“, came out probably three weeks ago.

Confederate soldiers. With guns. Be afraid; your betters have declared that the Constitution is all about slavery.  Except the First Amendment, and of course the emanations of penumbras that give us abortion.  But I digress.  Prejudicial? Do you think?  The MinnPost ran this in a piece about the Second Amendment, and I’m never going to let them live it down.

In stating the case that the Amendment is “a mess”, Black writes:

…the interpretation of any law must start with the actual language of the law as enacted. So, for today, let’s just put the text of the Second Amendment under the microscope. Here is its full text:

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.

It’s a marvelously unclear statement, to modern sensibilities – and yet for some reason it defined a policy, more or less, through nearly 200 years.  Until the 1960s, nobody really questioned that the “…right of the people” in the Amendment meant anything different than “of the people” meant in the First, Third or Tenth Amendments.

We’ll come back to that.  I’ll return to Eric Black…

…while noting that I’m getting that feeling Bill Murray had during the last three-quarters of Groundhog Day; it’s deja vu:

It’s a disaster. Seriously. Here’s just a sample of problems it presents.

What’s a militia? If you aren’t in a militia, does this have anything to do with you? Or perhaps (and this is roughly the current Supreme Court interpretation) what if “militia” is just an 18th century word for all the able-bodied males in a state who had better have access to arms in case their state needs them to secure its freedom even though they might not actually “belong” to what we 21st century-types would recognize as a militia, like a National Guard unit that you actually joined and were trained by and that actually has a command structure.

A fair point…

But if “militia” doesn’t refer to an organized group, what’s “well-regulated” doing in there? Who gets to decide whether the (actual or theoretical) militia you are in is well-enough-regulated to trigger (no pun intended) whatever impact the militia clause has? Who is doing the regulating? The state? The United States? The (non-existent but theoretical) organization of all the gun-owners in the state acting as self-regulators?

…and a vexing one.

Indeed, Black’s series seems to focus on three allegations about the Second Amendment:

1. It’s linguistically and legally inscrutable
2. It’s confusing
3. In an era where the US has a standing military, it’s obsolete.

But the first two were rendered null and void nearly a generation ago.    And the third exhibits a myopia about history, to say nothing of the Constitution, that needs to be actively fought.

But none of them are new. Indeed, it’s been nearly 20 years since the first two points were put out to pasture among people who are serious about the issue of the Second Amendment.

As to the third?  Stay tuned.

We’ll come back to that on Thursday.

One of the more comical moments in this past winter’s debates at the capitol over the various gun grab bills was when Representative Heather Martens, introducing her bill copied and pasted from Andrew Cuomo’s magazine ban bill, informed a crowd full of experienced shooters that (I’m paraphrasing closely here):

Nobody needs more than seven rounds for self-defense.  Experts say the Colt .45 is the best gun for self-defense, and it holds seven rounds

Hopefully the Colt marque will survive Rep. Martens’ endorsement.  The Colt 1911 is indeed a fine self-defense gun.  It’s also a hard gun for casual self-defense shooters to master; it’s big, and heavy, and it’s a single action piece with three safeties, any one of which the owner may bobble in the heat of the moment.  And – this is more important – it was designed to be used by guys in an army; when the lieutenant fires his seventh shot, he’ll have other guys in the platoon to cover him while he reloads.

But that’s getting ahead of ourselves.

Joe Doakes sent me this one.   It’s an attempt to answer the question “who really needs more than seven rounds?”

The answer?  Anyone who values survival:

It’s a dramatization, of course – but it reflects reality:

From metropolitan Philadelphia, PA to tiny Wilmer, AL, to North Woodmere, Long Island, NY, to Suitland, MD, and Pine Township, IN, home invaders are nowcommonly showing up in teams of 2-4 violent, armed criminals, willing to murder you and your family to get what the want.

Because self-defense shooting isn’t like the movies.  One hit doesn’t throw the target across the room – in fact if they’re drunk or high or dissociative, it’s entirely possible they won’t know they’ve been hit at all.  There’ve been cases of people walking to ambulances after five, ten or more hits (although they may have bled out before too long).

At any rate – when anyone, whether Rep. Martens or Governor Cuomo, tells you “seven rounds is all you need!”, just remember; they got that the same place they’re going to get yesterday’s dinner after the press conference.

To:  Speaker of the House Thissen
From:  Mitch Berg, Uppity Peasant
Re:  Vote NOW!  For the Children!

Speaker Thissen,

You’re taking a lot of flak for pulling Rep. Paymar’s gun grab bill from the agenda.

Representative Paymar

You’re getting the flak from the usual crowd; astroturf checkbook advocacy groups whose executives are also their entire membership; “faith” groups of the type PJ O’Rourke once described as “having faith the same way some people have halitosis”, the smug preening “faith” of the church that has adopted government as a sort of Executive Assistant to God.

A group of anti-gun zealots.  They’re frowning because someone – I bet it was the second guy from the right, in the glasses – forgot to invite anyone that wasn’t a white, Volvo-diving, NPR-listening, alpaca-wearing pre-1970 Saint Olaf graduate.  Courtesy of the Joyce-Foundation-supported MinnPost.

The Minnesota Gun Violence Prevention Coalition, which encompasses the main people and organizations working for firearm regulation in Minnesota, staged a rally/press conference on Friday to demand Thissen allow the measure to come up for a vote.

 “It seems to me that Speaker Thissen is trying to protect the caucus,” said Sami Rahamim, whose father, Reuven Rahamim, was killed in the Accent Signage shooting last year.

Rahamim posed a tough question for Thissen and the rural Democrats who tanked the gun-control bill: Does the DFL House caucus need protecting, or “hardworking citizens like my father?”

I know – the Accent Signage shooting both takes attention away from the fact that violent crime (outside North Minneapolis) has been in free fall for 20 years.  And the anti-gunners are using Rahamim and the searing images of that horrible shooting to distract from the fact that nothing in any of the bills that the DFL has been pushing would have prevented the Accent shooting in any way whatsoever – that, indeed, the only thing that might have would have been a guy in the plant with a gun and the will to resist, whether a guard or just a regular schnook with a carry permit.

But never mind that, Speaker Thissen; the real point is coming up:

Advocates for more regulations stressed that polling shows the public supports such measures as universal background checks, which would regulate the private sale of firearms at gun shows and over the Internet, among other avenues.

That’s right, Speaker Thissen.  Ignore your lying eyes, which showed you Greater Minnesota hates your bill.  Ignore the polls that show support for your bills was an uninformed mile wide and an inch deep (gun control is a vital issue to 4% of the voters); never mind the historical fact that the last time the MNDFL crusaded against the law-abiding citizen’s right to keep and bear arms, you lost the House.

But no.  The people who carried the water

 “With the will of the majority behind us, we believed our state would pass a universal background check bill” this session, said Jane Kay, of Moms Demand Action [heh heh] for Gun Sense in America. “That has all been swept aside.”

Heather Martens [DFL Rep. HD 66A], executive director of Protect Minnesota, which lobbied lawmakers extensively on the issue, said Thissen should bring the measure up for a vote, even if it is doomed to fail.

“I think he has a responsibility to reconsider that decision,” she said.

And for once, notwithstanding the fact that she has not uttered one substantive word of truth in her public life, I agree with Representative Martens.

You need to bring this to a floor vote, Speaker Thissen.  And you need to do it immediately.    Because it’s the right thing to do.  Do it for the children.  You owe it to them.

And you need to bust some knuckles in your caucus to make sure they vote the party line too.   Get everyone in the DFL caucus to vote the Metrocrat conscience, and do it this week.  None of this “voting their constituency” BS;  make sure Joe Radinovich and Zac Dorhold and Steve Howe vote the most enthusiastic “yea” they can manage.

And smile for the cameras when you do.  Thanks.

That is all.

It’s time we focus on the real victims here.

Hollywood, after donating millions to get Bloomberg and Andrew Cuomo into office, is bitching about the scope of New York’s gun grab law:

The sweeping gun control measure signed by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and hailed by Democratic leaders has a surprising critic: Hollywood.

 

Officials in the movie and television industry say the new laws could prevent them from using the lifelike assault weapons and high-capacity magazines that they have employed in shows like “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” and films like “The Dark Knight Rises.”

For some reason, Hollywood likes to use real firearms when they make their movies glorifying violence (or at least minimizing its consquences:

Industry workers say that they need to use real weapons for verisimilitude, that it would be impractical to try to manufacture fake weapons that could fire blanks, and that the entertainment industry should not be penalized accidentally by a law intended as a response to mass shootings.

Impractical to manufacture?

Tell it to those peddlers on 23rd Street with the “Rolexes”.  I’ll bet they can hook you up with a fake SIG 551 right quick.

Andrew Cuomo, of course, is angering people who supported him very generously:

Mr. Cuomo has gone out of his way to promote the industry’s success; on Monday, he issued one news release to say the state was on track to break its record for the number of television pilots shot in a year, and another to say that “The Amazing Spider-Man 2” would begin production this week in Rochester. The governor has also enjoyed political support from Hollywood: his sole out-of-state fund-raiser as governor was held at the Los Angeles home of an HBO executive.

And here’s the beauty of it all; Cuomo may have cried wolf once too often:

 But some lawmakers, feeling stung by conservative and upstate voters over the gun control law, do not wish to vote on it again, even to make what the industry describes as a technical correction. Gun rights activists, who are challenging the new firearm restrictions in court, have mocked the idea of a so-called Hollywood exception.

¶ “They’re saying, ‘Why are we being held to this standard when Hollywood is getting a pass, and they’re the ones who are promoting the violence?’ ” said Thomas H. King, the president of the New York State Rifle and Pistol Association.

¶ The new laws expand New York’s ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, and beginning next January, they will prohibit the possession of magazines that hold more than 10 rounds of ammunition.

And it’s gonna be hard to keep Mariska Hargitay looking all sleek and fashionable if they have to switch from a Glock to a Colt 1911 or a Ruger Redhawk.

Now that Speaker Thissen has made the eminently sensible move of getting his party out of an issue that is vital to 4% of the voters and deeply unpopular outside the 494/694 beltway – an issue that scuppered the DFL in 2002, indeed – Rep. Michael Paymar has the vapors:

Rep. Michael Paymar, a Democrat from St. Paul who authored the “Gun Violence Prevention Act,” said he was “very disappointed and very angry” that the proposal was no longer moving toward a vote on the House floor. “I think this is the kind of thing that really makes the public cynical about politicians and about the political process,” he said.

That’s right, Rep. Paymar.  You copied and pasted bills from other states, tried to ram them through after doing your damnedest to stifle public feedback, let a paid lobbyist introduce “Rep” Hausman’s bill, tried to jam your bill down on a wave of paid lies…

…in support of a bill that is considered absolutely vital by about 4% of the population, a bill that wouldn’t affect crime at all (which has been dropping faster as more people buy guns), with the aid of your buddies in the media that are perfectly happy to carry your lies without question:

Paymar painting the toenails of Jane Kay of “Moms Demand Action” (heh heh) and Representative Martens immediately after a hearing.

Why would anyone get cynical about that?

Try again next year, Mike.  We’ll be waiting for you.

It was ten years ago yesterday that the Minnesota State Senate passed the Minnesota Personal Protection Act, making Minnesota a “Shall Issue” state.

I was there, back during this blog’s infancy.  I sat in the gallery in the Senate and watched as the Metro DFL did what they always do on Second Amendment issues; lie as fast as they can.  I cringed a little as the Senate Metrocrat DFLers came back from recess theatrically donning flak jackets to express the fear that was really their only message.

That and crushing, embarassing, vindictive provincial ignorance; I cringed more when I tried to talk with the Code Pinkos that showed up.  The Women Who Lunch With Style made quite an impression with the media, who gave them slavish coverage, then as now – but they were embarrassingly ignorant about the law involved‘  No, I do mean ignorant.

And the media was as in the bag for the orcs then as they are today; indeed, today the connection is financial as well as ideological, with the MinnPost being the recipient of big money from the anti-gun-zealot Joyce Foundation .

The Metrocrat orcs predicted blood in the streets; Wes “The Original Lying Sack of Garbage” Skoglund claimed he feared being stalked by “gang-bangers with carry permits”, apparently having access to a list of gang-bangers who had clean criminal records who felt the need to pay $100 and get training to use the guns they already have illegally.

They also predicted maybe 90,000 Minnesotans would get permits eventually.

Today the total is somewhere over 140,000.  And in ten years, there’s been one unjustifiable homicide by a post-2003 carry permit holder, a rate of .036/100,00, as opposed to the state’s rate of around 1.4/100,000; Minnesota carry permittees are roughly 40 times safer than the average Minnesotan.

As in the 39 other shall issue states, the streets didn’t run red with blood.  Indeed, not much happened; nearly no murders, exactly two justifiable self-defense shootings (which are not “good” things, but certainly beat the alternative), this one and this one.

After ten years, the Minnesota Citizens Personal Protection Act’s legacy is this:

• Reduced violence: Minnesota’s murder rate is down nearly half since 2003; violent crime in general, nearly 15%.  That’s not entirely the responsibility of the MPPA – but it’s the exact opposite of what the DFL-Media noise machine warned us about.
• Grassroots Matter:  The battle to pass the MPPA mobilized a huge army that represents a silent majority; people on both sides of the aisle, or no side, who care about human rights and civil liberties enough to get involved in an abstruse issue, and donate to it heavily with time, treasure and energy.  The victory of the MPPA – from no traction at all to victory between 1995 and 2003 – was among the great bits of genuine grassroots politics in Minnesota history.
• The Road Goes On Forever: And remember – always, remember – the way The People, regular workadaddy, hugamommy schlumps with day jobs and mid-size late-model used cars, dwelling far behind the fashion curve and well outside NPR’s target market demos, humiliated the elite of the DFL, Representatives Paymar and Martens and Hausman and Senator Ron “I Went To Harvard” Latz, providing conservatives one of precious few whiffs of victory in a dismal session, splitting the DFL into two, providing one of the most priceless images of the year; a helpless hapless extremist faux-elite metrocrat orc declaring majority to support to a crowd where the good guys outnumbered them 40:1.  Every time.

The troops at GOCRA – helped, this year, by the NRA – won the victory ten years ago, and continue to defend your human right to protect your self, your family, your property and your democracy today.  If you’re not a GOCRA member and you care about protecting your human right of self-defense, please sign up now.

To the orcs?  Keep fearmongering, Representatives Paymar and Hausman.  Keep lying, Representative Martens and County Attorney Backstrom; keep sucking the filthy toes of the heirs of Stalin and Pol Pot, Doug Grow.  We may be mere peasants, but we beat you ten years ago, we humiliated you this year, and we will always beat you.

To the good guys?  Thanks, and happy anniversary.

Wonder why Obama’s gun grab legislation tanked – and, beyond that, why Obama quietly tried to appropriate the “guards in schools” idea for himself?

Because the American public – the part west of the Hudson and east of the Sierra Madre, anyway – is closer to the NRA than they are to Obama:

After the NRA school-guard strategy was roundly denounced as outright crazy by the pundits, — the editors of theNew York Times called it “delusional, almost deranged” — President Obama came out with … aproposal for armed guards in schools. It is no small feat for an out-of-touch, on-the-ropes organization to get the president to basically endorse its signature policy proposal at a time of national debate.

But, then again, it turned out that 55% of Americans supported the NRA proposal. Turns out, it was the people calling it crazy — like the editors of the New York Times— who were out of the mainstream.

Meanwhile, pundits denounced gun-rights activists who said that the right to bear arms is in part a protection against government tyranny. Only a crazed militia type could possibly believe that, right? Except that — go figure — 65% of Americans see gun rights as a protection against tyranny. And only 17% say they disagree. Once again, it’s the critics who appear to be out of the mainstream.

We Second Amendment Human Rights activists have always known this, of course.

We just have to keep coming back and proving it every few years.

And I suspect we always will.