When you’re a conservative, distrust of the media – like most large institutions – is part and parcel of the job.
You probably accept that, for whatever reason – from systemic bias to cultural confirmation bias to being paid off by George Soros – that the media has a comprehensive bias toward the left.
And you notice it on some issues more than others. For example, you notice that anti-gun groups – for example, “Protect Minnesota”, led by Representative Heather Martens (DFL – 66A), a woman who has never, not once, uttered a substantively accurate or true original statement about guns or the Second Amendment – gets breathless, slavish coverage from the Twin Cities media, whose mania for “balance” obscures, in their coverage, the fact that the pro-Second-Amendment movement includes thousands of actual activists, while Martens’ group and the other antis muster…
…well, Martens and about a dozen of her pals.
And it doesn’t take a political rocket scientist (?) to notice that while their groups have virtually no electoral clout, Martens is apparently a big enough cheese among DFLers on Capitol Hill that she gets treated like, well, a Representative herself.
So after the hearings broke up last night, I watched who went where for a bit.
After he got done with the media, Rep. Paymar lit his afterburners and ran for the bleachers to meet Representative Martens and Jane Kay from Action Moms:
Kay, Martens and Paymar, talking about how much clout they have when those Million Moms finally show up. Someday. Honest.
DFL stenographer and former Strib columnist Doug Grow – now with DFL PR shop MinnPost – painted Jane Kay’s toenails:
Grow, Kay
Hey, maybe his story about last night won’t be pre-written!
And at the end of the night, you had pretty much every anti-gun activist in town gathered with the DFL PR coalition:
Grow, Kay, Nick “I’m Not The DFL’s Monkey” Coleman (from “The Uptake”), a staff guy and Martens talking, presumably, about what a bunch of wingnuts their opposition are.
Us gunnies? We had the fun down front:
Second Amendment attorney David Gross mixing it up with an anti who claimed we should “learn our history”, that firearms confiscation had nothing to do with the Holocaust. The anti, by the way, reportedly had walked up to the child of one of the GOCRA members in attendance and said “You’ll grow up to be a better person than your father” at a hearing last week. These people ooze class, don’t they?
Jane Kay is the leader of “Moms Demand Action”, which is what they renamed the “Million Mom March” after they realized they actually had about two members in Minnesota. While more objectively accurate – it might be better still to call it “Mom Demands Action” – I’m not sure if they considered that the name sounds a little like a made-for-Cinemax movie.
I’m sure she’s a perfectly lovely human being and all. But the contempt she feels for those who disagree with her is emblematic of the intellectual entitlement the anti-gun crowd brings to the table.
She tweeted this (from a protected account, naturally) last night:
She seems to be of the opinion that you can either care about the Constitution or children, but not both.
Of course, Ms. Kay, I own guns precisely because I care about my children – enough to defend them in some meaningful way. And because protecting them – and eventually, teaching them to defend themselves and, God willing and yet heaven forfend, my grandchildren, is one of the paramount duties a parent has.
I’d love to discuss this with Ms. Kay. But it’s hard to get past the air of invincible condescension.
I went to the House Public Safety Finance committee hearings on the Paymar and Lesch gun bills last night.
More on the event itself a little later.
But I thought this bit was interesting.
The hearings were scheduled for 5:30. At around 4:45, House staff started passing out copies of an amendment that Paymar reportedly planned to propose for the bill. Here’s the link to the amendment. Paymar – the committee chair – waived the Legislature’s new 24 hour waiting period on amendments to get it in for the hearings. He also passed the word that no public testimony would be taken.
Recap: 45 minutes before the committee hearings – which took place at 5:30PM on March 21 – the DFL committee chair distributed an amendment that fundamentally changed the tenor of Rep. Lesch’s bill.
Now take a look if you will at the time-stamp on the file. I circled it, so that even I can’t miss it:
9PM the night before. That’s right around 20 hours.
So I have a few questions:
Rules, Apparently, Are For Peasants: From the House permanent rules, section 6.22:
6.22 PUBLIC TESTIMONY. Public testimony from proponents and opponents must be allowed on every bill or resolution before a standing committee, division or subcommittee of the House.
Paymar’s amendment substantially changed Lesch’s bill, by adding a niggling background check restriction to a bill that largely focused on reporting information and sentencing criminals.
How does this not rate public testimony?
Ethics Are What The DFL Says TheyAre:Paymar waived his party’s own rule on the waiting period for amendments to jam down a fundamentally bill-changing amendment, sitting on it for nearly a day after reneging on his “promise” to Rep. Hilstrom before dumping it outside the hearing room 45 minutes before the hearing.
If only the ethics committee could hear about it.
If Only We Had An Institution, Full Of Highly-Trained People With Years Of Experience Asking Questions And Who’ve Convinced Themselves That They Are A Monastic Elite Apart From Society With A Mission Of Keeping Institutions On The Straight And Narrow. Perhaps With Printing Presses And Transmitters: More on this later.
Michael Paymar is going to attempt to jam down amendments wrecking perfectly good bills – like Hilstrom’s and, to an extent, Lesch’s – which are supported by a bipartisan majority of the House. He’s going to do it because the DFL’s lotus-eating metrocrat pandits find guns in the hands of the plebeians distasteful.
For a decade, I referred to former longtime Minneapolis machine senator Wes Skoglund by the sobriquet “Lying Sack of Garbage”. The reason was simple; every time he opened his mouth on the subject of firearms and the Second Amendment, he lied. Every. Single. Time.
Skoglund left office some years back, apparently out of fear that carry permit holders from the Crips were stalking him. And for the years since then, Representative Heather Martens has had to carry the load of lying about gun owners, firearms and the Second Amendment, during what were the lean years for the gun-grabbing orc movement.
But it’s a new day for the DFL, and a new leader has stepped up. Michael Paymar is everything Skoglund used to be.
Only a few hours earlier, Paymar reached an agreement with a fellow committee member, Rep. Debra Hilstrom, DFL-Brooklyn Center, that gutted his universal background checks bill. In exchange, Hilstrom agreed to a bill that would extend background checks to private sales made at gun shows — but not to other private sales, such as those made over the internet or among neighbors or friends.
Paymar said at that time that the agreement kills universal background checks for all private sales, but that closing the “gun show loophole” was a major step forward.
On Wednesday he said, “The agreement we had with the Speaker is that Rep. Hilstrom would agree to the gun show loophole language, and that the Speaker would allow a vote on the House floor.” But once that more limited bill reaches the floor, Paymar said, an amendment will likely be offered to re-insert universal background checks.
“I refuse to let the Legislature take a walk on this thing,” Paymar said. “I refuse to let the leadership not be accountable for a bill not coming to the floor.” He added, “I can’t believe we’d walk away from the Legislative session and not have a vote on it, up or down.”
Rep. Tony Cornish, R-Vernon Center, a member of Paymar’s committee and a leading advocate for gun-owners rights, accused Paymar of “trickery and deceit.” He said Paymar assured members Tuesday night that universal checks were dead.
“And now he’s overtly admitting, that was just for committee,” Cornish said. “I think he’s going to lose a lot of DFL support.”
Let’s hope so.
I’ll quote Paymar from the Strib piece again:
“I’m not giving up on this,” Paymar said. Once a bill comes to the floor, he said, “I am guaranteed that someone will offer an amendment that will offer each member, Democrat and Republican, the chance to vote on this issue. I want people to take a stand on this issue, up or down.”
So do I. I want to see every Martha Forging DFLer put their vote on the line on that amendment. Oh, my, yes. I surely do.
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails in re a Pioneer Press piece on last nights’ House Public Safety Committee hearings and the, er, standard of logic on the DFL side:
“If we don’t believe that criminal laws deter people, than I don’t know what purpose all of you exist for here in this room. Because clearly, people do abide by laws,” [Minnesota Police and Peace Officers Association boss Dennis] Flaherty said. “And this notion that if we pass this, criminals won’t by abide by it, well that could be said about everything from speeding to virtually every crime you create here in this room.”
Then where is the need for this law? Let’s outlaw gun crimes and let anyone have a gun and just be lawful.
And we can outlaw poverty and ignorance too. And bad breath.
Until you admit the reality that some people DO NOT follow the law, and identify who those people are, you can’t craft a solution to prevent those people from committing gun crimes. Democrats are still in denial. Flaherty is still a moron.
Joe Doakes
Como Park
Flaherty is doing his job – shilling the line of his organization, which is itself a DFL-controlled pressure group as much as a “union”.
I went to the Capitol last night for the House Public Safety Finance Committee hearings on Michael Paymar’s “HF 237”, better known as “The Bad Gun Bill”, a bill rife with nannystate abuse-fodder.
The rest of the story? It’s got a lot of photos, and I don’t want the entire blog to load like a dog, so the rest of the story is after the jump.
Tomorrow (Tuesday, March 19) at 10 a.m., the House Public Safety Committee will hear and vote of HF237, Rep, Paymar’s Punish Gun Owners Act.
We need to show up in large numbers to tell the House members to REJECT the infringing bill and instead hold a vote on Rep. Hilstrom’s Criminal Control bill, HF1325.
Please show up as early as possible for good seats, and wear a maroon shirt (or your GOCRA shirt, if you have one!)
I can’t make it, but if you’re anywhere near the Capitol I certainly hope you can. And make sure you join GOCRA – the single most effective advocate in Minnesota for the law-abiding gun owner, and perhaps one of the most powerful grass-roots political organizations in the state.
SCENE: MITCH is out for drinks with his old friends Inge “Lucky” CARROLL, meme-buffer for the Alliance for a Better Minnesota, and Moonbeam BIRKENSTOCK, spokesbeing for Citizens4Luv, a left-leaning non-profit, and Avery LIBRELLE, progressive activist without opr.
CARROLL: (With three empty Mojito glasses and a full one in front of her) We need to do something about school massacres.
BIRKENSTOCK: Yes (he says, fanning face with a folded piece of campaign literature), we have to dooooooooooooooo something.
MITCH: Well, yeah, but “we have to do something” has been the motivation for an endless cavalcade of stupidity leading to a boundless trove of misery over the years. And let’s be honest; violent crime has been plummeting, and law-abiding gun owners are vastly less likely to commit any kind of crime than the general public.
LIBRELLE: Don’t bother us with details. We have to ban large AR15 clip bullets and assault handguns!
BIRKENSTOCK: Yes!
MITCH: Right, right, got that. So – what do you think about teachers?
BIRKENSTOCK: They are the absolute salt of the earth.
MITCH: Elaborate please?
BIRKENSTOCK: They are not mere professionals. They are like clergy, drawn to a higher calling, imparting knowledge and skills and good citizenship to our next generation.
CARROLL: That’s right. Teachers are a noble lot, a breed apart, drawn to an often thankless calling, working for 30 year careers at mere middle-class wages before retiring in their mid-fifties, doing one of the most put-upon jobs there is; trying to turn the illiterate children of Minnesota’s stupid and ignorant parents – who are the real problem with our education system – into good citizens.
LIBRELLE: Hear hear.
MITCH: So all those stories about teachers who diddle their students…
CARROLL: Oh, for crying out loud. That’s a teeeensy, tiny minority…
BIRKENSTOCK: …an almost insignificantly tiny one at that…
CARROLL: …of people in the profession.
MITCH: Right. So we shouldn’t tar and feather a larger, generally responsible group because of the misdeeds of a relatively small group of miscreants?
CARROLL: That would be the depth of stupidity.
LIBRELLE: No kidding. Bigot.
MITCH: Gotcha. So – just to sum up; teachers are, statistically, good people, utterly trustworthy to be watching over your children?
CARROLL: Absolutely.
LIBRELLE: Unimpeachable.
BIRKENSTOCK: Beyond a doubt.
MITCH: Good. So – what do you think about South Dakota’s decision to allow teachers with carry permits, who’ve passed background checks and skills tests and are, thus, statistically 2-3 orders of magnitude safer than the general public, to carry their concealed firearms at school, in the interest of defending their charges from unforeseen violent crime?
CARROLL: That’s just crazy!
BIRKENSTOCK: Teachers aren’t competent to do that.
LIBRELLE: If you let teachers carry guns, someday a teacher will shoot a classroom full of their kids!
CARROLL: Teachers just can’t be trusted with that kind of power.
Death came to me the other day as I was shopping for crackers.
No, not in the whole black robe and scythe get-up. In fact, he looked a little bit like a Ryan Winker speech sounds.
But I digress. We started talking.
DEATH: OK, so how about “death”? Whatdya think?
ME: Well, I’ll choose life, if I have any say in the matter.
DEATH: Right, right. No problem. I’m all about the “win-win” – well, as long as I’m not walking around in the robes, naturally.
ME: Naturally.
DEATH: So how about a compromise. We take “death” off the table, and settle for a concussion and a toxic intestinal infection?
ME: Er…that’s not much of a compromise…
———-
This past week and a half, Representatives Paymar and Martens Hausman introduced stupid, oppressive, constitutionally likely-dodgy gun grab bills. Think “death”.
In response, Representative Hilstrom and Senator Ortman filed good gun bills – bills that ratchet up the consequences for mis-using firearms. Think “life”.
Latz’ bill would take most of the provisions of the Hilstrom/Hortman bill, and plop in all of the worst features of the Paymar/Hausman/Stalin gun grab bills.
According to GOCRA, the “compromise” bill would bring us:
Universal Registration:
These bills would require universal registration of pistols and sporting rifles, implemented through a “universal” background check, — twice: The bills would require every sale of such guns to go through a licensed dealer, who would charge $25 per transfer. These transfers would still require a permit to purchase, for which the House bill would charge you another $25 annually.
Rights Delayed
The bills extend the time that sheriffs and police have to process a purchase permit from five to seven business days, and allow the law enforcement official to fingerprint the applicant and extend the deadline to 30 days.
Easier Carry Permit Denials
The bad bills would allow sheriffs the judgement to deny a carry permit on the basis of a subjective “likelihood” that the applicant was dangerous.
More Difficult Carry Permit Appeals
The bad bills positively encourage abusive denials: they remove the sheriffs’ obligation to pay an applicant’s legal fees when a permit denial is overturned — a safeguard that has kept sheriffs departments honest, and bogus denials fairly low, for almost 10 years. The Sheriff’s Association has not asked for this unfair reversal of law.
The bad bills also lower the sheriffs’ standard of proof of danger to self or other others from “clear and convincing evidence” to the mere “preponderance of the evidence.”
Due Process Protections Gutted
The bad bills would remove legal protections against losing your firearm rights. Currently, before you lose your right to own a firearm, you must be convicted or committed by a court. Under the new bill, any involuntary hospitalization, even overnight, would disqualify you from owning guns indefinitely.
Making The Law Abiding Into Convicts
The bad bills set a very low standard of proof for conviction of serious gun crimes, using the phrase “knows or has reason to believe” to convict sellers who reports a gun stolen, or who sell a gun to a person who later commits a crime.
More Difficult Civil Rights Restoration
The bad bills increase the difficulty and expense for a person who has paid their debt to society to regain their civil rights.
Intersting how the DFL wants felons to be able to vote while they’re still in jail, but never have a chance of getting their Second Amendment rights back.
Hearings Tonight!
The Senate is holding hearings on both the Good Gun Bill and Latz’ bill – I’ll call it The Polished Turd, since that’s about what it is – tonight. Hope you can make it.
And keep on lighting up the phones at the Capitol, especially for members of the House and Senate committees involved. Sources at the Capitol tell me your efforts are making a difference. It’s not even close; pro-Second Amendment traffic from Real Americans is crushing commentary from nannystate orcs. This needs to continue, and accelerate.
Earlier today, I urged the Senate GOP to get up and get behind Rep. Deb Hilstrom’s gun bill, which I call “The Good Gun Bill”.
About an hour ago, Senator Julianne Ortman introduced a companion bill in the Senate (SF 1359).
The bill has the same objectives as Hilstrom’s bill in the House:
Cracks down on “Straw Purchases”
Improves the state’s data reporting to its own background checks and the Feds’ “NICS” system.
Improves Reporting of court records showing ineligibility to own guns due to mental health reasons – and creates the state’s first process for people to get their rights restored.
Clamps down on felons and repeat criminals who use guns to commit violent crimes.
And it does all this without addressing, much less infringing, the rights of the law-abiding gun owner.
My opinion – and it’s just my opinion? The GOP needs to get behind this. A lot of legislators – including a few outstate DFLers – have put a lot on the line to defy their party’s Metrocrat inner circle. In this case, DFL Senators Lyle Koenen, Kent Eken, Dan Sparks, Tom Saxhaug and LeRoy Stumpf have gone against the Metrocrats. This is a good thing (and having David Hann, Senator Warren Limmer, Senator David Osmek, Senator DaveThompson, Senator Jeremy Miller, Senator Julie Rosen, Senator David Brown, SenatorBranden Petersen, Senator Dan Hall, Senator David Senjem, Senator Roger Chamberlain,Senator Mary Kiffmeyer, Senator Bill Weber, Senator Eric Pratt, Senator Michelle Benson,and Senator Paul Gazelka on board isn’t chicken feed).
The Sheriff’s Association, likewise, has reversed its usual behavior, and is supporting the law-abiding gun owner; this behavior needs to be reinforced with support and success.
The Good Gun Bill is good politics. The GOP in the legislature needs to do this.
If politics were easy, everyone would be doing it.
If Second Amendment Human Rights politics were easy, Andrew Cuomo would be a poli sci professor at Lackawanna Community College.
After last week’s introduction of DFL Rep Deb Hilstrom’s gun bill – I call it the Good Gun Bill, as opposed to the DFL’s raft of gun grab legislation – there’ve been two annoyances; some Second Amendment activists have come to the opinion that it’s just another gun control bill, and some Republican legislators seem stand-offish to it.
Both are mistakes.
It’s Not Even A Compromise – Read the bill. I did. It does what all of us pro-Second Amendment people say gun bills should do; makes life harder for criminals, leave the law-abiding citizen alone.
Some might see Hilstrom’s an urban DFLer, or that the bill is supported by a major law enforcement association, and assume it’s a DFL shill. It’s not.
It increases sentences for gun-related crimes and ties up a loophole in Minnesota’s NICS data reporting that was supposed to have been tied up by the DFL legislature years ago.
That’s pretty much it.
Read the law; there is no stealth gun grab provision written in invisible ink. It’s all right there.
This is a bill that Second Amendment people should support on Second Amendment grounds. It is not an onerous compromise; it is the sort of thing Second Amendment groups have been proposing all along.
Optics – Rumor has it that some Republicans in the Senate are hinky about the bill because they don’t want to be seen to be operating with the DFL.
Let’s think this one through. There are three reasons this is just plain wrong.
For starters; as I noted above, this is a good bill. This is, indeed, the only good gun bill in the Legislature that has any chance of passing.
Second: You neglect the “security mom” voter at your own peril. They are a form of low-information or single-issue voter, all right – and there are a ton of them. And Sandy Hook freaked them out bad. Statistics – like the fact that both violent crime, including murder, including mass murder – are down 40% in 20 years don’t matter to them, and their votes count just as much as yours. They are the ones who bellow “we have to dooooooooooooo something!” after every tragedy.
And here’s a teaching moment; showing the “security moms” that “doing something” can actually be productive, and seizing the messaging on this issue – which is, by the way, one of the very few issues that seems to be breaking the GOP’s way so far this session – is a good thing.
And the fact is, you can not let the DFL come out as the unalloyed good guy on this one; do you want the DFL to be able to go to Greater Minnesota crowing that “WE were the ones with the common sense solutions on guns?” After the Metrocrats’ crimes against democracy last month?
Finally: this is a chance to throw the DFL-enabling media’s “Bipartisanship” slur back in their face. You know as well as I do the DFL only cares about bipartisanship when they’re in the minority – but working this issue, and winning it, gives you an instant hot-button to throw back into Lori Sturdevant and Keri Miller’s faces when they squirt their crocodile tears about “bipartisanship”.
Passing this bill shuts them up, it gives the low-information but not-too-addled voter their catch word, and it gives us a gun bill that actually does something useful.
If the MNGOP drops the ball on this one, it’ll be a very, very bad thing.
Back during the Clinton era, [Baucus] faced a choice: support an assault weapons ban urged by a president from his own party and risk angering constituents who cherish their gun rights, or buck his party. He chose the ban, and nearly lost his Senate seat.
This was in ’94. The media downplays this, giving all credit for the GOP’s electoral turnaround to Gingrich and the “Contract With America”. And as much credit as Gingrich deserves, the gun issue, in the wake of the noxious gun grabbing provisions in the ’94 “Crime Bill” contributed a big chunk to the GOP’s electoral victory.
That was then. This is Montana:
Now, as he begins his campaign for a seventh term, Baucus faces the question again. For weeks, gun foes have sought assurances he would oppose the assault weapons ban. But it was only this past week he said he would oppose it.
That decision alone doesn’t settle the issue for his re-election campaign. His opponents are watching closely, eager to pounce as he navigates a series of other gun control proposals, including an expected call for universal background checks.
Baucus’ predicament is one that a group of Democrats like him in the West and South are facing. They hail from predominantly rural regions of the country where the Second Amendment is cherished and where Republicans routinely win in presidential elections.
This, of course, was part of the story of 1994, nationally.
It was also part of the story in Minnesota in 2002; DFLers in greater Minnesota who followed the gun-grabbing line of the Metrocrat orcs got swept out of office en masse.
Which is one reason so many House DFLers signed on to the Hilstrom bill last week – to deny the GOP a cudgel…
Background: It is a fact that the two places in the United States with the worst rates of firearm crime are…:
The states of the deep, deep South, with their Scots-Irish tradition of casual, clannish violence, honor killings, and so on.
Cities with tight gun controls. Like Chicago, which is more dangerous per capita than Afghanistan these days, at least in terms of gun violence. And if Rahm Emanuel theatrically bans IEDs, five’ll get you ten you start seeing those, too.
Now, when you mention this to gun-control advocates – who are usually urbanites, frequently with much schooling (as distinct from education), and some of whom at least try to go through the motions of an informed and civil debate – many will furrow their brows and intone one or both of two things:
“But wait! There are cities with tight gun controls, like New York and San Francisco, with low gun crime rates!”
“Yes, cities like Chicago and Washington DC have tight gun controls and high crime rates. But the guns that are used to carry out the crime come from places with lax gun laws!”
Zip Guns, Zip Codes: Of course, just as it’s misleading to splotch crime rates across entire states – or states with significant populations, shaddap about Wyoming and the Dakotas – as it is to draw the same conclusions about politics or the economy, it’s equally as misleading to do the same with metro areas. Just as Illinois as a whole is relatively safe (with a murder rate of 5.5 per 100,000, just a little above the national rate of 4.7/100,000), the city of Chicago as whole is modestly less-than-catastrophic, with a 15.9 per 100,000 murder rate; that’s only triple the national rate, double that of Minneapolis, and five times Saint Paul’s murder rate.
And especially true in cities like Chicago and Minneapolis and New Orleans and Baltimore and Atlanta, where you have wide swathes of disparity in income and society. And less so in cities like San Francisco and Manhattan, which have largely become gentrified and too-expensive-for-the-poor, and have managed to export their criminal element to Oakland or Newark.
Balance: To the second point? If Chicago is more dangerous because its criminals are able to get guns from suburban Illinois or and from surrounding states, why aren’t those surrounding counties and cities anywhere nearly as dangerous? A fifth of guns used in crime in Chicago come from Indiana, a state with a crime rate a point lower than Illinois and about a quarter that of Chicago. About 4% come from Wisconsin, a state with a crime rate half that of Illinois (and much of even that concentrated in Milwaukee, whose crime rate is not much better overall than Chicago, and for most of the same reasons) and less than a fifth that of Chicago.
If the guns – and the access to the guns – were the problem, then Montana, North Dakota and Mississippi should have sky-high crime rates too…
…oh, wait: while Montana (2.6/100,000) and North Dakota (1.5/100,000 in 2010) have very low murder rates, Mississippi is at 7/100,000 (with no urban areas making the top list). Not much different than Minneapolis; triple Saint Paul; half of Chicago’s murder rate, even with its Deep South pathologies fully and stereotypicallyundisturbed.
So here’s the question: if access to guns is the problem, why aren’t the places from which Chicago criminals get their guns as overrun with crime as Chicago itself is?
The number of gun-industry firms refusing to do business with government bodies that attack the Second Amendment (like my company) has more than tripled.
Wilson Combat, a custom pistol manufacturer located in Berryville, Arkansas, joined the movement on February 28 stating the following:
“Wilson Combat will no longer provide any products or services to any State Government imposing legislation that infringes on the second amendment rights of its law abiding citizens. This includes any Law Enforcement Department, Law Enforcement Officers, or any State Government Entity or Employee of such an entity. This also applies to any local municipality imposing such infringements.”
Wilson lists the states included on its no sale policy as: California, Hawaii, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, New York, Washington D.C. and The City of Chicago, Illinois.
Fearless Prediction: the Department of Justice will start prosecuting refuseniks on 14th Amendment grounds.
(Note: when I say “fearless prediction”, that means it’s not really a prediction. That means I’m being hyperbolic, while realizing that reality has a way of overtaking my hyperbole more often than not).
I was down at the State Capitol yesterday for a press conference, as Representative Deb Hilstrom (DFL Brooklyn Park) introduced the gun bill/s we talked about yesterday.
The bills, as we noted yesterday, would exert the state to solve actual problems – close gaps in the background check system, add mandatory penalties for using guns in crimes or possessing them illegally…
…y’know. Controversial stuff.
At the presser, I saw a big group of legislators from both chambers and both parties lining up to support Hilstrom’s proposal. Reps, Senators, Democrats, Republicans – it was probably the most bipartisan assembly I’ve seen that wasn’t in the lounge at the Kelly Inn after hours.
Not just legislators; guys in uniform. They weren’t just there for the fun of it – guys in uniform never are. No, they were from the Minnesota Sheriff’s Association.
And I saw media. Oh, lord, did I see media.
And Heather Martens was there, naturally; where there is truth about the Second Amendment, Martens will be there. To lie. And lie and lie and lie (note to the media who bothered to speak to her; she has uttered not one substantial word of truth in her years at the capitol. Ask me).
And the “groups” she represents put out a call for their “membership” to turn out in force to oppose this bill – probably remembering the hundreds of Second Amendment supporters who turned out daily to oppose the DFL’s gun grab bills a few weeks ago.
We’ll come back to them.
One person who was not there was Doug Grow, from the MInnPost.
To be fair, I haven’t seen Grow in person in over 20 years; I might not recognize him.
But judging by the story he wrote about the conference, and the bill itself, even if Grow was there, his story was pre-written, and would have appeared in exactly the same form had Mothra emerged from the Supreme Court chamber shooting flame from wherever Mothra did whatever he did, since I never watched the movie.
Rep. Debra Hilstrom, DFL-Brooklyn Center, has discovered again that there is no comfortable middle ground when the subject is guns.
At noon at the Capitol, Hilstrom, standing with Hennepin County Sheriff Richard Stanek and Rep. Tony Cornish, the gun-toting legislator from Good Thunder, introduced a gun bill that she said “can bring people together’’ on the volatile subject of guns.
“Gun-toting”.
Scare quotes.
No, no bias here.
The Astroturf Consensus
Grow, like most of the Twin Cities mainstream media, labors under the delusion that there’s a large, organized mass of people supporting gun control, and that they were out in force yesterday.
Her words were still echoing in the Capitol when critics, who had hoped for much stronger actions from the Minnesota Legislature, lambasted the effort of Hilstrom and a bipartisan group of 69 other legislators to “close gaps’’ in current state gun law.
“This is just a band-aid over a huge problem,’’ said Jane Kay of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense, an organization formed in the days following the mass shooting of school children in Newtown, Conn.
Only in America can a two-month old pressure group with fewer members than there were legislators standing behind Hilstrom get the breathless adoration of the media. Which is what “Moms Demand Action” and “Protect Minnesota” both are; astroturf checkbook advocacy groups funded by liberal plutocrats with deep pockets – with “membership” numbers in the single digits.
Provided they share the goal of fluffing the left’s withering narrative on gun control.
Of course, Grow wasn’t the only offender; Pat Kessler of Channel 4 asked Hilstrom why the bill included no universal background check which, he asserted, “70% of Minnesotans oppose”.
The correct answer – the polls ask people about background checks without explaining the consequences of those checks as the DFL and Governor Messinger Dayton currently propose them; they will result in a de facto gun registry, which is a necessary first step to universal confiscation.
More on gun-related media polls in another piece soon.
The Pre-Written Story
But Grow himself is the real problem here. His piece, while short on the sort of insight that actually engaging people on both sides of the issue might have given it, is long on evidence that Grow wrote the story long before yesterday’s press conference.
There’s the inflammatory reference to every leftymedia member’s favorite boogyman:
The bill has the support of the National Rifle Association, presumably because it does nothing to require background checks on all gun sales and because it does nothing to restrict sales of military-style weapons or even the quantity of rounds in ammunition magazines.
Well, no.
The bill has the support of gun-rights organizations because instead of wasting time and effort putting niggling restrictions on the rights of the law-abiding that didn’t affect crime in any way the first ten years they were tried, they actually address the real problem; criminals, the insane, the addled, and the holes in the data the state sends to the Feds for the background check system.
(And while the NRA makes a nice, recognizable, stereotyped boogeyman for the lazy propagandist, the NRA actually has very little to do with the day to day heavy lifting of the gun rights movement in Minnesota. It’s the Gun Owners Civil Rights Alliance that turned out 500 or more people a day to attend the gun grab hearings a couple of weeks back. Grow either doesn’t know that, or doesn’t want people to know that. You know where my money is).
More evidence that Grow wrote the story entirely off of DFL and “Protect Minnesota” chanting points?
Despite the fact that it’s a bill that authors hoped would unite people, it seems to be dividing. Yes, there was a mix of Republican and DFL representatives standing with Hilstrom, Cornish and Stanek. But there were no law-enforcement organizations represented at the news conference where the proposal was unveiled.
That’s false.
Here’s the video of the press conference:
See all those guys in uniforms?
Scroll in to 1:12. That’s Sheriff Rich Stanek, Hennepin County Sheriff, speaking on behalf of the Minnesota Sheriff’s Association.
Either Grow is lying, or he wrote the entire story with no knowledge of the facts of the story.
Short On Fact, Long On Jamming Words Into Peoples’ Mouths
Grow follows by saying…:
There also were no DFL senators, though presumably the bill will be as attractive to outstate senators as it appears to be to many outstate DFL representatives.
Grow throws that in there as if it’s a substantive fact related to the bill itself. It’s not. While most outstate legislators no doubt remember the DFL debacle of 2002, it’s also more than plausible Tom Bakk wants to keep his powder dry.
In other words, presence of no DFL senators is a non-factor, unless you’re a low-information reader.
Grow next swerves through fact – and in so doing, undercuts his own premise. I’ll add emphasis:
Rep. Michael Paymar, DFL-St. Paul, and the chairman of the House public safety committee, has indicated he has no desire to have the bill heard by his committee. Paymar is pushing a bill that would require purchasers of guns at flea markets and gun shows to go through background checks.
Yet, given the large number of co-authors with Hilstrom, there likely are ways for the bill to weave its way through the legislative process.
Yes. There are a large number of co-authors; so many they had to submit it not one, not two, but three times to get them all on. Over half of the House is signed on as authors of the bill.
Michael Paymar wants to thwart the will of the representatives of over half of Minnesota’s voters?
Putting Thirty Shots From An AR15 Into A Strawman
Finally, Grow takes his whacks at some of the legislators who’ve violated the DFL’s narrative:
[Representative Tony] Cornish, usually a lightning rod in the gun debate, said he was taking a different role regarding the fate of this bill.
“Several of my statements (in the past) have been controversial,’’ he said. “Today my role is to be a peacemaker.’’
No sooner had he said that than he uttered a statement that raises the hackles of those hoping for stronger gun measures.
“I want to thank the NRA for helping (on the bill),’’ he said. He went on to say that the bill “contains nothing for gun owners to fear.’’
Er, who’s “hackles” got “raised”, here? And why?
Was it the involvement of the NRA? Your dog whistles aren’t our problem.
Or was it the quote about gun owners having nothing to fear? Is that the actual goal, here?
Hilstrom, in her seventh term, refused to talk about her true feelings of the bill. Rather, she kept speaking of the importance of “passing a bill that will solve real problems.’’
She did point out that she never has sought the endorsement of the NRA and that in the past she has received a “C,’’ “D,’’ and “F’’ from the NRA.
OK.
So what?
If she’s doing the right thing – which, for a majority of Minnesotans, is “solving problems”, rather than attacking the law-abiding gun owner – then I don’t care if she’s a life-time “F” rating. And I don’t care about her true feelings; I don’t care if she’s being used as an escape hatch by the DFL to get out of the embarassment of the Paymar/Hausman gun grab bills.
Guess Who!
Finally: I owe the Twin Cities media an apology. I’ve said that Larry Jacobs is the most over-quoted person in the Twin Cities media. And he is. David Schultz is right up there.
But in the “single-issue” category, Heather Martens – “Executive Director” and, near as we can tell, one of less than a half-dozen members of “Protect Minnesota” (and de facto representative of House District 66A) and a woman whose entire body of public assertions is lies, dwarfs them all:
Heather Martens, executive director of Protect Minnesota, derided the bill as “NRA-approved.’’
Boo! Boogeyman! Hiss!
Listen, MinnPost-reading dogs! There’s your whistle!
“Any bill that fails to address the gaping holes in our background check law falls far short of the public’s demand for the right to be safe in our communities,’’ Martens said in a statement.
And there’s another lie. The bill does address the gaping hole that exists in the background check laws.
No, not the misnamed “gun show loophole”, which is another media myth. The real gap is the data that the state isn’t sending to the feds; the Hilstrom bill fixes it.
GOCRA’s Mountain, Grow And Martens’ Molehill
Leaving aside the fact that Grow got pretty much everything in this story wrong – and wrong in a way that suggests not only that he wasn’t at Hilstrom’s press conference but that he wrote the whole thing straight from chanting points long before Hilstrom took to the microphone – the most pernicious thing about Grow’s story is that it tries to create the impression that there’s a genuine battle between two titanically-powerful sides to this debate.
There’s not.
In terms of legislators? A bipartisan sample of over half of the House is on board co-authoring Hilstrom’s bill(s). A thin, runny film of metro-DFL extremists is backing the Paymar/Hausman/Simonson gun grab bills.
In terms of the public? Last month, GOCRA put out a call for people to come to the Capitol. And they did.
No, really:
“Protect Minnesota” and “Moms Demand Action” put out a call yesterday for people to come out and protest against Hilstrom’s bill.
Here they are:
Well, not literally. But no, other than Heather Martens, nobody showed up.
There are literally more DFL legislators co-authoring Hilstrom’s bill than there are members of “Protect Minnesota” and the “Moms Demand Action” put together.
After a month of barbering and nattering about dim-bulb gun-grab bills, there’s a chance at returning to sanity at hand.
Over the noon hour, Representative Deb Hillstrom – a DFLer from Brooklyn Park and a prosecutor by trade – introduced a new bill. And this bill has the potential – unlike all of Hausman, Paymar and Simonson’s vacuous, time-wasting, copied-and-pasted twaddle – to actually do some good.
Hillstrom’s bill treats law-abiding citizens like law-abiding citizens, and punishes criminals for committing crimes.
It’s been submitted three times – one, two and three – although all three are identical. This, according to a second-hand source, is a way to get around the maximum number of authors.
To summarize; the bill:
Facilitates the reporting of criminal and mental health commitment data to the national NICS database (more or less as Tony Cornish’s “Stand Your Ground” bill would have done before Governor Messinger Dayton vetoed it last year. The bill also cleans up the time lag in Minnesota’s reporting of such data.
Creates a mandatory sentence enhancement for violent felons. Many cities in Minnesota have similar laws; Saint Paul has one (although Susan Gaertner pretty much always used it as plea-bargain fodder when she was County Attorney). This would provide a five year sentence for violent felons in possession of firearms; for a second and subsequent offenses, the sentence would be 10 or 15 years, respectively.
Makes false reporting of a gun theft a gross misdemeanor.
Establishes categories of people ineligible to possess pistols or “assault weapons” (and, except for kids under 18, any firearm at all), including people with records of juvenile delinquency (including those who’ve been shunted into pre-trial diversion programs for violent crimes), those who’ve been committed for mental illness or drug abuse, people with regular or gross misdemeanors in the previous three years (including gang crimes, hate crimes, building zip guns, stalking, fourth-degree burglary or rioting), cops with substance abuse issues, people with domestic assaults in the previous three years (or domestic assaults with firearms, ever).
A five year mandatory sentencing enhancement for using a pistol or “assault weapon” in a felony (with 10 and 15 years for repeat offenders).
The bill also provides a due process for people who’ve been civilly committed to get their firearm rights back.
The bill is a huge step in the right direction; it actually punishes criminals, rather than law-abiding citizens (as Paymar, Simonson and Hausman’s bills do).
Rep. Hillstrom – a metro DFLer – is to be complimented for introducing it.
Of course, it needs to get through committee. The members of the Public Safety Finance Committee (names and numbers are below the jump) need to get flooded with phone calls supporting the Hillstrom bill.
No, I mean flooded. And get your representatives, too, whatever side they’re on.
I officially announce the start of a new, awesome business.
Because the market is so really really hot these days, I think I’m going to make it a gun manufacturer.
Our first design will likely be a semi-auto only license-build of the classic Heckler and Koch HK91. I’m going to call it the “Paymar”.
The “Berg Mark 1 Paymar”, a licence-built copy of the HK91.
A great design – like a Gull-Wing Mercedes – is hard to improve on.
And while we have yet to produce our first actual rifle for our showroom on University Avenue (which we got dirt cheap thanks to the light rail construction), we already have a policy; no sales to state or federal governments that pass laws infringing the Second Amendment. Bazinga. Nothing.
And the company outlet store – which, as I envision it, will also have a cash bar and a shooting range -but not in that order? We will have one policy; law-abiding shooters are welcome!
OK, so maybe the business is still a pipe dream – I have yet to assemble my first firearm of any type.
But if you are a shooter friendly store, let us know. And get the sticker.
Have you seen how we swarm the legislature? Imagine that kind of traffic coming through your door.
Just saying.
And if you know any Second Amendment friendly businesses? Pass the word.
After wasting a solid two weeks of the legislature’s time with a raft of gun grab bills that had no business seeing the light of day, the DFL is back at it.
Michael Paymar is pushing a rights-crushing omnibus gun bill so obnoxious it needs to be handled with tongs – a bill that punishes the law-abiding first, and worries about criminals…uh, they’ll get back to you on that.
In the meantime, the House GOP will be announcing an alternative bill later today – one that goes after criminals, and leaves the rights of the law-abiding citizen where they belong.
And call the members of the House Public Safety Finance Committee and tell them that the Paymar bill isn’t fit to wipe the hindquarters of a sick goat on a 100 degree day.
Via GOCRA, here’s the contact info for the committee, along with some commentary on each individual committee member:
Let’s show Rep. Paymar’s that Minnesotans oppose his assault on our rights by defeating his bill in his own committee. Ask them to SAY NO to the Paymar bill (HF237) and SAY YES to the GOCRA-approved alternate bill.
Representative Michael Paymar (DFL) – Chairman 651-296-4199
E-mail: rep.michael.paymar@house.mn You can suggest that Rep. Paymar simply scrap his bill and sign on to the alternate bill.
Representative Paul Rosenthal (DFL) – Vice Chairman
Rep. Rosenthal authored HF294, which would gut the civil rights protections of Minnesota’s Permit to Carry Law by allowing sheriffs to deny permits on the weakest of grounds. Tell him he should be working to punish criminals, not law-abiding citizens.
Thank Rep. Hilstrom for her strong rejection of registration schemes, as well as magazine and rifle bans, and thank her for supporting the alternate bill. (One newspaper has reported that she will be the alternate bill’s chief author!)
Rep. Mullery has been an opponent of gun rights for a long time. Remind him that if we work together, we can improve mental health and conviction reporting, and make our existing laws work better.
Remind Rep. Schoen that as a police officer, he knows who the real bad guys are: they’re not the law-abiding Minnesota gun owners, and they won’t follow new gun control laws any more than they follow the existing ones.
Rep. Simon is a smart, principled lawyer: he knows that the Supreme Court has affirmed the right to keep and bear arms as an individual right. He also knows that stripping due processdoesn’t make us more free or more safe. But you can remind him anyway!
Rep. Simonson is a new representative. Remind him that gun control is DFL Kryptonite: it has cost the House its DFL majority before, and it will again.
Representative Slocum is a co-author on several gun control bills this session. Tell her that focusing on the bad guys, not law-abiding gun owners, is the place to start.
Remind Rep. Uglem that the Second Amendment is not about hunting — it is a fundamental human, civil and Constitutional right, worthy of the strongest protection.
As the investing world celebrates the all time nominal high of an archaically-weighted index of an ever-changing basket of stocks, there is another – this time unprintable asset – that appears in all-time high demand – firearms. Smith & Wesson just released earnings not only with record high revenues but increasing their outlook dramatically for fiscal year 2013.
The surge in ‘background checks’ and sales since the election (and furthermore since the Tragedy in Newtown) continues (+29% YoY) and as SHWC notes “The tragedy in Newtown has understandably inspired an important national discussion about how to cope with violence in our communities – we possess a broad range of products and a highly flexible manufacturing operation. Taken together, these allow us to be highly responsive should the market and/or legislative developments drive a change in sales mix.”
Note to my financial planner, should you happen to be reading this today; I really, Really, Really hope you plunked a ton of my portfolio into S&W, Sturm Ruger and Glock USA when I mentioned it last fall…
I occasionally brag that I can make the gun-grabber case better than most of the gun-grabbers. Then, I can turn around and destroy the case.
Because the closest the gun grabbers ever come to a factual case – as opposed to an emotional one – is when they run down one assortment of numbers or another.
The problem is, they give you the half of the numbers that look bad if they’re completely wrenched out of context.
Power Line’s John Hinderaker notes that the Strib is doing exactly that:
The Minneapolis Star Tribune reported yesterday that the State of Minnesota issued 31,657 permits to carry handguns in 2012, a record number. No surprise there. The Strib puts that number in the context of the current debate over gun control, and concludes with these statistics, presented without comment:
Minnesota’s permit holders have committed at least 1,159 crimes since 2003, including 114 in which a gun was used, according to the BCA.
Wow, sounds like a regular crime wave among gun permit holders! But what do those data actually show? According to the same article, there are now over 125,000 permit holders in Minnesota, or around 2.6% of the over-21 population. So, other things being equal, you would expect them to commit something like 2 to 2 1/2% of all crimes (since a considerable number are committed by persons who are less than 21 years old). In order to put the Strib’s numbers in context, you need to know something about the number of crimes committed in Minnesota.
By the way, I’ve done the same thing with the Violence Policy Center’s numbers on a national level a few years back; putting their numbers (which purported to show a nationwide crime wave among carry permit holders) in full context, showing violent crimes and murders as a percentage of the same crimes in the general population, I showed that carry permittees nationwide were over two orders of magnitude less likely to kill an innocent person than the general public – and that the general public was three orders of magnitude less likely to be wrongfully murdered by a carry permittee than by a regular schmuck. And as I showed last summer, a complete and honest look at Minnesota’s numbers show that Minnesotans are safer still at all levels.
John – an actual lawyer – points out the context that the Strib is buggering:
According to the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension’s numbers, there were at least 146,249 crimes of violence and crimes against property in Minnesota in 2011. (I believe that total is low, if we are trying to get a number for all crimes, since drunk driving, for instance, is not included). Let’s assume, to make the calculation simple, that the number of violent and property crimes has remained constant since 2003; actually, it has fallen somewhat. But using the 2011 rate for the period 2004-2012 yields a total of 1,316,241 crimes. (And you thought Minnesota was a law-abiding state!) Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that over that period of time there have been an average of 50,000 carry permit holders in Minnesota; that would be roughly 1.2% of the over-age 18 population [and 60-65,000 would be more correct]. (Again, that is an average from 2004 through 2012, assuming an average of 50,000 permit holders over that time period.)
So do the math: if permit holders were as law-abiding as the average Minnesota citizen, you would expect them to have committed 1.2% of the 1,316,241 crimes from 2004 through 2012, or a total of a little over 16,300. Which tells us, according to the Strib’s numbers, that non-permit holders are around 15 times as likely to commit a crime as permit holders. Carry permit holders must be the most law-abiding segment of Minnesota’s population, with the possible exception of Sunday School teachers.
And sunday school teachers with carry permits, near as I can tell, have committed no crimes whatsoever.
I believe that since Minnesota enacted its shall-issue law in 2003, two permit holders have been charged with homicides. Over the eight years from 2004 through 2011, there were 807 homicides. Using the same logic employed above, one would expect 1.2%, of these homicides to have been perpetrated by carry permit holders. That would be nine or ten murders, as opposed to two.
Actually, there’s only been one murder we know of in the past ten years carried out with a post-2003 shall-issue permit – a woman who shot her boyfriend in Saint Paul. The shooting took place at the woman’s home, so the permit was irrelevant – but no matter. There’ve been two justifiable homicides.
But let’s say there are two. Two murders in ten years breaks down to .04 murders per 100,000 people per year as a percentage of the population; even among the population of carry permit holders, a murder rate of .4/100,000 per year. The state average is closer to 1.4 per 100,000 per year; in Saint Paul it’s closer to 3/100,000, and Minneapolis has a murder rate of 8.3/100,000. That means a carry permittee.
And as I noted, there’s actually been only one murder committed by a post-2003 permit holder in Minnesota in the past decade.
As Hinderaker notes, the crime rate among permit holders in Minnesota is vanishingly low, provided you look at all the numbers.
Especially the ones that don’t fit the left’s and media’s narrative.
The media practices a little Pauline Kael syndrome on the gun issue in this piece, which notes the shocking conclusion that “women” – meaning in this case “wealthy liberal women from the most liberal city in the United States” – don’t like guns much.
And in so doing, we mark the rise of a new breed of victorians:
Gun violence is the kind of issue, said Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University, “that has real potential to mobilize waves of women voters and waves of office-holders.”
“What’s different here is Newtown. That cut a lot of different ways to a lot of different women.”
Perhaps.
Smart women – smart guys, too – realized that the only real defense against evil with guns is good people with guns.
Dumb women? And men…?
Rep. Jackie Speier, D-Calif., a member of the Congressional Gun Violence Prevention Task Force, is eager to get Congress on the record on gun issues. She supports tighter restrictions.
“If we can force votes on these bills on the floor of the House and the Senate, where everybody has to be on record, it’s going to make it very clear to a huge segment of the population — that being women — of where people stand. And I think that will inform the decisions people make at the ballot box,” said Speier.
Yes, Ms. Speier, by all means get those votes on the record.
Because women are the fastest growing segment in the gun-owning population. Across racial, social, economic and political boundaries, women are buying guns and learning to shoot faster than men are (largely because guys are more likely to have already started).
And maybe in your ofay Bay Area district, a majority of women will snif and vote against the proles with the guns.
East of the Sierras?
The article does, however, cut to the heart of the anti-gun movement:
Behind the scenes, an influential network of female philanthropists based in San Francisco is working to make sure the issue remains prominent, particularly to women.
Shortly after the Newtown shooting, members of the 20-year-old San Francisco-based Women Donors Network began hearing from their 200 members, all of whom donate at least $25,000 a year to progressive causes and individuals and politicians.
Collectively, they contribute $150 million a year to various causes and politicians, the organization says.
And there’s your battle.
The Second Amendment movement is millions of Real Americans who turn out to rallies, testify at hearings, vote for Second Amendment candidates, and above all own guns without incident for their entire lives.
The Orcs? A few obscenely wealthy crones who write big checks to astroturf groups like “Protect Minnesota” and the “Violence Policy Center”.
Did I say “Astroturf?”
Among the women’s organizations at the forefront of the issue is Moms Rising, the 1.1 million-member activist organization co-founded by Berkeley resident Joan Blades.
“Moms Rising” is a reboot of the “Million Mom March”, the group with “1.1 million members” (no doubt anyone that visits the website is counted as a “member”) that can never muster more than three “members” for an event in the Twin Cities.
Gun violence touches every neighborhood, said Moms Rising executive director Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner. Twice in the past year, her children’s private schools in Seattle have been on lockdown because of the threat of a person nearby brandishing a gun.
“We had a national awakening with the (Newtown shooting),” Rowe-Finkbeiner said. “It is something that a lot of women — and men — could relate to.”
And I love the imagery; a bunch of upper-middle-class crones who can write $25,000 checks and whose kids are snuggled into private schools trying to set the agenda for women in Chicago, on ranches in Montana, in North Minneapolis – many of whom are just starting to realize that gun bans don’t save people; people do.
The Strib’s longtime outdoor writer Dennis Anderson wrote an excellent profile of state representative Tony Cornish over the weekend. Cornish, with the departure of Pat Pariseau and Linda Boudreaux from the Legislature, has taken on the role of key defender of the Second Amendment in the Legislature:
In St. Paul, however, where he’s the face of gun rights at the Capitol, he’s sometimes less popular, even downright loathed, particularly this legislative session, when a minor blizzard of gun bills has been introduced.
Not to worry, Cornish says confidently, he and other Republicans have enough votes, along with those from rural DFLers, to block any proposals that gun-rights advocates oppose.
“They won’t pass,” he said.
A one-time city cop, deputy sheriff, conservation officer, police chief and, yes — speaking of big guns — Army tank commander, Cornish legally packs what he advocates, either a .40 caliber Glock on his hip — if he’s wearing a sport coat — or a Smith & Wesson in his pocket.
“After being shot at a couple of times and receiving a number of death threats, and never knowing whether I might come across someone I arrested years ago,” he said. “Well, I guess after 36 years as a peace officer, I’d just feel bare without it.”
Plain-speaking, Cornish seems at times a throwback among legislators, reminiscent, in his forthrightness, of Charlie Berg, the onetime DFLer, onetime Republican, mostly independent lawmaker from Chokio in west-central Minnesota.
Sometimes underestimated, in that respect he’s also not unlike the outwardly wacky but ultimately effective retired Sen. Bob Lessard of International Falls.
Of course, every time the “G” word pops up in the Twin Cities mainstream media, the media beat a path to the door of Heather Martens, “Executive Director” (also likely only actual member) of “Protect Minnesota”. Maybe the editors insist, and she’s the only anti-gun person in their collective rolodex.
The media seems to be unaware of the simple fact that every single substantive declaration about the gun issue, that Heather Martens has ever made, beyond the gurgitation of the odd statistic, has been a lie.
And Dennis Anderson’s piece, like every piece of coverage Martens has ever gotten in her misbegotten public life, is more of the same; I’ll add emphasis to the most dissociative of Martens’ lies:
” [Cornish says the] …background-check system needs to be improved, but it’s complicated and it will cost money,” he said. “If we mandate upgrades to the system, we’ll have to get it right, and it’s going to cost money.”
Heather Martens of Protect Minnesota, a group that would like to see gun laws tightened, wants Cornish to go further.
“We just don’t agree with him, and we don’t think he operates in good faith,” Martens said. “He believes guns are an unlimited right, no matter how many people die. We believe gun deaths can be prevented and that prevention is warranted.”
Martens is ranting – and she’s counting on the public to be both stupid and gullible too.
Cornish, like every single significant pro-Second-Amendment figure, anywhere, believes that there are limits: criminals, the insane, the chemically-addled, at a fair and clear statutory point, must not get guns. People who use guns to commit crimes must be punished. People who get carry permits must know the laws and know how to handle their guns without hurting themselves or others.
Those are limits. Those are gun controls that, unlike anything Heather Martens says (or hands off to the legislature), actually work.
Cornish disagrees. Background checks on gun sales between private parties? “No.” Restrictions on modern sporting arms, or what commonly are called assault-style rifles of the kind he uses to hunt coyotes? “No.” Prohibition of high-capacity magazines? “No.”
“None of those will reduce crime,” he said. “And none of those bills will pass. We’ve got the votes to block them.”
Thank God for Tony Cornish.
And in the Almighty’s own way, thank God for Heather Martens. The harsh, incoherently-gabbling, upper-middle-class elitist pathological liar symbolizes the myopia and hypocrisy of the gun control control movement as capably as anyone since Carl Rowan.
