As we noted on Tuesday, the Strib’s coverage of the fact that over 100,000 Minnesotans have carry permits (six weeks later than it was covered in this space) had good news and bad news.

The good news?  Larry Oakes, the Strib reporter, did a decent job of finding some sources on the pro-gun side.  Like a few Strib reporters before him – Conrad DeFiebre was the first – he seems to have tried to do a fair job.

And maybe it’s that urge – and reportorial “duty” – to be fair that pushed Oakes into his mistake, and the bad news; Oakes took Heather Martens seriously.

That may be a form of “good news” in a sense; fifteen years ago, there were a couple of anti-gun groups, and a slew of Metrocrat DFL legislators who would queue up to bash on the Second Amendment and its supporters.  Now, Martens is pretty much the best anyone can manage.

And as this blog has been showing for most of the past decade, if Heather Martens says it, it’s a lie.  Or, in this classic example published by a very gullible and uninformed Minnesota Public Radio, fifteen lies in a row with barely a breath.

But here’s where it gets serious:  Oakes writes…:

State data shows that since the law took effect, permit holders were convicted of 882 non-traffic crimes, including 66 assaults, two robberies and two killings. Many were committed with guns.

I don’t know the “66 assaults” or “two robberies”; I’m going to dig into those.

I’ll show you why in a moment.  Let’s focus on the “two killings”.

I had  a hunch where the “two killings” numbers came from.  I called Mr. Oakes at the Strib.  And he confimed – he’d been pointed to the numbers at the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension by Martens.

The BCA doesn’t go into a lot of detail about what killings are what – but let’s presume that the “two killings” are not the two justifiable homicides in Hennepin County over the past couple of years – the Grumpy’s shooting, where a bouncer shot and killed a patron that was threatening him (and cut him!) with a knife, and the Evanovich shooting last fall, where a good samaritan killed a mugger who’d just pistol-whipped a woman in the parking lot of a Cub foods on East Lake, and then drew on the samaritan (who shot first, taking out Evanovich and ending a bit of a crime wave on East Lake).  HenCo attorney Mike Freeman – no fan of civilians with guns – ruled both of those shootings justifiable.  So those are of no use to Heather Martens or any anti-gunny.

To the best of anyone’s knowledge, other than these two, there have been two other shootings involving carry permittees, and the BCA records seem to line up with them.

The first “killing”, if my sources are correct (and they pretty much always are) was a 2010 suicide; a man in Duluth who had pled guilty a week earlier to sexual assault.

There are a couple of interesting details about this case, though:

• For starters, his permit should have been yanked when he pled guilty – in court, that moment – if not when he was arrested for felony sexual assault.  So if the man – Brock McCarthy was his name – ever had a permit, he shouldn’t have when he killed himself.  That’s if the system worked as it is supposed to.
• He shot himself in his home.  His permit was irrelevant.
• It was a suicide.  Not a murder.  While suicide is a tragedy (that, in this case, was connected to another awful crime), it’s different than killing a second or third party who doesn’t want to get killed.

While suicide is a tragedy, one needn’t have a carry permit – or a gun – to do it. People without permits – or guns – do it all the time.  The only difference with gun suicides is that it’s rarely about “seeking attention”, like cutting one’s wrists or taking pills. It’s about wanting to check out, now. Tragic? Sure. A rap on carry permits? Nope. Fishy to present as a “killing”, in the sense of a person killing another person?

Absoflutely.

The second killing was one Michelle Rae Wilson, who killed her boyfriend in 2008 in St. Paul.  Wilson was convicted of second-degree murder.  I’m familiar with the case; my friend the late Joel Rosenberg covered it extensively.  It was a fair cop.   It was also in her home – the carry permit was irrelevant.

(On the off-chance that the other homicide was the shooting at Nye’s back in 2005?  The permit-holder was using a pre-“Shall-Issue” permit, one of the ones issued with the full police discretion that, Heather Martens would have you believe, made them safer than the ones we’ve had for the past nine years).

Martens’ point was to try to impugn carry permittees – as Oakes’ next quote made clear:

Martens said it debunks the notion that all permit holders are law-abiding.

Let’s shoot that strawman in the face.  Nobody said “all” permittees were law-abiding.  Merely much more law-abiding than the general public.

As Oakes, to his credit, allows Gun Owners Civil Rights Alliance boss Andrew Rothman to note:

Rothman responded that permit holders commit much less than their share of crime, citing as an example that though one in seven Minnesotans has a DWI on their record, only one in 545 of the state’s permit holders got one after getting a permit.

“No one ever claimed permit holders would be perfect,” Rothman said, “but the numbers show (they) are consistently orders of magnitude more law abiding than the general public.”

Indeed, as we’ve shown in this space, even in a bad year, carry permittees are a couple of orders of magnitude safer than the general public.

Let’s look at Minnesota statistics.  Leaving out the two justifiable homicides and the suicide, there has been one unjustified murder carried out by someone who had a carry permit in 10 years.   There are over 100,000 carry permittees.  Divided over ten years, that yields a murder rate of .1 per 100,000.  The murder rate in Minnesota averages around 2/100,000.  Carry permittees are 20 times safer than the general public.  So far.

And in terms of danger to the public?  From 2003-2010, there were 1107 murders in Minnesota (give or take a few – I did the math in my head).  That’s an annual murder rate of about 2 per 100,000.  Against that, we have one non-justifiable homicide carried out by a permit-holder.  That boils down to an annual rate of .002/100,000, meaning a typical citizen is just shy of three orders of magnitude less likely to be murdered (unjustifiably, anyway) by a carry permittee than by a non-permittee.

We’ll look into the “robberies” and “assaults” later.

Whatever the overall affect on society, Easton, the Twin Cities gun instructor, said he thinks that carrying has made him a safer member of it by giving him what he perceives to be “a sense of grace.”

“When you’re carrying a gun, you can’t afford to get accused of causing trouble, so you let things roll off your back,” he said. “You wave with all five fingers.”

Very, very true.

So there are two lessons from Larry Oakes’ story:

• The Strib is making an effort to cover the issue relatively fairly.
• On the other hand, if Heather Martens opens her mouth, she’s lying.

I think that sums it up well.

Back during the glory days of Fairness-Doctrine trial-balloonery from Obama and the Democrats, the President’s apologists liked to claim that “the President wasn’t going to push the doctrine”.

To which those of us who knew the issue replied “He, President Obama himself, does not need to do it himself.  He’s got his choice of FCC administrators or Congress to do it for him”.

Anyway, in recent weeks the subject’s turned to gun control.  Some lefties have claimed that “Fast and Furious” was not an attempt to used the ful weight and power of the federal government to slander the law-abiding gun owner; it’s risible, but it’s a point to debate.

But that usually gets followed up with a “President Obama hasn’t done anything to attack the Second Amendment, and he’s not going to”.

Which is wrong on one count – he was on the board of the Joyce Foundation, which actively funds anti-Second-Amendment groups – and he really doesn’t have to do it himself.  Congress may be smarter (or more afraid of the NRA) than that, of course…

…but the UN is not.

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel – mayor of a city that forbids gun ownership by the law-abiding and is spending millions in taxpayer money to try to find ways to flout the Supreme Court’s McDonald decision which expressly condemned Chicago’s handgun laws, and is “unexpectedly” in the middle of a wave of gang violence that has increased the city’s murder rate 30% at a time when the national murder rate has been dropping for years – is appealing to gang-bangers’ “values” to try to stem the flood of blood:

“We’ve got two gangbangers, one standing next to a kid. Get away from that kid. Take your stuff away to the alley. Don’t touch the children of the city of Chicago. Don’t get near them,” Emanuel — President Obama’s former chief of staff — told anchor Scott Pelley.

It’s…er…

…novel?

“And it is about values. As I said then [when a 7-year-old girl was shot and killed last month], who raised you? How were you raised?

Oh, that’s easy!  They were raised by single parents in a system that systematically devalues fatherhood – the institution that traditionally helps boys channel their natural aggression!  They were either raised by people who may have had values of their own once, but for whatever reason either couldn’t keep their kids – or grandkids – out of institutions that think summarily ending the lives of people who wear  your colors, or “disrespect” you, or who sell drugs on your gang’s drug turf, is a perfectly acceptable way to resolve issues…

…or by people who subscribed to those beliefs themselves.  And many to most of them were raised into a post-nineties ‘urban culture” that glorifies violence, especially violence that ends up in wealth, however transient, and a form of “honor killing” no less noxious than the most backward Wahhabi.

And I don’t buy this case where people say they don’t have values. They do have values. They have the wrong values. Don’t come near the kids — don’t touch them.”

Let me know if that works better than “no guns for you!” has been working out.

EIght young people were shot in Chicago in gang-related violence yesterday alone.

Via Power Line, I see that the Strib has noted the fact that 100,000 (currently 103,000) Minnesotans have carry permits…

…which was first reported in this space on May 31; well over 1z00,000 Minnesotans currently have active carry permits.

The Strib is finally on the story – and there’s good news, and there’s bad news.

The bad news?  They – in this case. reporter Larry Oakes – still can’t resist a bunch of the usual clichés:

[A carry permittee named Pat Cannon] not a vigilante. He’s not a nut. He’s just another average Minnesotan who has acquired the power to kill.

Why do I suspect the Strib newsroom is the only place, besides a DFL meeting (PTR) that “Vigilante” or “Nut” would have been suggested?   I mean, you get used to it when the MSM talkes about gunnies – this sense that underneath it all it’s just a little “off”.

But here’s the good news – Oakes balances things out relatively fairly:

[Permit training instructor Evam] Easton said the permit holders he knows “are lawyers, real estate agents — especially women who have to show houses alone — landscapers, a video engineer, a network technician, a radio show host [Quite a few of the, actually – Ed.], a couple of legislators, a mediator who talks divorced couples through sticky situations … a lot of typical, average careers.”

And to his credit, Oakes finds a couple of “experts” who are not completely ludicrous on the subject:

“America has long had a gun culture, but now it’s becoming a carry culture,” said Adam Winkler, a professor at the UCLA School of Law and author of “Gunfight: The Battle over the Right to Bear Arms in America.”

Winkler traces the roots of the shift to fears spawned by the social and political upheaval of the 1960s.

“People began to see the gun as something for personal protection, not just hunting,” Winkler said. Meanwhile, as gun-control advocates pushed to get handguns banned in Washington, D.C. and Chicago, the NRA “changed overnight” in 1977, Winkler said, from stressing support for hunters to focusing like a laser on the right to bear arms.

Those factors helped trigger a handgun rights movement that swept the country, and by 2011, 37 states adopted so-called “shall issue” permit laws, taking away officials’ discretion to deny permits to people who are of legal age, sound mind and have no criminal history.

Not a bad whack at history for an MSM piece, all in all.  And it’s perhaps a sign that the Twin Cities media is growing in office ever so slightly that Andrew Rothman is getting as many calls as some of the more risible antis:

Rothman said it’s no surprise that a greater proportion of permit holders live where the gun culture is generations deep.

“If you grew up in Minneapolis, it’s easy to believe that guns are just plain trouble,” he said. “But you don’t have that out in the country, and the square miles are huge. If you have a dangerous situation, the police can be 30 minutes or an hour away.”

And Oakes does in fact manage to get outside the traditional envelope of media sources:

[A woman], a 40-year-old professional from the Twin Cities, asked that her name be withheld for the same reason she started carrying: A man with a violent history is stalking her.

She got a restraining order, but even the judge who signed it told her it wouldn’t necessarily protect her. So both she and her husband got permits and carry.

“I don’t want to ever have to use it, and I would rather not have the responsibility,” she said.

So so far I have to give kudos to Oakes.

And I can’t fault Oakes for his editorial drive to lend some balance to what has, so far, been a favorable story about Minnesota carry permittees.

But I saw the next section head…:

A mixed record

…and my Martensdar went off.

“Martensdar” is that feeling any Minnesota Second Amendment activist gets when Heather Martens is about to be cited as an expert source in the Twin Cities media (see also: Jacobsdar, Daveschultzdar).

And lemme tell you, my Martensdar is one finely-tuned machine:

The law “has not been a net benefit to our society in any way,” said Heather Martens, executive director of Protect Minnesota — Working to End Gun Violence. “They promised that if lots of people had guns everybody would be safe. Here just [recently] we had a 5-year-old child killed while sleeping on a couch. I think we were sold a bill of goods.”

Maybe Oakes is new to the guns beat.  Or maybe – this is actually the most likely – he can’t find another anti-gun “expert” in the Twin Cities.  It’s plausible that Oakes doesn’t know the single fact anyone needs to know about Heather Martens.

So here it is:  If Heather Martens says or writes something about guns, it’s a lie.  

This blog has been documenting Heather Martens’ serial perfidy for almost a decade.  Her “Group” (it’s not a group), “Protect Minnesota”, has just changed its name, because after almost a decade nobody took her seriously under the old name, “Citizens for a “Safer” Supine Minnesota”.

And she’s in traditional form with the statement above, with two toxic lies in one paragraph:

• Nobody, but nobody, “promised that if lots of people had guns everybody would be safe”.  We showed with a preponderance of evidence that we’d be safer – and we are.  Violent crime is down in Minnesota – especially the parts with the strongest gun culture.
• The five year old was not killed by a carry permittee.  He was killed by a juvenile (you need to be 21 to get a permit, and 18 to buy a gun legally, which I’m pretty certain the gun involved in the murder was not) on a block that was in effect a self-contained criminal enterprise, among a group of a adults among which one might suspect few would qualify for a carry permit (due to criminal records), in a city that was, and remains, hostile to the law-abiding gun owner.

But that’s not all.

There’s some even more misleading information in Martens’ contribution to Oakes’ piece.

More on Thursday.

Where was this when my kids were that age?  A Dallas entrepreneur is building a family-friendly gun range to help teach the next generation of Real Americans [1].

“One of the reasons we’re doing this is, when I had my boys, I didn’t have a place to take them and educate them about how to handle a gun safely,” Prince explained. “I really want families to be able to take their kids here and teach their young shooters how to shoot safely.”

No kidding.

Two rooms will be available for birthday parties.

“The age limit is eight years old. You have to be tall enough to get above the shooting table,” Prince said. “They’re not gonna be left unattended. Parents are gonna be one-on-one, or if there’s not enough parents we’ll have range safety officers here to show them how to do it safely.”

“We’re gonna do a lot of education here at this range,” he added.

The thing non-shooters never get?  It can be great education.  Shooting, done right, focuses the mind like any martial art – which, indeed, it is.   With proper supervision – we’ll come back to that – it can be a great thing to teach kids.

And, this being Texas, there’s a better than even chance most people get that:

The kickoff party Friday drew a big crowd and Prince was being well-received by his neighbors in Lewisville.

Denton County Commissioner Hugh Coleman said he was happy to have the facility in Lewisville.

“I am thrilled to add jobs and add to the tax base, and I think gun rights are for everyone,” he said.

But even in Texas, there are enclaves of Orcs:

But some see things in a different way. Dawn McMullan is a mom raising two sons in East Dallas, and she’s done some gun control advocacy in the past.

[And her past as a “gun control advocate” makes her precisely the least-informed, least-competent person to comment on the subject]

“It makes me very nervous,” she said. “I think eight-year-olds, developmentally, can’t tell the difference between play and reality sometimes.”

“And also to put it in a party or game atmosphere just seems to not respect a gun as much as we should respect guns,” she said.

Ms. McMullan has apparently never met a competent Range Safety Officer (RSO).  If good RSOs taught reading, there’d be no illiteracy.

And as re mixing kids and guns?  The dispositive factor in kids’ growing up with warped attitudes about gun violence is not “having shot”.  It’s “do his parents have a criminal record”, or “does anyone with a record live in the house”, and/or “is there someone in the house with a drug or alcohol problem”, or maybe “is someone in the house so addled that they leave guns lying around where kids can get at them in an idle or dumb moment?”

And even then – who’s going to teach the kids to leave the gun and walk away?  Someone who shows them the destructive power behind a gun, and then shows them painstakingly to walk away and tell a (competent) adult?  Or Ms. McMullan and her whole “guns are the forbidden fruit” schtick?  Hint, Ms. McMullan: that works especially well with teenagers!

But Prince said respect is exactly what he’ll be teaching.

“We truly believe it’s a right and a privilege to shoot and to bear arms,” he said. “But you have a responsibility to know how to do it well. It’s your responsibility to know how to take care of your gun and know how to use it.”

“Ignorance is not bliss in this situation,” he added. “Until they outlaw guns, people are gonna have access to them and should have access to them. And they need to be educated. Take the mystery out of the guns.”

Eagle Gun Range expects to open for business sometime in the late summer or early fall.

I’m smelling bonanza for some savvy Minnesota entrepreneur – and apoplectic strokes for not a few Minnesota lefty pundits.  Just saying.

(more…)

Who knows how bad  episode would have been…

The armed gunman, 53, murdered a bailiff, 47, a locksmith, 33, and the prospective new tenant of the flat, 45, in the south-western city of Karlsruhe with shots to the head before taking his own life.

The bailiff had two bullets in his thigh before he was finished off.

The victims were tied up and ‘executed’, according to the local prosecutor. ‘This was a planned act and we are dealing with four cold blooded murders,’ he added.

…if Germany didn’t have gun laws every bit as draconian as violence -addled Chicago!

Dave Mindeman seems flabbergasted that elected officials must be in tune with their voters on even the most flamingly, sirens-blazingly obvious issues:

Rep. Colin Peterson has confirmed that there is one thing more important than being a Democrat….one thing more important than principle….one thing more important than the truth.

That would be: The NRA

Well, let’s be honest here; it’s not “being a Democrat” that’s been keeping Peterson in office in his fairly conservative district – which, once Peterson retires, will likely become a hard-red district.  It’s reflecting his constituents.

And I’m curious what “principle” Mindeman thought Peterson was breaking; to most Americans, keeping government in line – say, when it uses the power of government to try to slander the law-abiding gun owner, or especially when they try to cover up and stonewall the facts of a case that’s led directly to the deaths of hundreds of Mexicans and at least one, and now possibly two federal agents – is the height of principle.

This travesty of a contempt vote, being brought against Attorney General Eric Holder, that the House has insisted upon because the NRA is pulling the puppet strings, has 4 Democrats signing on to it. And one of those four is Colin Peterson.

And this blog salutes their courage, in bucking the Democrats’ naked power-mongering to stand up for the rule of law.

The whole issue is a joke. The Fast and Furious policy was a dumb thing to do but to move this whole thing into a contempt vote is even dumber.

I think Brian Terry’s family might agree it was a “dumb” thing to do – and would think getting answers from our “public servants” isn’t so dumb at all.

I doubt Peterson would be giving it one minute of thought except for the fact that the NRA is going so “score” the vote. Scoring a contempt vote? How crazy is that?

Keeping score on a vote on an issue involving the “Justice” department using government time, resources and power primariliy to slander the NRA’s five million constituents?

Crazy like a fox – in that “I’d like to get re-elected” sense of the term.

But this has been crazy from the beginning. Just to gain some political points and satisfy the fantasy world of the NRA’s fear of the “secret Obama war on guns”, they are counting noses for this vote.

Dave Mindeman, like many Democrats, believes that Voter ID suppresses legal voting, but can’t believe an administration headed by a President who used to be bankrolled by an anti-gun foundation, and who depends disproportionally

Peterson plans to join in on the sham. And why not? It gets him NRA bonus points while sticking it to the administration – the one he is running away from.

Even a second amendment supporter like Peterson must know this whole thing is a joke….but then there has never been anything funny about the NRA.

But there is plenty funny about the way urban DFLers demonize it.  The NRA is perhaps one of the grass-rootsiest lobbying organizations there is.  It has five million paying members – unlike the typical big-money group supporting the DFL (say, “Alliance for a Better Minnesota”, which has one).

And besides most Republicans, they have plenty of traction among Democrat voters outside the 494-694 circle, who may vote all wrong, but certainly understand that the Second Amendment is a civil right.

A right that Barack Obama and his administration have been trying – on  “principle” – to chip away at the best they could since before they were elected.

A rare kudo to Colin Peterson.  You finally got one right.

But feel free to desert him for this one, Democrats.

BONUS QUESTION: Why doesn’t Mindeman have similar harsh words for CD1’s Tim Walz, who also voted to hold Holder accountable for his coverup?   Closing ranks and ignoring it because the CD1 race might be closer, perhaps?  Do Dems only criticize the  Democrats they think they can afford to?

This one made the news over the weekend; in Phoenix, a 14 year old boy shot and gravely wounded an armed intruder who’d not only kicked down the door of his house while he was baby-sitting, but was pointing a gun at the kid:

The boy was home with his three siblings, ranging in age from 8 to 12, when he saw a woman they did not recognize at the front of the house around 4:30 p.m. She began pounding on the door, said James Holmes, a Phoenix police spokesman.

The boy went upstairs and got a handgun, police said. A man with a rifle had forced his way into the home. He aimed the gun at the boy, and the boy shot him, police said.

Having the coolness under fire to not only not have to stop to change his pants after what must be, to a kid, the most terrifying possible thing – a group of strangers kicking the door of your house in – and seeing a rifle being pointed at him, and returning fire with (by one report) a head shot?

Someone call the SEALS’ talent scout.

The boy and his three siblings left the house and went to a neighbor’s house, where the boy called police and his father, Holmes said.

“He took an action that no police officer, certainly no one in our community, wants a 14-year-old to have to take,” Holmes said. “And yet he’s safe, his siblings are safe, and so now we have to figure out why this happened and why these people were there.”

Another thug off the street.  That’s the good news.

Now for the (hypothetical) bad news:  in Minnesota, this kid’s problems, and his parents’, could be just beginning.

Arizona has strong “Stand Your Ground” and “Castle” laws.  If a shooting is ruled justifiable, the citizen is immunized from civil litigation over the shooting.

Here in Minnesota, even if the county attorney declines to press charges – and under Minnesota law, the boy would have to have proven he was an unwilling participant and that the force he used was appropriate and that his fear was reasonable, although clearly all three of those applied, and there is no “duty to retreat” in the home under Minnesota case law – the “victim” and his family could come after the teenager’s parents for damages for the injuries sustained.

A lawyer may well say “the suit won’t get far under those circumstances” – which is an explanation only a lawyer could buy.  The family will have to spend thousands of dollars defending against that non-lawsuit lawsuit – and that’s presuming they don’t run up against an activist judge, or a plaintiff with enough money or connections to land a big-dollar attorney with the aim of overwhelming them, or a crusading David “Darth” Lillehaug uber-attorney willing to fight against the family on a contingency just because he hates guns..

When lefties say “name one person in jail for lack of a stand your ground law”…:

a. We do, and

b. Jail isn’t the only hell that Minnesota’s legal system holds out for the families of the otherwise perfectly law-abiding citizen.   Eternal legal hell is another.

When our bored dilettante of a governor vetoed “Stand Your Ground”, all he did was give trial lawyers another marketing hook.

Yesterday, the President invoked “executive privilege” in order to cover up his administration’s involvement in a plan to slander America’s law-abiding gun owners, which went awry and ended in the death of a Federal agent.

IBD’s editorial board has had enough

President Obama’s contempt for the rule of law hit a new low when, on the eve of a vote to hold Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress, he granted his AG’s 11th-hour request to hide sought-after documents on Operation Fast and Furious under the cover of executive privilege.

“I write now to inform you that the president has asserted executive privilege over the relevant post-Feb. 4, 2011, documents,” Deputy Attorney General James Cole says in a letter that GOP Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa received just before Wednesday’s hearing and vote, a letter that apparently was not mentioned in a last-minute meeting between Issa and Holder Tuesday night.

Or maybe it wasn’t the 11th hour at all, but just a long-planned final gambit in the cover-up of who made the decisions in a federally sponsored effort to provide Mexican drug cartels with sophisticated American firearms and who is ultimately responsible for the murder of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry with these weapons?

Remember – Fast and Furious didn’t attack terrorism.  It didn’t even attack the narcotraficantes that have made Northern Mexico more dangerous than Iraq, Afghanistan, even Chicago.

It was a government financed effort to smear America’s firearms industry and law-abiding gun owners, in pursuit of Obama’s goal to try to reverse the slide in this nation’s gun control laws.

No more.

Executive privilege, as Issa noted in his opening remarks, can only be asserted when it involves direct presidential decision-making and communications. It cannot be invoked, legally, to prevent others in the chain of command from explaining their actions or responding to requests for information on their decisions in which the president is not involved.

And the Administration has been lying to Congress, and the people (over half of whom the program attempted to slander) the entire time:

Back in February 2011, Assistant Attorney General Ron Welch, in response to the investigations by Rep. Issa and Sen. Chuck Grassley of the Fast and Furious gun-“walking” program run out of ATF’s Phoenix office, wrote a letter stating that the “allegation that ATF ‘sanctioned’ or otherwise knowingly allowed the sale of assault weapons … is false.”

Later, Deputy Attorney General Cole, in another letter to Congress, wrote: “Facts have come to light during the course of this investigation that indicate the Feb. 4 letter contains inaccuracies.” In other words, the Department of Justice lied to Congress. The cover-up continues with the invocation of executive privilege.

IBD’s editorial writers have reached their conclusion:

Fast and Furious has become worse than Watergate. No one died at Watergate. Just what is in those documents that Obama and Holder so desperately want to hide? Brian Terry’s family and the American people deserve answers.

Well, this was supposed to be the most transparent administration in  history.

Rhetorical question:  can you imagine what would have happened had George W. Bush spent federal money to smear, say, ACORN or Common Cause or the Violence Policy Center?

Make no mistake about it – Barack Obama’s been a disastrous president.  The only parts of his administration that have worked – the hunt for Bin Laden – he inherited primarily from George W. Bush.  His foreign policy has made the US an epic laughingstock.  And his domestic policy has nobody laughing.  His claim last week that the private sector is “doing fine” is emblematic of his Antoinette-y disconnect from real life in this country.

But he’s had one epic domestic policy success – one great shining success story that has made life better in this country, that has created good private-sector manufacturing and entrepreneurial jobs, and that has required no federal stimulus money whatsoever.  Far from it, in fact.

Barack Obama has spurred an epic boom in the American firearms industry, as Real Americans – genuinely and rightfully fearful that an administration that spent millions and sacrificed a federal agent in an attempt to smear the law-abiding gun owner – stock up on firearms against an unfettered second Obama term.

The fact that this boom in gun ownership coincides with a sharp drop in violent crime…

Last week, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) announced that violent crime decreased 4 percent in 2011. The number of murders, rapes, robberies and aggravated assaults all went down, continuing a pattern.

…may just be coincidental – correlation doesn’t equal causation.  But we know better than that.

“This is not a one-year anomaly, but a steady decline in the FBI’s violent-crime rates,” said Andrew Arulanandam, spokesman for the National Rifle Association. “It would be disingenuous for anyone to not credit increased self-defense laws to account for this decline.”

Mr. Arulanandam pointed out that only a handful of states had concealed-carry programs 25 years ago, when the violent-crime rate peaked. Today, 41 states either allow carrying without a permit or have “shall issue” laws that make it easy for just about any noncriminal to get a permit. Illinois and Washington, D.C., are the only places that refuse to recognize the right to bear arms. The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence did not respond to requests for comment.

They never do.

If the gun grabbers were right, we’d be in the middle of a crime wave, considering how many guns are on the streets. “Firearms sales have increased substantially since right after the 2008 election,” said Bill Brassard, spokesman for the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), which represents the $4 billion firearms and ammunition industry. “There was a leveling off in 2010, but now we’re seeing a surge again.”

And as more Real Americans of all races, genders and orientations strap up – there were 16.5 million checks of the NICS database last year – not only has crime dropped, but the firearms industry has become one private enterprise that is, er, “doing fine”:

Sturm, Ruger & Co. sold 1 million firearms in the first quarter of 2012 – an amazing 50 percent increase from the first quarter of 2011. The jump was so steep that the company stopped accepting orders from March to May to catch up with demand for its products.

Last month, Smith & Wesson announced a firearm-order backlog of approximately $439 million by the end of April, up 135 percent from the same quarter in 2011. Sales in that period were up 28 percent from 2011 and 14 percent over its own predictions to investors. NSSF estimates the industry is responsible for approximately 180,000 jobs and has an annual impact on the U.S. economy of $28 billion.

So kudos to you, President Obama!  At least your policies are having one positive benefit.

And only one.

Let’s go back in time ten years.

Back then, as the plucky underdogs of “Concealed Carry Reform Now” worked away at the biggest grassroots political coup in Minnesota pre-Tea-Party history, the orcs of the anti-gun movement sawed gamely away at a series of memes to try to scare people out of voting for the measure:

• “There’ll be blood in the streets!”
• “People will kill each other over fender-benders!”
• “It’ll be a danger to law enforcement!”
• “Gang-bangers will get permits to carry”. (Seriously.  They said that).
• And, paradoxically, “nobody really wants them”.

None of them came true, naturally – in Minnesota or any of the 40-odd other states with “Shall Issue” laws.  The only real value to come of any of those memes was that the DFL got to practice what it preached…as rel environmentalism.  Because they re-used all of those memes to try to similarly poison the well against “Stand Your Ground” bills, which are if anything vastly more socially benign than “Shall Issue!”

But that’s next year’s battle.  Today, let’s look back. Because today, we’re observing a mournful anniversary, and celebrating an ass-kicking milestone.

———-

Saturday is the first anniversary of the passing of my friend and first carry permit instructor, Joel Rosenberg.

Borrowed from the GOCRA website

Joel was the beating heart and the rapier wit of the Second Amendment movement in Minnesota; where there were trenches to be fought in, he was there.  The passage of the Minnesota Personal Protection Act was a monument to lots of people – Joe Olson, the whole GOCRA/CCRN crew, Senator Pat Pariseau and Representative Linda Boudreau (who wrote the legislation for years and years until finally passed), a far-sighted GOP minority and a fair-minded, human-rights-focused minority of outstate DFLers – and of course, Joel, who spent the better part of a decade bouncing peripatetically about between all of them.

And it’s perhaps fitting that, just in time for this sad anniversary, there is happy news.

The Gun Owners Civil Rights Alliance – which has led the way on Second Amendment issues in this state for nearly 20 years, issued a press release (I’ve added emphasis):

As of this month 101,357 Minnesotans have been issued carry permits, according to  a report issued by the Department of Public Safety yesterday morning.

More than 100,000 law-abiding gun citizens now hold Minnesota handgun carry permits, according to the latest monthly report from the state’s Department of Public Safety (see attachment). The permits are issued under the Minnesota Citizens Personal Protection Act. As of May 30, 101,357 permits were active.

Permits by Year Courtesy GOCRA

The statute, known as a “shall-issue” law, requires county sheriffs to issue a five-year carry permit to any law-abiding citizen who has received certified training and passed criminal, mental health and substance abuse background checks.

Permitees by age. Courtesy GOCRA

Passed in 2003 and re-passed in 2005 following a court challenge on a legal technicality, the statute, replaced a previous “may-issue” system that allowed police chiefs and sheriffs absolute discretion to grant or deny a permit for any or no reason. Under the previous system, some jurisdictions issued permits freely, while others refused to issue any for personal protection.

 

1 in 7 permittees is femaile. Courtesy GOCRA.

“Self defense is a human right,” said Joseph E. Olson, a law professor and president of the Gun Owners Civil Rights Alliance, which lobbied for the law for more than a decade. “And the right to bear arms is a Constitutional right. Now, one in 40 Minnesota adults has exercised that right.”

That’s 50,000 more than I’d figured we’d ever have.  10,000 more than the 90K estimate from the Legislative Auditor’s office – a  figure the DFL bandied around like a scary story to keep kids in line.

101,357 law-abiding Minnesotans with currently active permits to carry firearms in public.

It’s a wonderful thing.

Let’s take the occasion to go over a few bits of news you can use about the issue:

• Notwithstanding Wes “Lying Sack of Garbage” Skoglund and Heather Martens’ and Jane Ranum and Ellen Anderson’s assurances, not a single carry permit holder has been accused, much less convicted, of a single unambiguously-wrongful shooting.  Skoglund’s demented twaddle about “gang bangers with permits” and “people with permits stalking me” has proven to be even less accurate, much less prescient, than the DFL’s usual addlepated pandering to the uninformed and ignorant (see also: the campaign against “Stand Your Ground”).
• There are been two justifiable homicides carried out by carry permit holders – the Evanovich case and the Grumpy’s incident.  In both incidents, the Hennepin County Attorney’s office (!!!) stated without any muss or fuss that the civilians involved – a good samaritan and a bouncer, respectively – had acted justifiably.
• There was one highly ambiguous incident – the Treptow case, in which a citizen shot  (and wounded about as lightly as it’s possible to wound someone with a handgun at four feet range) a road-raging motorist who was pointing a gun at his pregnant wife – and happened to be an “undercover” cop.  Official Minnesota closed ranks around the officer.  The case was a miscarriage of justice for which heads should roll, in the next world if not this (but preferably this).
• Treptow case notwithstanding, there has not been a single accusation, much less conviction, of a post-2003 permit holder on any crime of gun-related violence.  Not one.
• Minnesota has a murder rate of 2.2 per 100,000 people (and the gun homicide rate is 1.47 per 100,000).  That means of every 100,000 MInnesotans, 2,2 are murdered every year.  Among the population of Minnesota carry permittees, then, the murder rate (leaving out homicides ruled justifiable) is 0 per 100,000.   Considered over the nine year history of the shall-issue law, that means Minnesotans with legal carry permits are less likely to commit crime by a factor of 0 divided by 2.2, also technically known as “infinity”.  Minnesota Carry Permittees are infinitely safer than the rest of the population.
• But why so bloodthirsty?  Although nobody keeps statistics on the subject, we know anecdotally that there’ve been  dozens, possibly hundreds of defensive gun uses (DGUs) over the past nine years carried out by carry permittees, mostly without a shot being fired.
• Nobody really knows what percentage of eligible citizens (people with clean records who pass background checks and take a safety course and are over 21 years old, in Minnesota) get their permits – the rule of thumb used to be about 1% of a state’s eligible population.  If that rule of thumb was accurate, then Minnesota is a showcase for carry permit adoption; 100,000 out of four million (that’s a rough guess as to the number of eligible adults over 21 years old in Minnesota) is 2.5%, which is spectacular.

While it’s a long way to go to get to the goal – every law-abiding American exercising his duty to protect their and their family’s lives and liberty – it’s a great start.

And I think Joel would appreciate that.

The Obama Administration and the left – at least, the mewling, white, upper-middle-class version of the Left – thinks it’s in a position to start re-instating gun control.

And they’re doing it the same way they started doing it 40 years ago; with a concentrated, coordinated, considered slander of all law-abiding gun owners.  Fast and Furious tipped the Administration’s hand; they want to undercut the “law-abiding” stock of the most law-abiding people in the United States – the legal gun owner,

You’re starting to see it in the media and in the leftyblogs that re-package BIg Left’s message for further regurgitation; the way the media tried to turn the Martin/Zimmerman case into a commentary on gun owners (to say nothing of the “Stand your Ground” law, which it – let’s repeat this – was not).

So it’s time for all of us who support the human right of self-defense – no less important than speech, religion, press or assembly – to do something that many of us figured we wouldn’t have to do anymore; get up, get organized, and start voting for gun rights again.

Don’t take it from me.  Take it from Gunnery Sergeant Hartman.

The good news;  Hennepin County residents are applying for carry permits at a record clip:

From January through April of 2012, the Sheriff’s Office took in 1,875 applications for permits to carry. In comparison, the department netted 1,220 applications during the same time frame in 2011– an increase of nearly 54 percent.

Hennepin County Sheriff Richard Stanek said the increase surprised him because 2011 was the busiest year for new gun permit applications since 2003, which is when the permit law took effect.

If 2012 stays on pace, it will dwarf the previous year.

It is, in fact, good news to see more Henco residents taking their moral civic duty to be proficient with firearms seriously.

The funny part?

Two, really.  When Fox9 was presenting the report last night, in their little clip of putative analysis, they noted (by way of intended irony) that it’s odd so many people would get handgun permits since crime in Henco is down 38% this year.

Now, why would that be?

No, not entirely due to gun permits – to claim it would be wrong, and to demand it would be a straw man.  But every time a citizen gets a permit, the deterrent value of the statute grows – and Minnesota’s number of permittees is on the higher end of the national average.

Now, criminals aren’t known for reading newspapers.  And yet violent crime in Henco has dropped.

Why could that be?  Why, oh why?

Bonus:  Kudos and Brickbats:  Kudos to Henco Sheriff Stanek, who has by all accounts run an honest shop in re handling permit applications, even though he works for a government that gives Berkeley a run for his money.

And a kudo and a brickbat for Channel 9 News.  When wrapping up the story last night, anchorette Heidi Collins asked the reporter (Eric Runge, I think) if all these permits in the hands of law-abiding citizens were a cause for “concern”.

The reporter, to his credit, noted correctly that carry permit holders tend not to commit crimes, more or less.  It’s not a big reach; at any given moment in Henco, there are probably 15-20,000 people with post-2003 carry permits; since 2003, they have committed exactly zero murders, two homicides ruled justifiable, and countless defensive gun uses that deterred countless (because literally – nobody counts them) crimes.

One of the big lessons of this past month or so is that Stand Your Ground laws are racist and target people of color…

…oh, wait:

The NAACP.s Jacksonville chapter has thrown its support behind a woman who will be sentenced Monday in a shooting where she claimed self-defense against an abusive husband under the state.s Stand Your Ground law.

Marissa Danielle Alexander, 31, was charged with three counts of aggravated assault in August 2010 after she fired a single shot into the ceiling of her home during a dispute that somehow turned physical.

So – now the only reason to oppose stand your ground is that you’re racist and sexist?

Joe Doakes of Como Park beat me to this point:

“I’m sorry for your loss” isn’t the same as apologizing for the shooting; in fact, nothing like it.

What he meant was “I’m sorry your son attacked me, forcing me to defend myself, which ended his life and landed me in the middle of a horrible and expensive ordeal. I’m sorry his poor choices deprived you of your son. But I’m not sorry I defended myself using the appropriate level of force. I’m not sorry for shooting him because he left me had no choice.”

Of course, that’s too much for Associated Press to comprehend and even if they did, it doesn’t fit the narrative.

Joe Doakes

Como Park

And the narrative is in full force.  More later today.

Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel took over a city that was in a morass of gang violence.

It’s only gotten worse.

Now, when Democrats inherit tough situations, they blame the problems on their Republican predecessors.  But there hasn’t been a Republican mayor of Chicago since the Blackfoot tribe ran the place.

So he’s doing the next best thing; blaming former Mayor “Stick This Gun Up Your Butt” Daley:

Mayor Rahm Emanuel went on the defensive Thursday about a surge of recent homicides in Chicago and questioned why new law enforcement tactics hadn’t been created before he was elected 10 months ago.

“You can say, ‘Are you doing it right,'” Emanuel said, “but the question is, ‘Why were those policies not done before?'”

Between the start of 2012 and April 1, Chicago Police recorded 120 homicides, a 60 percent spike over the 75 murders during the same period in 2010 and 2011.

And let’s not forget – even that rate was catastrophically high.

So far, the only response has been to disarm the law-abiding public even more.

…for the prosecutor in Florida to charge George Zimmerman with Second Degree Murder.

Corey also had a message for those who have been rushing to judgment on the case.

“You cannot know what it’s like to launch this type of investigation and come to this conclusion,” State Attorney Angela Corey said during the press conference.

“We don’t prosecute by public pressure or petition. We prosecute cases on the relevant facts of each case and on the laws of the state of Florida.”

The worst thing about how the left has treated this case – as a stage prop for Obama’s re-election campaign – is that it causes doubts in the justice system, among both those who are inclined to support it or not.

Naturally, the Obama administration and the media who push his narrative had every reason to portray the local prosecutors and police as racist peckerwoods who didn’t care that a black kid was dead.  And the claque that has been benefitting from that perception for decades now – Al Sharpton and the various race-war pimps – benefit handsomely from that perception.,

Which is, of course, not to say that the local cops and prosecutors did do a good job – in fact, we don’t know.  But prosecutor Corey is right – these ambiguous shooting cases frequently do take a long time to work out.  A great example – of both the time it takes to work out an ambiguous shooting and of a justice system horribly skewed by official tush-covering – is the Treptow case, from five years ago in Coon Rapids.

So there is much we don’t know about this case.

But one thing that any rational person – and by “rational person” I mean “one who rationally assesses the facts as they know them = does know is that this case is no indictment of “Stand Your Ground”.

Let’s compare and contrast the genesis (so far) of this case, and war-game out its resolution under Florida law (with its Stand Your Ground provisions) and Minnesota law (which still has a vague, ambiguous “duty to retreat”).

Assumptions:  We’ll assume that the episode went like this: Martin was walking (we won’t ascribe motives to him yet).  Zimmerman, being a diligent (maybe over-diligent) neighborhood watch guy, followed Martin in his car, then got out and confronted Martin.  The encounter went south – accounts vary – and either Zimmerman ended up attacking Martin, or Martin attacked Zimmerman (you can believe whichever you want, because only the jury’s perception really matters at this point).  At some point, and with whatever motive, Zimmerman shoots Martin, who dies.   The police arrive.  Zimmerman claims self-defense.

Under Current Minnesota Law, if the case were being tried under Minnesota law, the prosecution would have to prove to the jury beyond a reasonable doubt that Zimmerman, while not planning to kill Martin, did in fact intentionally kill Martin without justification.  Zimmerman and his attorneys, claiming self-defense, would have to prove to the jury that…:

• Zimmerman reasonably feared death or great bodily harm – they’d have to convince the jury that Zimmerman’s fear of Martin beating him to death was reasonable.  Of course, people get beaten to death, strangled, clubbed to death with bottles all the time – there’ve been three “one-punch kills” in Minnesota so far in 2012.  I’m no lawyer, but I’m going to say this will likely mean having to prove that Martin really attacked him, injured him, and didn’t appear likely to stop at the time.   Is that enough to convince a jury?  We’ll see.
• He was a reluctant participant – No, the fact that he followed Martin, and disregarded the 911 operator’s instructions, don’t count.  Zimmerman had a right to be on the street, whether he was following Martin or not.  And 911 operators don’t give legal orders.  It might not look good for Zimmerman – but in fact he needs to prove that he didn’t willingly dive into the actual physical scuffle that led to the shooting.
• The force he used was reasonable  – in other words, he’d need to prove that the force he used was only enough to end the lethal threat.  If there’s evidence Zimmerman shot Martin while he was lying on the ground, then the case is over.
• He made a reasonable effort to disengage – If he convinces the jury that he was jumped and tackled before he had a chance to try to run away, or that he did in fact try to back away while under attack, then that’s what he’d have to do.  The prosecutor, of course, can try to convince the jury that Zimmerman should have tried to escape until he slipped into a coma with brain damage; an anti-gun judge could instruct the jury to keep to the strictest possible definition of “duty to retreat”.  Zimmerman, or any self-defense shooter under Minnesota law, could have been impeccable on the other three points, and still go to jail based purely on the discretion of the prosecutor, the prejudice of the judge, and the whim of the jury.  That’s why Minnesota needs a Stand Your Ground law.  But that’s a matter for the next legislature.

If Zimmerman failed to convince the jury that he’d met all four of those criteria, then his self-defense claim fails.

Under Current Florida Law – But the case is being tried in Florida.  Florida has a “Stand your Ground” law.  That means that the prosecutor must prove to the jury beyond a reasonable doubt that:

• Zimmerman met all the elements of Second Degree Murder under Florida law – that he did in fact intentionally kill Martin without justification.
• Zimmerman did not reasonably fear death or great bodily harm – they’d have to convince the jury that Zimmerman’s fear of Martin beating him to death was unreasonable.  Of course, the defense will show the jury that people get beaten to death, strangled, clubbed to death with bottles all the time – I’m going to guess if there’ve been three  “one-punch kills” in Minnesota so far in 2012 that there’ve been more than that in Gainesville alone. The prosecutor, I’ll guess, will have to debunk the notion that Martin attacked Zimmerman, or build a case that Zimmerman really did attack Martin.  We’ll see.
• Zimmerman was not a reluctant participant – The fact that Zimmerman followed Martin, and disregarded the 911 operator’s instructions, may have been a bad idea – I know that after taking carry permit training twice, it’s the last thing I’d do.  But the defense will point out that Zimmerman had a right to be on the street, and convince the jury that he didn’t willingly dive into the actual physical scuffle that led to the shooting.
• The force he used was not reasonable  – in other words, the prosecutor will need to prove that the force Zimmerman used was beyond what was needed to end the threat.  If there’s evidence Zimmerman shot Martin while he was lying on the ground, then the case is over.  Othewise?  Not so much.
• He made a reasonable effort to disengage – Does not apply in “Stand your Ground” states.  Not so that people can “shoot first”, but because this is a provision that is abused by prosecutors; can anyone else see the absurdity of saying “yes, your life was being legitimately threatened – but you should have tried harder to run away before defending yourself?”

If the prosecution proves all the elements of second-degree murder, and disproves any of the three pillars of his self-defense claim, the jury will likely find ZImmerman guilty.  If the jury accepts all three of the pillars of Zimmerman’s claim (or reasonable doubts exist about them), then they will (assuming a rational jury) find him innocent.

The only difference is on whom the burden of proving the legitimacy of the self-defense claim rests.  That is all.

Sharpton and the race-war pimps will keep trying to fan this into a racial incident – because it benefits them to do so.  White liberals will try – and fail – to turn this into an indictment of “Stand your Ground” laws.

And before too long, the Obama administration will need to find itself another stage prop; the mainstream media, his Praetorian Guard, will dutifully move on, and the  case, provided you trust the local justice system, will reach the resolution it would have reached without all the national attention.

It’s a scenario that’s launched a thousand “miscarriage of military justice” stories and more than a few movies during and after three wars, now; soldier gets into difficult, ambiguous situation; soldier, believing himself to be threatened, shoots.  Judge Advocate General jacks the soldier up over an arcane technicality in the “rules of engagement”, adjudicated by a bunch of officers and lawyers sitting in a secure base camp, an office or the Pentagon.  And the soldier(s), having followed the rules in all but the one, most arcane, most-technical sense of the term, and having acted otherwise blamelessly, get sent to prison.

Some of the dimmer bulbs on the Twin Cities’ Sorosphere’s intellectual Festivus pole were grunting and argling yesterday about this piece here, from “Think” Progess, by one Jon Soltz, claiming that Florida’s (and by extension, Minnesota’s proposed and vetoed) “Stand Your Ground” laws “gives George Zimmerman more protection than soldiers overseas”.   It’s written by one Jon Soltz, listed as founder and chairman of VoteVets.org, 

Soltz:

The Trayvon Martin case has gripped the nation, and forced the country to re-examine our gun laws. But the horrible affair has struck me in another way, because of my two tours in Iraq. One fact stands out in my mind: The “Stand Your Ground” law in Florida, which may let George Zimmerman off the hook for the killing of Martin, gives more leeway to shooters than our own military gives to soldiers in war.

That sounds serious.  And it is.  Seriously misleading, anyway.

We’ll come back to that.

VoteVets.org has more than 105,000 members who take a wide array of views on gun control and the 2nd Amendment,

…although the group itself is a left-leaning “veterans” group affiliated with the whacko-left “Center for American Progress”, “Moveon.org”, and which is supported by the Soros-affiliated “Democracy Alliance”.

But this is less about the organization than about the spreading of chanting points in which Soltz is participating.

but the Trayvon Martin case is less about the right to bear arms than it is the “use of force.” It’s impossible to ignore the legal protection George Zimmerman enjoys in suburban Florida vs. the Rules of Engagement that outline when one of our troops can shoot while in combat in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Soltz is half right…

…well, no.  He’s half on topic.  There is something that’s impossible to ignore.

But comparing rules for self-defense among civilians out and about in a civil society is nothing like the rules of engagement for the military in a combat zone.

The U.S. military issues Rules of Engagement (ROE) for every conflict to guide servicemembers’ ability to protect themselves from deadly threats…

…which Soltz goes on to describe in great detail and, I’ll presume, accurately (although I’d love to have some of combat veterans who read this blog go over his version of the ROE just to make sure), he misses a key point.  And by “key”, I mean, “so vital that his entire point makes absolutely no sense if you get it wrong”.

Soltz:

A key component of the ROE used during the height of violence in Iraq in 2007 was the requirement to use “Graduated Force” when time and circumstances permit. Section 3.G.(1) states that if an individual “commit[s] a hostile act or demonstrat[es] hostile intent” — meaning he or she attacks U.S. or designated allied forces, nationals, or property, or threatens the imminent use of force against any of them — U.S. Force “may use force, up to and including deadly force, to eliminate the threat.”

Right.

A soldier (or sailor, airman or Marine) in a combat has a lot of firepower at hand; a selective-fire assault rifle (sometimes with a grenade launcher), a machine gun (anything from a squad automatic weapon to an M2 .50 caliber or a fully-automatic grenade launcher on top of their Hummer), or more; antitank rockets, grenades, and more.  They can be supported by tanks with cannon with cannon that can pick your nose from a mile away with a depleted-uranium dart that flies at a mile every second and a half and that can go through a foot of armor steel.  They’re a radio call away from calling in artillery – 40-to-100 pound shells in barrages of dozens of shells that can level a city block faster than a  bunch of drunk Detroit Pistons fans – or air support, in the form of Apaches with rockets and automatic cannon, A10s and F16s flying close support,  dropping 2000 GPS-guided bombs that can fly down your toilet more accurately than the Roto-Rooter guy, or even a B52 that can drop thirty or forty of them, if you really need to dig out of a jam.

The rules of engagement are there to make sure that the 19 year old kid with the aweseome responsibility of being at the business end of all that firepower knows how to use it to advance, rather than degrade, America’s interests in the area.

On the other hand, the law regarding civilian self-defense is there to judge whether homicide is justified or not.  In every state, the questions are  “is the citizen’s fear of death, rape, maiming or other injury reasonable enough to justify using lethal force”, “was the citizen a reluctant participant”, “was the force they used reasonable” and in some states, “did the citizen make a reasonable effort to retreat”.  In some states, the citizens have to prove all of the above; in others – Florida – the state has to prove they didn’t.

We’ll come back to that.

Soltz gives an example of how Rules of Engagement caused a problem for one soldier:

In fact, Richard Allen Smith, the vice chairman of VoteVets.org, recently told me a story he had heard during his time in Afghanistan, which illustrates this point.

The Scout Platoon leader for Richard’s Battalion was in a situation in 2007 where they detained someone, but he managed to get out of their truck and flee. While he was running away, the Platoon Leader fired at him and caught him in the thigh. They called for a medevac, but he bled out before the bird could get there.

Under military law and rules of engagement, the Platoon Leader was clearly in the wrong: he pursued an unarmed guy who wasn’t posing a threat to U.S. Forces and shot him to death. He was charged (although he was never tried because he was injured a few days later when his truck was hit by an IED and he was deemed mentally incompetent to stand trial).

I’m not sure why Soltz brings this up: does he think a citizen would skate on shooting a fleeing attacker?  As a rule, they would not.

But Soltz is slowly cutting to the chase, here.  He starts out with an honest admission:

Of course, comparing the Trayvon Martin case to a war situation is neither fair nor clean, and we still don’t know all of the facts surrounding Trayvon’s death.

But the facts end there:

But insofar as what I’ve read about the case, it sounds to me that if Trayvon had been an Iraqi soldier, and George Zimmerman had been a U.S. Soldier, there would have been an immediate investigation, and most likely a manslaughter charge, and victim’s family financially compensated for wrongful death.

And that goes to show you the risks in going by “what you’ve read” when, as a lefty (and I’ll be charitable and assume that Soltz isn’t purely reciting the party line, which, given his groiup’s funding, is probably more charitable than warranted, but I’m a uniter, not a divider), the stuff you read is produced  by groups that are trying to use the Martin case to fan racial tension to boost the President’s fortunes – or lefty-vetted “Experts” who are, in fact, not.

If Zimmerman was attacked, then under either military law (as Soltz recited it) or under criminal law, he was arguably justified in shooting.  I say “arguably” because these things do need to be investigated.

Was it?  Do we know the facts?  As Soltz himself allowed, we do not.

Which doesn’t justify just making up facts to fill in in place.  LIke this:

But Zimmerman is a civilian in Florida where, as the country now knows, a shooter is often immune from criminal prosecution and civil liability if he believed he had been threatened with deadly force.

But only if the investigation shows that the evidence warrants that conclusion.  After – y’know – due process, according to the law passed by the relevant legislature.  Same as in the military!

Yes, I did say “making stuff up”:

One of the striking components of Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law — or, more appropriately, “Shoot First” law — is that it eliminated the “duty to retreat” embedded in centuries of common law about self-defense. Traditionally, a person had the duty to retreat from dangerous situations if they could, and the use of deadly force was justifiable self-defense only if a person could not have otherwise safely gotten away.

Except that’s both not true – it’s not “embedded in centuries of tradition”.  It’s a feature of some self-defense laws.  Not others.  They vary.  And simply saying “it was part of common law” isn’t a carte-blanche guarantee of validity; slavery was a part of “common law”, until it wasn’t anymore.

“Duty to Retreat” is not a feature, it’s a bug; it means that the citizen is supposed to make a “reasonable” effort to disengage (which, when you’re a civilian with a carry permit, is always a good idea even if it’s not a legal requirement).  Reasonable according to whom?  If you have a bad knee and your attacker is 18 and faster than you?  If you are outnumbered?  If you are in a stopped car and someone points a gun at you?  What is the “reasonable” course?  The answer – under the law in half of the states – is ambiguous, and entirely at the discretion of a county attorney.  It’s ambiguous.

And ambiguity makes bad law – just as it makes for lousy orders for soldiers. Which is why Rules of Engagement are so detailed.

Soltz claims that “Stand Your Ground” gives citizens more protection than it gives soldiers in the field.  Leaving aside the apples-and-axles non-sequitur of trying to compare the situations, he’s 180 degrees wrong; “Stand Your Ground” removes ambiguity from the citizen’s case, giving them a similar standard (not “the same” – combat and self-defense are not the same) as the soldier has.

It’s another entry in the library of chanting points the left is trying to use to keep the Martin case alive as a wedge issue.

Read Soltz.  Judge for yourself.

NBC identified and whacked a fall guy for the fraudulent, narrative-based editing of the George Zimmerman 911 call we talked about last week.

NBC News has fired the producer it deemed most responsible for the airing of a selectively edited 911 call placed by George Zimmerman the night he killed Trayvon Martin.

Sources at NBC who asked not to be identified confirmed a New York Times story saying that a Miami-based producer was fired Thursday, though the sources refused to identify the former employee.

In the original 911 call, Zimmerman is heard describing Martin as such: “This guy looks like he’s up to no good. Or he’s on drugs or something. It’s raining and he’s just walking around, looking about.”

The dispatcher then asks: “OK, and this guy – is he white, black or Hispanic?”

“He looks black,” Zimmerman responds.

The version NBC ran, though, was much shorter and did not include the question posed by the 911 operator.

“This guy looks like he’s up to no good. He looks black,”

In other words, the producer who let the narrativizing of the news slip out too clumsily was sacked.  The executives whose policy “narrative-based news) actually is are still being chauffeured around New York.

Hot on the heels of yesterday’s revelation that NBC altnered the tape of George Zimmerman’s 911 call to bump up the “Racist” factor comes the news that Zimmerman didn’t say “It’s a f****ng coon”, but rather “It’s f***ng cold“.

CNN cleaned up the audio from the 911 call.  I took a listen to it.  While some quibble, it seemed pretty clear to me that Zimmerman was saying it was “f****ng cold”.  You be the judge.

If that’s the case – and I believe it is – then what we have here is a case of the media (aka “Obama’s Praetorian Guard”) committing a series of calculated lies, or at least making a curiously congruent set of unwarranted assumptions, that might not have been carefully designed to whip up racial tensions on the part of blacks (to draw their attention away from their catastrophic unemployment rate under Obama) and against civilian gun ownership (so as to make white liberals like “Spotty“, among many others, care about just another dead black kid) – but it’s hard to see how events and news would have unfolded differently if they had been trying.

We saw all of this here in the Twin Cities last fall with the Evanovich case; until Mike Freeman, the Henco prosecutor, exonerated the shooter, the local media was doing its absolute level best to whip up exactly the same combination of racial and anti-gun frenzy.

I was going to invoke Berg’s Seventh Law: “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.”  But it doesn’t completely appliy.  It’s actually a contender to be a corollary to Berg Seven, if not a law unto itself:

“Any time the liberal media (to say nothing of leftyblogs) “reports” on guns or race, they should be distrusted but verified.  And then, almost invariably, distrusted some more“.

I lost count of the cases in point decades ago.

There used to be firearms ranges in the Twin Cities – places where shooters could go and practice and, perhaps more importantly, teach the kids how to handle and, even moreso, how not to handle guns.

Metro-area DFL governments have pretty much squeezed out all the ranges within 20 miles of the Twin Cities proper.  Today, with the exception of Bill’s Gun Range in Robbinsdale, you have to drive to Burnsville, Lakeville, Blaine and such (along with a private club in Oakdale with some public shooting hours) to find a public range.

Not a few of those old ranges – Braemar in Edina, for example – were absorbed by Twin Cities law enforcement; they became ranges for cops.  They’re maintained at public expense.  And while cops need plenty of practice with their firearms, it’s not like the ranges are hopping 24/7.  There’s slack time (not that the cops shouldn’t get some more practice yet).  And since the public is paying for that unoccupied time, why not give the public access to the ranges they pay for?  If only for the safety instruction that, statistically, saves vastly more lives than any gun control measure?

And so Tom Hackbarth sponsored a bill that’d open up ranges to the public for firearm safety instruction.

And the bill was debated for an hour yesterday.

And during that debate, Assistant Minority Leader Kim Norton claimed that it would cost either $500,000 or $1,000,000 to convert these ranges for public use; according to various accounts, either Norton raised the figure in mid-debate, or a metro DFLer did.

That’s right – in the special little world of the DFL, you need to convert a range (which was a public range, in the case of Braemar among others) to handle civilian bullets.

Clearly the Sheriff’s Association wants this bill killed.  Public ranges aren’t for the public after all.

And if you’re a parent in North Minneapolis or Frogtown who wants to teach your kids gun safety?  You gotta drive and drive and drive and pay and pay and pay.

Because the DFL doesn’t want all those pesky brown-skinned people to know how to handle guns.

Fifteen years ago, as the Minnesota Personal Protection Act (aka “Concealed Carry”, which is a misnomer – it’s really “Shall Issue”) started picking up steam in Minnesota, it also started picking up detractors.  Many of the names involved were exactly the same bunch that’s bagging on “Stand Your Ground” today.  They predicted, as is their dismal wont, blood in the streets and shootings over fender-benders and bla bla bla.

Sound familiar?

Judging by the record of the 94,000-odd carry permittees in Minnesota over nearly a decade, they were as wrong then as they are now.

Anyway – in 1997, I challenged any liberal detractor of “Shall Issue” to a debate in any forum on the facts and merits of the issue.  At that point, I wasn’t even a small-potatoes D-list basement pundit; I was a guy writing on a politics list-server.   Nobody took me up on the challenge.

Things have changed a bit; I am that small-potatoes D-list basement pundit.  And I’m still right on the issue.

And I reiterate my challenge.  I will take on any liberal detractor of “Stand Your Ground”, in a debate on the actual facts and substance of the issue.  (That’s a bit of a trick, there – the left’s case really has few facts and less substance).  We can have the debate in any mutually-agreeable forum – my show, your show, at Old Mexico or the Ramsey County Library, or on the steps of the Capitol at dawn for all I care.

The only qualifications?

• I don’t get a check from Soros or the Flying Koch Brothers, so it can’t interfere with the day job.
• I’d prefer it to be versus an intelligent lefty who can carry on a factual argument for more than one round of factual exchange (if that) without breaking into name-calling, which rules out “Two Putt Tommy” and 2/3 of the rest of the Twin Cities leftyblog community.
• We’ll agree to a format beforehand. I’m not going to waste either of our time on a shouting match or mindless harangue if I can avoid it.  I do better than that.  Can you?

The “Million Mom March” – which, lately, draws fewer “moms” than pro-gun activists to its “events” – and “Citizens for a “Safer” Supine Minnesota, famous for never having once published a single fact in any of its press releases, and whose leader (and, let’s be honest, only member) Heather Martens has given this blog ten years of too-easy material, have had to “merge” (hahahahaha).  They are “Protect Minnesota“, now.

Rumor has it that they had to change the names in large part because their old names have become so utterly synonymous with dishonesty and providing false information.

This blog is happy and proud to have contributed to that.  And I dedicate its next ten years to extinguishing the group completely, preferably by humiliating them into an inescapable political shame spiral.

Although a little bird at the capitol tells me Heather Martens may be doing that herself; she reportedly approached a prominent Republican lawmaker with a model bill that was an attempt at a compromise on “Stand Your Ground”; Ms Martens claimed it had been approved by the NRA.

The lawmaker called the NRA.  They’d never heard of it, and did not approve.  Martens had lied, not that this surprises anyone who’s read this blog over the past ten years; if Heather Martens drops a hammer and claims it will hit the floor, don’t buy it until you hear the thump.

Just saying – it’s hard to humiliate an organization like “”Citizens for a “Safer” Supine Minnesota”…er, “Protect” Minnesota, when they do it so well themselves.

Long before the Trayvon Martin shooting started dominating the headlines, gun law reform was in the news in Minnesota, and had already spawned a smaller, more “Barney-Fife”-y version of the disinformation mill that has been sweeping the nation these past few weeks.

I and the rest of the Minnesota Second Amendment community have been playing whack-a-mole for months now, as one dishonest public official or in-the-bag cop or another misinformed/disinforming editorial board excrescence essentially spreads the same vacuous chanting points.

Usually, whether the issue passes (like concealed carry) or not, it dies down between the final passages/vetos and the next session – because none of the people who write for the other side really know much about the issue other than what they’re told.

The Martin shooting has extended the disinformation season even here in Minnesota, though, as the DFL and media try to find a wedge issue to get their base frothed up and to try to peel off the uninformed, not-very-curious ones part of the swing set – the ones voted for Mark Dayton in 2010.

Which brings us to a piece from over the weekend at the MinnPost, by one Thomas Weyandt, a former St. Paul City Attorney’s-office prosecutor who’s  joined the cottage industry of instant pundits with opinions on gun laws:

With the national uproar over the Trayvon Martin shooting in Florida, it’s a good time to take another look at the expanded Castle Doctrine bill that almost became law in Minnesota. Ours would have been even worse than Florida’s “Shoot First” law.

It’s an inflammatory statement.  Let’s see if he packs the factual gear to follow it up:

But first, my qualifications before I explain why. I was an assistant city attorney for St. Paul for 34 years. In about 1996, I became interested in the lack of knowledge of gun laws by police, prosecutors, defense attorneys and judges. I did a study of the results of 676 cases my office had prosecuted and then wrote a manual on how to do it correctly.

His auto-bio speaks of 30-odd years in workmen’s compensation law for the City of Saint Paul – but a “special interest in gun crimes”, leading to a book on the subject, “Investigating and Charging Weapons and Gun Cases“.  Book?  Manual?

Whichever.  He’s setting himself up as an expert..

I have taught police, prosecutors and defense attorneys at a number of classes. I also was involved in the prosecution of hundreds of gun crimes during the last 10 years of my work with the city. Since retiring, I have been a consultant to a group that deals with gun laws at the Legislature.

Odd that he doesn’t favor the reader with the name of the “group” with which he “consults”.  I’m tempted to wonder if it’s “Protect Minnesota”, whose leader, Heather Martens, may be among the most discredited lobbyists on the hill – because she so habitually lies.  If so, that might be why Weyandt doesn’t give us the name of the group.  I’ll check up on that.

(UPDATE:  It’s “Protect Minnesota“, all right – check down in the “2009 Background Check Bill” section.  They’re hawking his “book”, in CD form.  Weyandt felt the need to buttress his credibility by proclaiming himself a “consultant” on the issue, but not to tell you he “consulted” with a group that’s been fighting a bit of an “Aboslutely No Credibility” issue for the past decade or two).

He also doesn’t say how he, a work-comp attorney, was “involved” in that prosecution.

There are two things to keep in mind as we proceed through Weyandt’s article:

1. To A Lawyer, It’s As Much About The Information The Jury Doesn’t Get As What They Do:  A good trial lawyer never asks a witness a question whose answer he doesn’t know in advance.  They can also spend as much time arguing about the instructions the jury get about the law relating to the case as they do about the case itself – to make sure the jury doesn’t get the information that doesn’t help their case.  In this case, the “jury” is “the MinnPost’s audience”, and he’s already left out one key bit of information, the “group” with which he “consults”.  What else has he left out?  Oh, we’ll get to that.
2. There Isn’t Just One Law:  Law really exists at three levels in this country; the Constitution puts down the basics.  “Statutory” laws passed by Congress, legislatures, county commissions and city councils fill in the implementation details.  And then “case law” – the stuff that makes lawyers rich – covers all the nuances that law develops over time and application to real-world situations.   We’ll come back to this.  Oh, yes, we will.

Hypothetically, here:  Let’s say that a Neo-Nazi – let’s call him “Tim Stevenson” – gives a rabble-rousing speech at a tiny meeting of neo-nazis.  He rouses the skinheads and flat-earthers present to a fever pitch of hatred against “N****rs, Kikes, Wops, Spics, F****ts, C**holics and Immigrants”, calling for their expulsion from the US – peacefully, if possible, not-so-peacefully if not.

Stevenson – at 60 years old a small man, 5’7 and maybe 150 pounds, with a law degree from the U of M and closely-cropped hair – is a truly hateful man.  He also has a spotless criminal record, and has a Minnesota permit to carry a handgun; “believing rotten things” is not a condition for denial.  As hateful as his beliefs are, he’s never been in a physical fight in his life. He’s got a little .380 in his pocket.

After his speech, and after coffee and coffee cake with the assembled louts, Stevenson leaves the meeting, walking out onto a cold, dark, wind-swept Brooklyn Center street to get to the parking lot, a block away.  He’s being followed, he notices, as he tries to walk toward the parking lot, by a large woman in a “trench coat mafia” duster. His spidey sense, augmenting his far-left Nazi paranoia, kicks in; he walks a little faster.  The woman walks faster still.  Stevenson breezes through the stoplight to get across the street to the parking lot; the woman breaks into a jog, yelling “Hey!”

Stevenson turns, and notices the woman appears very aggressive.  He starts backpedaling, toward his car, yelling “what?”

“I’m coming for YOU, Stevenson!” the woman – Hannah Rothenshteyn-Gabler, 29, a 5’11 former rugby player and current competitive bodybuilder, bellows.

(By an odd coincidence, a video production class was just letting out in a building across the street.  Seven people with video cameras happen to videotape the entire incident, from a variety of angles, with crystal-clear audio, albeit with a style overly derivative of early John Sayles).

At this point, it was Stevenson’s opinion and perception that something bad would happen if he waited to meet the woman.

Stevenson backpedals, yelling “DO NOT ATTACK ME!  HELP!  DO NOT ATTACK ME!” – because while Stevenson may be a neo-Nazi, he did pay attention in concealed carry training; he remembers the part where his instructor said “when you’re carrying, you have to turn into the biggest p**sy in the world”.  “HELP!  DO NOT ATTACK ME!”

As he backpedals through the parking lot, he can’t see the banana peel, left earlier in the evening by a littering driver, lying in his path.  As he backpedals, he slips and falls squarely on his butt, sprawled on the ground, dazed for a shaved instant.

Rothenshteyn-Gabler runs up to where Stevenson lies on the ground, and pulls a 16 pound sledgehammer from under her duster, and hefts it above her head.  “I am going to pound your brains into silly-putty”, she says.  “And then I’m going to soak what’s left of you in gasoline and light you on fire!”, she bellows, preparing to smash the hammer down on Stevenson’s face.

Feeling himself – in his opinion, informed by his perception of what was going on – to be in imminent danger of death and great bodily harm, having established that he was an unwilling participant and making a very credible and reasonable effort to try to run away, Stevenson pulls his .380 and fires one shot.  It hits Rothenshteyn-Gabler in the head, killing her.

Stevenson calls the police, who detain him, but review the evidence – including the seven videotaped accounts – and note that Stevenson behaved correctly in every possible way.

But the Hennepin County Attorney brings charges – Second Degree Murder.  Stevenson’s lawyer mounts an affirmative defense, a “self defense” claim, noting that yes, Stevenson did shoot Rothenshteyn-Gabler, but…:

• Stevenson  was as reluctant a participant as it was possible to be.
• He’d made an extraordinary effort to retreat.
• He had a freaking sledgehammer above his head, and an attacker who was clearly ready and able to use it, putting him in very reasonable fear of death or great bodily harm.
• He fired exactly one shot, enough to end the threat – so his force was “reasonable”.

The prosecutor got up to respond.  “But ladies and gentlemen of the jury – while the defendant meets all four criteria of the self-defense claim, HE IS A NEO-NAZI!  I mean, come on!  He’s a NEO NAZI!  He HATES Jews and women and blacks!  HE’s A NEO NAZI!  A NEO NAZI!”

Two questions for you, the audience:

1. How does the jury rule – bearing in mind that Stevenson’s beliefs, reprehensible as they are, had nothing whatever to do with the fatal encounter itself – personal beliefs don’t justify deadly attacks, right?
2. How would the story be any different had the “Stand Your Ground” bill passed?

For the first:  If the Jury doesn’t nullify the law and ignore that, noxious personal beliefs aside, Stevenson acted correctly?  They’ll most likely acquit him; hateful as he is, he obeyed the law.  There are no guarantees with a jury, but given impeccable behavior, he could prove the correctness of his actions.  He’d make his lawyer a little wealthier, of course.

For the second?  The lawyer would have to come up with a better argument, one that hinged less on “HE’S A NAZI”, and more on proving his fear wasn’t reasonable.

Tha’ts really about it.

I bring this up because some local leftybloggers want to ignore the facts and pretend that the first part is what matters, when it suits them.

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