If the story presented in this Wall Street Journal article is true, what happened at the elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, could have been prevented or greatly mitigated:

Local residents voiced anger Thursday about the time it took to end the mass shooting at an elementary school here, as police laid out a fresh timeline that showed the gunman entered the building unobstructed after lingering outside for 12 minutes firing shots.

12 minutes can be a lifetime. But it gets worse.

Victor Escalon, a regional director for the Texas Department of Public Safety, gave a new timeline of how the now-deceased gunman, 18-year-old Salvador Ramos, walked into Robb Elementary School, barricaded himself in a classroom and killed 19 children and two teachers.

Mr. Escalon said he couldn’t say why no one stopped Ramos from entering the school during that time Tuesday. Most of the shots Ramos fired came during the first several minutes after he entered the school, Mr. Escalon said.

And worse still:

Ramos shot his grandmother Tuesday morning and drove her truck to Robb Elementary School, crashing the vehicle into a nearby ditch at 11:28 a.m., according to the timeline laid out by Mr. Escalon. He then began shooting at people at a funeral home across the street, prompting a 911 call reporting a gunman at the school at 11:30. Ramos climbed a chain-link fence about 8 feet high onto school grounds and began firing before walking inside, unimpeded, at 11:40. The first police arrived on the scene at 11:44 and exchanged gunfire with Ramos, who locked himself in a fourth-grade classroom. There, he killed the students and teachers.

A Border Patrol tactical team went into the school an hour later, around 12:40 p.m., and was able to get into the classroom and kill Ramos, Mr. Escalon said.

Consider the implication of this timeline — Ramos essentially announced himself and his intentions from the moment he arrived, but no one stopped him for over an hour. And it gets worse:

Ms. Gomez, a farm supervisor, was also waiting outside for her children. She said she was one of numerous parents who began encouraging—first politely, and then with more urgency—police and other law enforcement to enter the school sooner. After a few minutes, she said, U.S. Marshals put her in handcuffs, telling her she was being arrested for intervening in an active investigation.

The Marshals deny this happened, but there’s more.

Videos circulated on social media Wednesday and Thursday of frantic family members trying to get access to Robb Elementary as the attack was unfolding, some of them yelling at police who blocked them from entering.

“Shoot him or something!” a woman’s voice can be heard yelling on a video, before a man is heard saying about the officers, “They’re all just [expletive] parked outside, dude. They need to go in there.”

We worry, quite rightly, about the fog of war in these instances. Much of the initial reporting is wrong. I am hoping the story told here is wrong; if it is accurate, there will be hell to pay. And quite rightly so.

To: Representative Dean Phillips
From: Mitch Berg, Irascible Peasant
Re: Show Us The Information

Rep. Phillips,

After wrapping Beto O’Rourke in unearned merit earlier this week, you’ve now gone full Napolitano: you “know” there’s a virtual army of spree killers just waiting to…

…well, let’s let you explain it:

That’s a pretty big accusation, Representative. Any chance you could share any testable substantiation of thousands of angry young men with guns?

Because that’s a pretty big accusation.

I think you’re full of crap. Feel free to show the world any information I’m wrong.

You won’t, and I suspect you cant, but here’s the challenge.

TIA,

Mitch Berg

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

The Constitution sets an age limit for Congress – must be 25 years old – and for President – must be 35 years old. Why? Because we want national leaders to have acquired the wisdom which comes from maturity, so they make responsible decisions. It’s hard to test for wisdom so we use age as a proxy. We do it for lots of important activities – sex, voting, alcohol, enlistment, marriage, contract – restricting people from engaging in those activities until they are wise enough to do them responsibly.

Lots of angry tweets about the Texas school shooter being able to buy AR-15 rifles within days after his 18th birthday. Why? Do they think 18-year-olds lack the wisdom and maturity to use rifles responsibly? Millions of responsible hunters and military service members cast doubt on that conclusion. What additional life lessons would the Texas shooter have learned between 18 and 21 which would have taught him it was wrong to kill his grandmother and then shoot up the grade school?

It’s not an age issue. It’s not a wisdom or maturity issue. He knew damned well what he did was wrong. He even told people on social media that he was going to do it. He did it anyway. What law can we pass, what age can we set, which will stop wicked people from committing evil? None.

So what can we do?

First, stop making soft targets. Gun Free zones sound good but a sign at the door doesn’t keep criminals out, it simply notifies criminals where the soft targets are.

Second, harden soft targets. Liquor stores hire off-duty cops. Pawn shops use two-room man-traps at the front door (they operate like airlocks on a space ship – second door doesn’t open until the first one is closed and somebody inside confirms it’s safe to open the second door). Why don’t schools have better security? Is gin more valuable than Jimmy? Is jewelry more valuable than Julie? Fire a Diversity Counselor and use the savings for structural improvements.

Third, harden staff. The qualities which make a great teacher – compassionate, empathetic, caring – are not the qualities which make a great protector. The guy guarding the door must be armed, trained, and mentally capable of opening fire on an armed intruder. S/He must instinctively run Toward the sound of trouble. There must be a few retired cops or Fallujah vets who could fill that role (or train others to do it).

Fourth, stop making soft-target-seekers by hardening police spokes-persons. After a mass shooting, the official response should be, “We have no comment because we won’t glorify the killer and inspire others to copycat. We implore the media not to do it, either.”

These are short-term responses. The long-term solution involves a change in societal attitudes. When I was a kid, every pickup in the school parking lot had a shotgun, for pheasant hunting before and after school. School was cancelled for Opening Deer Season because nobody would be there anyway, we were all out in the fields with guns. And there were never any school shootings, despite young people having guns, because we were raised differently, society was different then. I know what you’re thinking – okay, Boomer – but look at those tiny bodies in Texas and tell my why society today is so much better than in my day. I genuinely want to know.

Joe Doakes

Much more to come on this…

…but you knew this.

UPDATE: I got punked.

When I’m universal dictator, Reddit is sooooooo hosed.

But I will do it today:

The ignorant, stupid racists of The View got curb stomped.

Anything that causes that program pain is an objective good.

While Berg’s 18th Law is still in full effect regarding the Uvalde shooting, it appears that many of the usual check-marks apply.

The kid appears to have been bullied, and pretty troubled – in the sort of way that checks off some really tired cultural checkboxes. Berg’s 18th Law requires we treat all such revelations skeptically, and so I shall – but given what I’ve seen so far, the media will drop all conversation about the shooter by Monday.

While 30% of Texas schools allow teachers and other staff to legally carry their personal, concealed firearms, Uvalde and/or Robb were not among them. At the roughly 1,000 school districts in the US that allow teachers to carry their legally permitted concealed firearms, there were exactly zero deaths, or violent incidents of any kind, for about the 7,000th day in a row. But don’t you dare suggest that as a viable approach; that’s worse than dead kids, to today’s left.

I put out my thoughts and prayers to the people of Uvalde, and to every parent.

Doing that is, by the way, a “dog whistle” to much of the left. “WE DONOT NEED YER THOTS N PRYAERS, WE NEED AKSHEN” is usually how that goes.

It’s geometrically wrong, of course. Thoughts and prayers – or, if you prefer, analysis and reflection – is exactly what is needed when you face a seemingly intractable problem.

Part of our society has never gotten that.

Erin Preese is gonna show the gun rights movement what for:

All right. Let’s get taken on!

I’m just going to head out to her Twitter account…:

Like an amazing number of leftist candidates, she seems to have availed herself of some mass blocking service/list. I’ve never even interacted with her…

…and I’m already cast forth from her echo chamber.

So we’ve established this: “taking on the gun lobby“ means “parenting chanting points into the echo chamber“.

Anyone but me notice the number of “progressives” that positively celebrated the Ukrainian government giving out selective-fire AKMs to literally everyone who showed up in the parking lot to get one? Including left-of-center members of the Ukrainian Parliament, who were positively lauded for excercising (what NPR would never, ever refer to as) their God-given right to defend their lives, their families, their community and their freedom itself?

Note to fellow amateurs: the Javelin or NLAW missile, or even the Molotov Cocktail, are only useful against the tank if you can get your people into position to shoot, or drop, them on the enemy. And that takes the lowly rifle.

An analysis – amateur, but factually solid – on the role of “irregulars”, the type of people the late and unlamented “Dog Gone” used to refer to as “fat white guys with guns”, on the war in Ukraine.

It’s long, but it’s worth a watch.

During World War 2 in the Pacific, American GIs famously used verbal call-and-answer passwords with the letter “L” – “Calla Lillies” was a famous one – because the Japanese language has no such sound in it; it’s hard for Japanese-born speakers, even those relatively fluent in English, to make that sound.

Likewise, an easy way to tell if someone is from Western Europe is to see how they pronounce a phrase like “Think Through The Thoughts Thurman Thought Thirty-Three Times”. A German will work hard not to say “Tink Tru Da Tots Turman Tot Turty-Three Times”; a French native, “Zink Zru Ze Zots Surman Sot Zurty-sree times”. Neither language has the “th” sound like American English does.

But if America comes, heaven forbid, to blows over our social and cultural differences, the social and cultural divides don’t really break along linguistic lines.

So as a substitute, perhaps we’d have to try this; tell someone a bit of news like this, and see if they regard it as good news or terrible news.

That should tell you what you need.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

The comment embargo period under Berg’s 18th Law of Media Latency has expired. My comment:

Six people were killed and 12 others injured in a mass shooting on a street of bars and nightclubs in Sacramento, California, at 2:00 in the morning on April 3, 2022. Law enforcement sources say a man drove a car up 10th Streetnear the K Street Mall and shot from the car. Another man also fired shots. The shooting may have been intended for rivals but by-standers were struck as well. Smiley Martin and his brother Dandrae Martin have been arrested.

Smiley was charged with Possession of a Firearm by a Prohibited Person and Possession of a Machine Gun (a pistol recovered at the scene had been converted to fully-automatic fire). He was released from state prison in February on probation despite a 2017 felony assault along with convictions for possessing an assault weapon and thefts. Prosecutors said Martin has displayed a pattern of criminal behavior from the time he was 18.

Dandrae Martin, who was held without bail, was freed from an Arizona prison in 2020 after serving just over 1 1/2 years for violating probation in separate cases involving marijuana and aggravated assault. He is charged with Possession of a Firearm by a Prohibited Person and Assault with a Firearm.

“President” Lesko Brandon, in response to the shooting, declared: “Ban ghost guns. Require background checks for all gun sales. Ban assault weapons and high-capacity magazines. Repeal gun manufacturers’ immunity from liability. Pass my budget proposal, which would give cities more of the funding they need to fund the police and fund the crime prevention and intervention strategies that can make our cities safer. These are just a few of the steps Congress urgently needs to take to save lives.”

Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said: “Too many families and communities across the nation have been shattered by the epidemic of gun violence plaguing our nation, which steals more than 100 beautiful souls each day. Moved by the tireless activism of survivors and advocates, House Democrats have passed the Bipartisan Background Checks Act and the Enhanced Background Checks Act: commonsense and urgent action that will help end the bloodshed. Democrats will not relent until we enshrine this life-saving legislation into law, because inaction is not an option.”

NBA Golden State Warriors basketball coach Steve Kerr spoke out: “It’s just mindboggling to me that we can just continue to cater to the very small minority in this country,” he said. “Again, 90 percent of Americans, regardless of political affiliation, support background checks. We go through drivers’ school and drivers’ safety. And we have to apply for a license to drive a car. Nothing like that with a gun? … A lot of us are just angry.”

California already has the nation’s strictest gun laws, according to the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. The suspects are felons who are prohibited by state and federal from purchasing or possessing firearms. 100 spent casings were recovered from the scene. Prosecutors have not said how the brothers acquired the pistol or ammunition, both of which require identification and a background check prior to purchase, in California.

None of the people calling for more gun control laws explained how their proposals would have prevented the Sacramento tragedy.

None of the people calling for more gun control laws called for longer prison sentences or tougher parole standards to keep dangerous offenders off the streets.

None of the people calling for more gun control laws are serious about crime prevention, only virtue-signaling, which is a shame because America does indeed have a problem with gun violence. But the problem isn’t the guns, it’s the people using them to commit violence, a very small, distinct, readily identifiable minority of the population but one that simply cannot be criticized in polite society. So the violence continues, more innocents die, other innocents are stripped of rights, to avoid committing the gravest offense of all: speaking the truth.

Joe Doakes

Rahm Emanuel told Democrats to “never waste a crisis“.

It’s one rule they follow to the hilt.

Suwana Kirkland, DFL-anointed candidate to replace Dave “The Drunk Driver” Hutchinson, is running in a moldy blue country. She doesn’t have to worry about Real Americans votes.

So if she’s caught on camera snuggling with gun-grabbers at DFL caucuses, no biggie for her.

You just shouldn’t expect much new from the HCSO.

Well, less drunk driving.

Probably.

CORRECTION. I’m informed the woman in the HCSO uniform is Duwanna Witt. Not being a Henco resident, I’m not nearly as up on the candidates as I should be.

I regret the error.

Senator John Marty is apparently working hard to burnish his cred as a progressive extremist.

Yesterday, he introduced a bill to require licensing for gun owners.

And in it, he proved himself a word the successor to Wes “Lying Sack Of Garbage” Skoglund and the “Reverend“ Nancy Nord Bence, in that nut a shingle claim he makes is it simultaneously substantial, original and true.

Seriously:

“For young people, the 15-year-olds who can easily access guns now and commit armed carjackings and murders and other things, you know, they would have to go through training and they would have to go through a process to do this,” said Marty. “And, we would have limits so that some of these 16-year-olds couldn’t go out and buy guns.”

Anyone see the problem in the Senator’s statement?

Anyone at all?

I don’t want to keep seeing the same hands, here.

St. Paul man shoots daughters boyfriend after he allegedly barges into his house with a very bad attitude:

A 56-year-old man told investigators that his daughter’s boyfriend broke kicked in his front door, threatened his daughter, and he shot him.

Paramedics pronounced [“boyfriend” Kaleef] Barnes dead at the scene.

According to police, this killing marked the 13th homicide in St. Paul this year. Last year at this time, the city’s homicide count was at nine. Barnes’ shooting happened just hours after an unrelated shootingThursday evening in the North End neighborhood where one man was killed and another seriously wounded.

The case is still with the Ramsey county attorneys office. Coming weeks after the Hennepin county attorneys office declined to charge a woman for a self-defense shooting in her own home, and apparently declined to press charges against it would be car jacking victim, one might be tempted to feel encouraged that citizens are cleaning the cities up, just a little bit.

But Berg’s 18th law is still in full affect. We don’t know all the details, and if anything, John Choi may be worse at dealing with civilian self-defense shooters than even Mike Freeman.

So your metaphysical appeals in whatever form your worldview recognizes on behalf of the homeowner/citizen are encouraged.

Joe Doakes from Como park emails:

did everything right.

did not initiate conflict.

size disparity – reasonable fear of great bodily harm

attempted to retreat

used only the force necessary to end the attack – one shot

dug out her phone to call 911 immediately after

good girl, proud of her

Joe Doakes

To: Senator Warren Limmer, chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and the entire Senate GOP Caucus

From: Mitch Berg, irascible peasant and, hate to say it, guy who’s starting to feel like a bit of a chump

Re: Action

Senators,

Let me direct your attention back to 2002. The GOP had played safe on “shall issue” carry permit reform for years. But in 2002, just in time for those crucial midterms, the GOP doubled down.

The time was right. Every DFLer in greater Minnesota who opposed the bill in the 2002 legislature, got retired from office that fall.

OK. Back to the present. it’s 20 years later, gun rights are in the ascendant. Why are you acting like it’s 1996?

We need to talk.

I supported you. When your people called, I gave you airtime. I voted for you.

Enough of us did to keep you in the majority – last year, against incredible odds, when most of the smart money said we would be falling into the minority again.

A key part of that fairly miraculous performance was the fact that Minnesota’s hundreds of thousands of gun owners turned out for you, come hell or high water.

So here you are, now, sitting on a thin majority, heading into a midterm where all the signs show the people are chomping at the bit to get out and support red meat conservative issues.

So, Senator Limmer, why in the flaming hootie-hoo are you sandbagging us on stand your ground and constitutional carry?

Despite complete GOP control in the Minnesota Senate and years of promises to Minnesota’s law-abiding gun owners, the Senate GOP is not moving on important gun rights legislation.

Call Senator Warren Limmer, Chair of Senate Judiciary, TODAY and demand hearings on Constitutional Carry and Stand Your Ground.

Then visit our Action Center at http://gunowners.mn/action and send an email to your State Rep & Senator demanding action on this important gun rights legislation.

They’ve made campaign promises of support for these bills for years – let’s hold their feet to the fire to take action!

If I may speak frankly – and it’s my blog, so I certainly may – you have played it too safe, and squandered opportunities to move the needle, for far too long.

Please see to this ASAP.

That is all.

State senator John Marty – he of the radical gun control bill that the progressive caucus his flogging in the legislature, to try and fluff up progressive morale – took a picture at the “Moms Demand Action” rally in front of the Minnesota state capital earlier this week.

Here it is:

Pretty impressive photo.

But…it sure is a nice tight angle shot, isn’t it?

There’s a reason for that. Here’s the wide shot of the same scene:

Another angle? Sure:

Since roughly the 2002 election, gun control in Minnesota has been a mile wide and an inch deep.

And, at least in Minnesota, at least this year,, where Michael Bloomberg‘s money is going to states where they’ve got a chance of cramming down a symbolic victory, and not paying to drag “community groups” out for “spontaneous”, “community” protests, it’s not even that wide.

I’ve been obeying Berg‘s 18th law pretty religiously. I mean, it makes sense – I wrote it, right?

So when I saw this case – of a Minneapolis homeowner who shot a burglar in her backyard, several weeks ago – I went quiet on the case for a bit.

The story went a little like this: the burglar entered the woman’s backyard, couldn’t get into the house, and then broke into the garage. The homeowner went to investigate with a pistol.

So far so good. W

When the guy didn’t leave, she then fired four warning shots.

As the story goes, the man then advanced on the woman, causing her to shoot him with a rifle (whose arrival on the scene may or may not have been related to her son, who had been standing guard inside the house with a rifle, perhaps the one used in the shooting).

Clearly there is some part of the story that isn’t public knowledge, yet.

The media responded the way they frequently seem to dec cases like this – with a borderline hagiography of the deceident. Worst, the case was apparently investigated shortly after the shooting, and the Hennepin County attorneys office – one of the more anti-gun jurisdictions in Minnesota Dash declined to prosecute. At which point, “the public“ Dash read “Nekima Levy Armstrong”, according to some rumors, the de facto arbiter of all justice in Hennepin County – went to the county attorney and demanded another look.

So, possibly at second glance, the results are back:

Hennepin County Attorney Mike Freeman says they don’t have evidence to disapprove a self-defense argument.

“While this case is tragic, there is not sufficient proof that the homeowner and/or her son are guilty of a crime,” a news release from the county attorney reads. “Based on the evidence provided to our office, it appears the woman and her son would have valid self-defense claims.”

Not sure what we don’t know about this case, but it’s got to be interesting.

After a few fairly quiet years, gun control is back in the MN Legislature.

Alice “The Phantom” Hausman (who isn’t any better about being seen in 66A today than she was in 66B fifteen years ago, and whose upcoming retirement from office is greeted by many with “I thought she already was…“) has introduced the House version of a bill unreeled a few weeks ago by Senator John Marty.  The only real question this time around is “which gun control activist is she going to pick to introduce her bill in committee this time?”

So – in a year where people have had enough of crime, where gun sales and carry permits have broken all previous records, and when gun control in general is polling the lowest it has since it became an issue, about 55 years ago, why is Minnesota’s radical left suddenly going long on it?

I’ts simple.  Science. 

We’ll come back to that. 

Fighting For His Life:  Redistricting has pitted Senator John Marty (DFL-Roseville) against Senator Jason Isaacson (DFL-Suburb Full Of The Un-Bright).  In the scramble to reorganize around the new boundaries, they both have roughly 6-8 weeks to appeal to their party’s base – insane “progressive” extremists – to get the nomination to go ahead.  

It is a race to the bottom in ever since.  And Marty, on the subject of “who’s craziest about guns”, jumps out to an early lead.  He wrote this op-ed on some astroturf radical-left blog a few weeks ago outlining the philosophy behind his bill:

The recent conviction of the killers of Ahmaud Arbery is welcome news; it has been described as “justice being served.” The convictions were appropriate for the three white men who followed a young black jogger in their cars, confronted him, and then shot him. But it cannot bring back Ahmaud Arbery. Convictions alone cannot be seen as justice.

Beware.  A “progressive” is going to start talking about what “Justice” really is.  

When people – and in many states, the laws – allow armed people to chase others they suspect might have committed theft, and if they get scared about their safety in the ensuing struggle, kill the person they are chasing, we have normalized lynching.

What Marty has done, here, is take a couple of facts, and turn them into a bald-faced, inflammatory lie. 

You are allowed to chase thieves.  Even alleged thieves.  

And if you reasonably and immediately fear death, use only the force needed to end that threat, are not the aggressor, and in many states make reasonable efforts to disengage, you can defend your life.  

A jury found that the Arbery’s killers didn’t meet – or come close to meeting – the standard for self-defense (even given the antiquated pre-Civil War law allowing whites to chase blacks, which the defense tried in its desperation to use).   

If the rules in Georgia “normalize lynching”, they’re sure going about it the long way, since all three men have been “normalized” into life terms in jail, at the very least.  

So Marty’s lying. 

The killers in the Arbery case, like the killer of Trayvon Martin in 2012, claimed that they were authorized by the law to make what they considered a citizen’s arrest. In both cases, when the young black men being hunted down, undoubtedly frightened, resisted their assault, the killers said that they became frightened and needed to shoot as a matter of self-defense. The people who provoked the incidents claimed self-defense.

And again, Marty’s lying about the Martin case.  I won’t go through all the details…

…because Massood Ayoob already did, and with a level fo detail that everyone should bring to the table in trying to debate gun grabbers like Marty and Hausman. 

Although the courts convicted the killers in the Arbery case, our laws are encouraging vigilantism. Multiple states have enacted the NRA-backed “stand your ground” laws, where a person can shoot someone based simply on their subjective feeling that they are at risk, even if walking away and avoiding the confrontation was a reasonable alternative. In Minnesota, there are currently at least three proposed bills to adopt a stand your ground provision here.

Marty is not only lying, here – self-defense involves the “subjective feeling”,  provided a jury agrees that the feeling was reasonable, the fear was immediate, the shooter wasn’t the aggressor, and the force used was reasonable. 

And he’s playing word games.  Years of abuse of “science” have trained ignorant people with big vocabularies that “subjective” is a synonym for “inferior”.  I’ve had at least one person – with a PhD in Education, no less – say this regarding “Stand your Ground” laws. 

To which I respond “what ‘objective’ standard “perceiving an imminent threat’ do you recommend?”

It was a short conversation.  

These laws give people a sense of entitlement to bring high-powered weapons to public settings, ostensibly to protect themselves or other people or property. In the recent Kenosha case, Kyle Rittenhouse, the 17-year-old who was acquitted, felt it was his right to bring a high powered, semi-automatic rifle to a protest. Rittenhouse’s lawyer said that he did “nothing wrong.”

Marty’s lying again.  Rittenhouse’s defense claimed his shooting was justified.  A jury agreed.  

Stand your ground laws promote vigilante justice, and guns in the hands of racist vigilantes lead to modern-day lynchings. We need to repeal those laws and take a comprehensive look at how we regulate guns.

Marty is lying and preying on his audience’s ignorance.  

“Stand your ground” wasn’t a factor in Rittenhouse’s defense; he may have tried harder to retreat than any self-defense defendant I’ve ever seen (with the possible exception of this guy).  

And it wasn’t part of the Arberry case, either.  

Practically anyone can purchase an arsenal of weaponry powerful enough to gun down dozens of victims in minutes, including semi-automatic rifles and large capacity ammunition magazines.

And yet practically nobody actually does it.  

In a nation with more guns than people, if law-abiding gun owners were a problem, you’d know it. 

After so many years in which the gun lobby dominated the political system, it is a hopeful sign that we are seeing the beginning of a national conversation about gun laws.

As we’ve noted countless times in the past, whenever leftists start talking about “conversations about giuns”, they mean “they lie, scream, defame, slander and insulit; you listen”. 

Which is what Marty is doing.

Up next, Big Left’s inevitable deflection to cars:

As we work to promote safer communities, consider how we regulate automobiles. There are lawful uses for both guns and cars, but both are deadly when misused.

With cars, we require the operator to be trained, licensed, and insured. We register the vehicle, and re-register it when transferring to a new owner.

Except literally nobody says owning and driving a car is a constitutional right – a mandated “Right of the People”, on par with free speech, assembly, worship and the press.

John Marty should propose training for people to be allowed to vote. 

Licensing for the news media (that may be redundant these days). 

Insurance before worshipping. 

Make that dog hunt, Senator.  Then we’ll talk.  

We don’t have a gun registration system because the gun lobby has used fear tactics to fight even modest regulation. They say, “First they’ll register your guns, then the next thing they’ll do is take ’em away.”

Right. Just like they did with cars…

Well, no.  Just like they did with guns, in New York. DC, Chicago, and like they tried to do in California, Virginia and New York State.  Not to mention the UK and Australia, in the past few decades.  

But keep talking about cars. 

So what is Marty proposing (with emphasis added by me):

Here are some reasonable changes that are long overdue:

– Licensing gun owners and registering firearms, requiring training and insurance.

Which takes us back to having to get permission from a state functionary to exercise a constitutional right, and requires trust that a future administration won’t revoke the licenses and send cops around to the registered addresses to round ’em up at their pleasure.  

Like they did in Chicago, DC, New York City, Australia, the UK, and like they tried to do in New York State, California and Virginia. 

– Prohibiting people without occupational need or personal safety risks from carrying weapons, whether concealed or openly brandished, around the community.

This is just pandering to “Karen”.   There is an extremely negative correlation between carry by the law abiding citizen, with or without a permit, and crime committed by those citizens.  

– Putting a lifetime ban on gun ownership for people convicted of violent crimes.

This is just pandering to the ignorant; these people are already banned from owning guns until their rights are restored by a judge.  Someone convicted of a violent crime will have a pretty steep burden of proof to get a judge to restore their rights – outside Hennepin and Ramsey counties of course.  

Perhaps Marty should propose registrations, licensing and lifetime bans on judges that catch and release violent criminals?

– Banning certain dangerous weaponry such as large capacity magazines.

Which are, again, not correlated in any way with the street crime that accounts for most gun homicides.  

These modest proposals do not punish responsible gun owners any more than vehicle registration punishes responsible car owners.

And again, this is mealy-mouthed double talk.  Marty is lying.  He proposes confiscation of guns – which only happens to those who are law-abiding and responsible. 

But these proposals will help stop the arms race on our streets where gang members are more heavily armed than the police and where anyone with a temper or a minor grudge can end up murdering someone in a road rage incident.

Wait – what?

Gang members aren’t “responsbile gun owners”, or even legal gun owners.  Ands they will not be getting licensed, buying insurfance, or registering their guns.  

None of my audience needs to be told this.  And I suspect none of Marty’s audience gets the distinctionn

Regulation saves lives. Over the last 75 years, motor vehicle regulations have cut the traffic death toll by about 90 percent, based on the number of miles driven.

Logic isn’t a long suit of Marty, or anyone who votes for him.- but the distinction wouldn’t confuse a moderately bright fifth grader; the lawful, ordinary use of cars is prone to accidents.  Ensuring their safe use, and making cars themselves more accident. proof, will have an effect. 

Guns are designed to poke holes in targets, whatever that target is.  That’s their purpose. 

If gang members start running down crowds of people with cars, Marty’s analogy would be marginally less nonsensical. 

Speaking of nonsense, Marty is going to butcher the sainted memory of Justice Scalia:

Regulating firearms would reduce fatalities too. The U.S. Supreme Court has held that the Second Amendment gives an individual right to bear arms in self-defense, but that is not an absolute right. The court says that reasonable restrictions may be placed on the possession of firearms.

Commenting on Scalia’s dicta on the Heller decision should only be allowed to people with licenses and insurance.  

“Reasonable regulation” incliudes keeping them out of felons hands – prudent restrictions against objective issues.  

Not the sort of Karen-baiting ninnyism that Marty and Hausman are yapping about.

Blindsided Them With Science: So – why are Marty and Hausman going long on gun-grabbing, at the tail end of a decade that saw the most radical turnaround in public opinion in the history of the gun rights debate?

Polling shows that the public isn’t smelling what the DFL’s been cooking. Crime is making the Twin Cities – once the pride of the upper midwest, and crown jewels in “progressivism’s” CV, gradually unlivable.. Schools are collapsing, and the teachers union seems hell-bent on accelerating the unfolding disaster.

But the DFL has dealt with all of that before.

But there’s one more challenge – one the DFL hasn’t had to face in the past.

Science.

Let me explain.

After two years of lockdowns, mask hysteria, Vaccine Summer followed by Omicron Winter, and mandates, it turns out that pure, unadulterated science has found a cure for Covid-19: war.

And with the end of Covid, comes the end of the sort of bullying, log-rolling and virtue-screaming that validates and affirms the self-esteem of today’s generation of “progressives”.

With the end of Covid, and of bullying, log-rolling, of snitch-lines and the hierarchy of officially-blessed paranoia atop which they sat for two glorious (to them) years, their reason for existence has been undercut.

Marty senses – out of self-preservation, but not incorrectly – that trying to logroll and bully and harp on law-abiding gun owners (not gang bangers, nosireebob) might provide the sense of mission that events have so cruelly yanked away from Marty’s base.

Show me where I’m wrong.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

This author suggests Ukraine should have adopted the Finland model: every citizen a citizen-soldier. Makes sense to me, and also aligns with the “well-regulated militia” concept of the Second Amendment.

Point of order: the Finnish (And the very similar Swiss and Israeli) models presume that service in the military is part of a citizens duty to the stage, like paying taxes and serving on juries.

For millions of Americans, you wouldn’t even need to issue weapons. We have them already. Just give us a couple of weeks’ training in small unit movement, ambush basics, sniping, asymmetrical warfare, guerilla tactics. Conquest by invasion would be impossible. The Wolverines would prevent it.

Of course, giving people military training assumes the government trusts its own citizens and vice versa. Can we say that with confidence in America today?

Joe Doakes

We can, of course, assume those such thing; in fact, the Government/Media-Industrial complex has spent the last 40 years demonizing the concept of “the militia“ to a fine sheen – One might assume, to protect itself from any organized opposition. At the moment, the social cost of supporting, much less belonging to, a “militia“, are just too high, whatever the finer points of constitutional ideals, for the average schmuck.

Idaho bill would require prosectors to reimburse people with successful self-defense claims, whom they opt to prosecute anyway:

If enacted, the legislation would require the county or prosecuting state agency where the person was charged with a crime to reimburse the defendant for “all reasonable costs” if they are found not guilty by reason of self defense. Reasonable costs would include lost wages, the costs of any lost business opportunities and legal costs including bail, expert witness fees, attorney’s bills and other expenses. The bill also includes a “safety net” to protect defendants if they are sued by victim in a self-defense case, she said.

It’s intended to provide consequences for the sort of malicious, specious prosecution of people like Kyle Rittenhouse – cases with lots of political sturm und drang but little to no actual evidence of unjustifiable homicide.

For the first time in 2021, over 100,000 carry permits were issued in one year in the state of Minnesota.

There are currently well over 350,000 permits in circulation. in 2003, the MN House research department estimated no more than 90,000 would ever be issued.

That is close to 10% of all eligible Minnesota adults. which has to mean in greater Minnesota, at least a fifth of adults have permits.

Only 90% to go.Only 90% to go.

If citizens can’t defend their freedom, then they are not citizens. They are subjects.

The Canadian truckers have shown us that if they don’t have the ability to defend their personal finances from government opporession, they are not citizens. They are subjects.

And against even more drastic threats?

The Peasant Revolt of 1381 – in which peasants in what would now be the eastern suburbs of London rebelled against onerous taxation and government overreach (figuratively and literally) may or may not have been an impetus for the Second Amendment – but it certainly should instruct any study of the issue of popular power versus government authority.

This video explains the event; if you ignore the presenter’s obvious left-wing bias (trying to connect Margaret Thatcher and King Richard II is the kind of thing that plays better in a faculty lounge than in reality), the lesson is fairly clear:

And for people with ears to hear, the lesson remains clear: Ukraine, responding to a Russian invasion, has “granted” their citizens a right that can not be legitimately taken away in the first place.

Preparing for the possibility of a large-scale Russian invasion, the Ukrainian government has moved to declare a 30-day state of emergency, grant citizens the right to bear arms, and conscript military reservists between the ages of 18 and 60, adding nearly 200,000 troops to the country’s defense as Russian troops continue to enter the Donbas region.

Of course, the Ukrainians are implementing under duress what the Estonians have made a part of their national culture (although not, alas, in the sense of being an inalienable right, but more a matter of duty to state and people). Defending their freedom from Russia is an actual national hobby even in whatever passes for “normal times” on the Russian border (I’ve written about the article linked above in the past; it may be even more worth reading today).

This is the lesson: today, as in 1381 and 1776 and 1939, and in Ottawa today, your freedom is only as secure as your ability to defend it; legally, in courts via the Marquis of Queensbury rules of the legal system…

…or otherwise.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

The transformation of society from capitalism to communism requires a transition phase under a strong-man during which people are ‘socialized,’ trained to the new rules. Those who will not submit are purged. It’s said you can vote your way into socialism but you must shoot your way out. The Canadian Parliament just voted their way into socialism and the purges are under way. But Canada’s gun registration and prohibited gun laws soon will turn into confiscation, leaving the public with nothing to shoot. The road to socialism will be a one-way street Up North.

Canada provides a lesson in real time for those who think it cannot happen here.

Joe Doakes

Even many well-meaning “liberals“, as opposed to progressives, blinded by “normalcy bias“, are going to be surprised at how this next few years goes.

And as in Canada, freedoms only hope in the United States is in the west.

The big gun rights news this past week was the “Sandy Hook parents” winning is $73 million settlement from XXXXX.

Well I will defer to any lawyers on the finer points of this case, it appears to be more a matter of Connecticut law making the suit viable enough to make the settlement worth making.

Is it a precedent? Perhaps – in Connecticut.

This is further evidence, I think, of the thesis we talked about two years ago – how gun rights have won, and how the violent blowback in some of the bluer states is in fact evidence of that victory, as they overcompensate for the fact that gun control is on the wane nationwide.

Like all other gun control legislation (and the few gun control cases favorable to gun controlthat have gotten through the courts, in recent years), the proper response is to make sure a state law is clear on the subject.

And if blue states make the laws equally clear, to the point where it’s impossible to buy a firearm in Connecticut?

Well, then it’s up to Connecticut voters to fix that.

You know – to turn gun control into the same third rail there, in Connecticut, that it is nationwide, or at least to keep the issue in contention. Because in states with politically active gun rights movements, even seemingly unlikely ones, the battle is going very much the other way.

Joe Doakes from Como park emails:

Hatred in San Jose.

Key point: guns which are registered are subject to the law. Guns which are not registered . . . nobody knows about them so those owners need not comply. And criminals already ignore the law, so it won’t affect them at all.

The whole thing is stupid. If gun violence is the problem, they should simply ban gun violence. Leave responsible gun owners alone.

Joe Doakes

It’s nothing but red…uh bean sprouts for progressives.

Whenever your Democrat friends condescendingly coo “nobody is coming for your guns”, just remember – they’re coming for your guns:

Gun owners in Minnesota had a pretty easy session last year. This year, the Dems have to try to turn out their base. Grabbing guns certainly gets the Karens and Mascists and ninnies of the left lathered up.

More this weekend.