He had a lengthy series of convictions, many of them disqualifying him from holding, much less owning or buying firearms.

He was in violation of an order for protection – itself a crime.

He had a history of same:

Gregory Ulrich was already subject to every restriction, sanction and consequence a “Red Flag” law can provide, and then some.

And still he shot up the Allina Clinic in Buffalo yesterday – a “gun free zone”, by the way – killing one and injuring several. He was prohibited from having, buying or owning guns by state and federal law, he was subject to at least one restraining order, and he built bombs – itself a very, very serious federal felony.

In short – when people say “we already have laws in place that do literally everything a “Red Flag” law is supposed to do”. Gregory Ulrich was a case in point.

Which didn’t stop Metro Minnesota’s political class from plying their dismal trade – exploiting crises:

And we, the good guys, implored our political class “learn the facts before you start jabbering about policy”. What good did it do us?

The Carver County sheriff pointed out in various news conferences yesterday that a “Red Flag” law would have been about as useful as a “Miss Minnesota” tiara on tow truck driver. Which ensures that Carver County’s sheriff won’t be getting any more live feed time.

…I’d be passing the hat to get David Hogg…

…to transfer or drop out.

But have no fear, Master Hogg. Logically, factually and intellectually, the intellectual foam pillow that is your worldview and movement has been on Mars for quite some time now.

David Hogg, who has built a very rewarding career slandering law-abiding gun owners, is his immense expertise from “gun safety” to industry. Seeking to “own” Mike Lindell [1], he announced last week he seeks to start a pillow company.

Last Friday, it turned out Hogg’s big idea had run into the same roadblock as his gun control agenda – reality:

That Harvard education is serving the lad well, isn’t it?

Turns out Americans can unify on one thing – gunning up.

Even in Minnesota?

Perhaps especially so.

the numbers: The National Shooting Sports Foundation tallied more than 37,600 statewide requests to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System in January — nearly double from 18,990 in January 2020.

It wasn’t just January: More than 380,000 background checks were recorded here in 2020, up 49% from the previous year.

380,000 NICS checks in 2020 is more than one for every ten eligible Minnesotans (over 21 with a clean criminal record).

Feel that #Unity

“Protect” Minnesota has a new executive director.

We’ll come back to that.

Modern American “progressivism”, like all its many forebears in the past 200 years, has been all about rallying people against boogeymen. From “monarchists” in the French Revolution, to “Wreckers” in Stalin’s USSR to the Wobbly’s “Bosses”, up through “the patriarchy” and “the man” and “counterrevolutionaries” in Red China and San Francisco in the sixties and seventies, and if you have a hard time distinguishing between ’em, join the club.

Today, the boogeymen…er, boogiepeople on the left are pretty much all the things that people who are included are told to be “anti”. “Anti-Racism” “Anti-Misogyny” (not just sexism, anymore – it’s the more active, more malevolent noun these days), “Anti-Fascism”, “Anti-Transphobia”, and on and on – all of which sounds like good things to be “anti”…

…and, unsurprisingly, when you dig into the “Root Causes” of all those nouns, all things trace back to “Western Civilization” in all its particulars: the Judeo-Christian value on the individual and their worth, value, rights and responsibilities and potential of each and every person, as a person with a mind, a point of view, and at the end of the day an indivisible soul of personal, societal, political, intellectual and metaphysical worth.

Those aspects of humanity are anathema to progressivism in all its flavors. The focus is on the group – the Marxists “classes”, the Nazi’s irreducible focus on race, the modern academic Left’s obsession with a byzantine network of intersectional identity groups. The individual is nothing but a vote (for now), an appetite, a widget to be moved through the production line of life (like Obamacare’s awful caricature of Progressive humanity, “Julia”). Progressivism is “Materialist”. Souls, individual intellects and thoughts and reams, all are ephemeral; humans are widgets that consume and produce, and whose worth and value (to those in power) is expressed via their membership in the collective.

Those widgets have a term. “Bodies”. Not people. Not brains. Not souls.

Bodies.

Anyway – “P”M has a new director. And unlike the dotty, dizzy neverending font of comedy that was Heather Martens, or the serial fabulist The “Reverend” Nancy Nord Bence, the new director presents us with a few surprises.

She’s “a gun owner herself” – which might be seen in several ways. Is “P”M moderating? Are they realizing that the culture war has slipped far enough away from them, especially over this past year, that they have to start speaking to people who need to be convinced?

And she’s apparently incredibly famous, since she apparently just goes by “Rashmi”. I’ve turned “Protect” Minnesota’s website, Facebook feed and other social media upside down, and not been able to find any reference to a last name, which is Seneviratne, by the way.

But even during the reign of the serial fabulist the Reverend Nord Bence, “Protect” MN wasn’t nearly extreme enough in its hatred of guns and (law-abiding) gun owners, enough for some people.

“P”M spawned a breakway group, “Survivors Lead” – basically a woman, Rachel Joseph, with a long history of progressive activism and a story; an aunt who was murdered, according to Ms. Joseph’s story, by a gun.

Quick aside: I don’t minimize anyone’s trauma over having a loved one murdered. But in the many times I’ve heard Ms. Joseph’s story, she’s never once mentioned a perpetrator, someone actually holding and using the gun that killed her aunt; that persons evil motivation, the legal fallout from the murder, whether that person was sentenced or not. It’d be wrong to crack wise – “what, did the gun animate itself?” – but omitting a perpetrator, his/her motives and the like from the conversation is incredibly intellectually dishonest.

Anyway – “Rashmi” and her apparent moderation are not going over well with “Survivors Lead”:

The extreme heckling the not-as-extreme about getting less extreme. That qualifies as “dog bites man”, at the very most.

Rather less so? There followed some more, er, ethnically pointed traffic on one social media feed (from which I’ve long been blocked) or another.

After which “P”M – operating through its usual social media persona, the omniscient third person that used to be Martens and Nord Bence – responded:

On the one hand, watching the agents of Big Left eating each other is one of my favorite spectator sports.

And if the biggest semi-organic anti-gun group in MInnesota (shaddap about Moms Want Action already) is pivoting from pushing Linda Slocum’s gun grab bill to highlighting the inequity of gun control (“Race, class and geography all play into who gets to have a gun and who doesn’t” – which is something every Second Amendment activist has known for 50 years) and speaking in the first “person” to the prudence of victims of violence to arm up, then in culture war terms that’s the sound of the first tank crossing the pontoon bridge at Remagen.

But…”white bodied privilege?”

What the flaming hootie hoo?

I thought for a moment – is this a shot back at the Rachel Dolezals and Elizabeth Warrens of the world, with their flip-flopping identities, by “actual” “people of color”, reinforcing the idea that while you might “identify” with one degree melanin or another, your apparent appearance still wins out in the great privilege lottery (which will, I suspect, get pilloried hard by the Trans crowd, for whom perceived identity is everything? I’ll let the fight that one out).

But no. It’s much less hilarious than that.

It’s “inclusion language” – slang or argot that one class of people use to track who is in, and who is “out” – to be sure. That’s part of it, and people are noticing:

Referring to people as bodies is a reminder, writer Elizabeth Barnes says in an interview, that “racism isn’t just about the ideas that you have in your head.” Barnes is the author of “The Minority Body: A Theory of Disability, The Girl Behind the Wall.” In intellectual discussions, theories about social oppression sound almost disembodied; “we talk about prejudice,” Barnes says, “like it’s just a matter of ideas.” The point is to emphasize the physical violence done to black people through slavery, lynching, and police brutality. In the case of women, the term “bodies” highlights “what happens to women’s bodies in health care contexts, in sexual contexts, in reproductive contexts.”

But behond that?

It’s a nod to the materialism of the left – that the mind, the thoughts, the indivisible soul of the indivisual human being is not merely irrelevant, but inconvenient to the obsession with identity.

Your melanin defines you.

In some ways its a cheap ad hominem – “of course you’d think that, you are (add a reference to your target’s melanin, or lack thereof)”. But pointing logical fallacies out to the foot soldiers of Big Left is a little like arguing salinity with sharks; it’s just part of the water they swim in.

So – gun groups eating each other? Good.

The debate contributing to the ongoing hijacking of the language? Bad.

The whole thing participating, in its own little way, in the further erosion of one of the ideals that’s made Western Civilization the most successful, and humane , civilization in human history?

Worse.

Where did all the ammo go?

People hoping to get out the range without having to take out a second mortgage to afford to replace their stock are asking (as I might have, before all my guns fell into Superior).

The conspiracies are…colorful:

• Companies are stockpiling their product to drive up demand
• Ammo plants have shutdown completely
• Ammo companies are in cahoots to stop selling to civilians and are now selling only to the Feds and law enforcement.
• OJ bought all of it in his search for the real killers. 

The reality? More mundane:

Spread the word.

As we noted last week, “Stand your Ground” and ‘Constitutional Carry” bills have been introduced in the Legislature.

And they have a shot, potentially – there are enough red-district DFLers with legitimate fears of being retired in 2022 to maybe soften the DFL’s stance, and Governor Klink might need to weigh his fealty to the Progressives against gun control’s dismal record outside 494 and 694. A veto will be held against him, and every outstate DFLer, in 2022. Smart DFLers (like Bakk and Tomassoni) remember 2002, when every single outstate DFLer who opposed “Shall Issue” was defeated in the ’02 mid-terms.

Remember – it took seven years to get Shall Issue reform passed, culminating in the ’02 pro-gun election sweep.

Gun rights are a long game.

This, against a backdrop of 40% of gun buyers in 2020 being new purchasers, and 40% of them being women and, at least anecdotally, a substantial number of them being formerly ambivalent about firearms.

The left gets this. And so we get articles like this in the Strib – all but portraying Constitutional Carry as a tool of the Klan.

My suspicion? Big Left realizes they are losing the gun battle, and has to gaslight the minority who still opposes them into becoming more die-hard, to avoid losing more ground outside the Blue coasts and Chicago.

Imagine this: you are walking through downtown…er, Brainerd. It’s dark out, with a tinge of fog in the air.

A car full of rural youth with mischief on their minds rolls up and jumps out. One has a gun, another a baseball bat. They are making loud, aggressive, rural-youth-y noises.

In a split second, you discern:

1. Your life is in immediate danger
2. They, not you, are the aggressors
3. You being a middle-aged man or woman, and they being spry rural teens, you don’t reasonably have the means or opportunity to run away.

In a split second, you decide that your concealed handgun is the best way to resolve the situation – whether you shoot or not.

And after the episode is resolved – via the youths fleeing or, heaven forfend, violently – you call the police, lawyer up, and get ready for the process of proving to the prosecutor (if all goes well) or a court and jury (if it doesn’t) that your decision was correct.

Here’s where it gets complicated.

For the next several weeks a county attorney, sitting in a warm, safe office with a Keurig and stacks of law books and protected by metal detectors and deputies, working from the police report, will pick over the life-or-death decision you were forced, against your will, to make on a cold, dark, foggy night in Brainerd, with a grisly death potentially seconds away, to see if your attempt to flee was satisfactory enough under not only statute, but according to at least a dozen entries in Minnesota case law.

Your freedom for the next seven to life is at stake – to say nothing of your life’s savings, home, and your family’s future.

Seem reasonable?

If so – in what world? Seriously?

———-

Self-defense reform bills – SF 13 and HF131 – have been introduced in the House and Senate that would remove Minnesota’s ambiguous, legalistic and opaque “duty to retreat” requirement in self-defense situations – where the other criteria for self-defense (see the list above) are met.

They will NOT let people shoot people because they don’t like the way they looked at them.

They will NOT provide open season for the current usual cultural suspects (WhitesupremacistnazitransphobeKKKsciencedeniers) to kill people (indeed, in states with “Stand your Ground” laws, “people of color’ use them more often than white defendants – successfully).
There is literally no *rational* reason not to pass this measure into law. Reflexively chanting “Duty to retreat! Duty to retreat!” will earn you an invite to re-read the opening scenario.

If you’re in Minnesota, contact your legislator.  I imagine most of you know yours, but the MN Gun Owners Caucus tool above has a legislative contact tool that’ll find ’em in case yo don’t.  

It’s kind of nice to be on the offensive again, isn’t it?

(The bills are of purely intellectual interest to me of course – any firearms I may have owned fell into Mille Lacs last summer. And guns terrify me. I’d never own one again).

Imagine this: you are walking through downtown…er, Brainerd. It’s dark out, with a tinge of fog in the air. A car full of rural youth with mischief on their minds rolls up and jumps out. One has a gun, another a baseball bat. They are making loud, rural-youth-y noises. In a split second, you discern:

1. Your life is in immediate danger
2. They, not you, are the aggressors
3. You being a middle-aged man or woman, and they being spry rural teens, you don’t reasonably have the means or opportunity to run away.

In a split second, you decide that your concealed handgun is the best way to resolve the situation – whether you shoot or not.

And after the episode, you call the police, lawyer up, and get ready for the process of proving to the court that your decision was correct…

…during which time a county attorney, sitting in a warm, safe office with a Keurig and stacks of law books and protected by metal detectors and deputies, will pick over the life-or-death decision you were forced, against your will, to make on a cold, dark, foggy night in Brainerd, with a grisly death potentially seconds away, to see if your attempt to flee was satisfactory enough under not only statue, but according to at least a dozen items of Minnesota case law.

Seem reasonable?

If so – in what world? Seriously?

Turnabout

After a couple of sessions of playing on the defensive on gun rights, the good guys are going over to the attack.

A Self Defense Reform bill has been introduced at the MIinnesota State Legislature.

ACTION ALERT – STAND YOUR GROUND
BILLS INTRODUCED IN HOUSE & SENATE
Our Stand your Ground bill has been introduced in the Minnesota Senate by Senator Carrie Ruud (R – SD 10) as Senate File 13 (SF13) and in the Minnesota House by Representative Lisa Demuth (R – 13A) and Representative Matt Bliss (R – 5A) as House File 131.

This bill, known as Self-Defense Law Reform, or “Stand your Ground”, legislation simplifies Minnesota’s self-defense law by codifying the 10-12 court cases that interpret our existing statutory law while removing the ridiculous “duty to retreat” concept that requires Minnesotans to retreat from an attacker before defending themselves with force.

This is our Stand your Ground legislation with bill content honed by use of force and legal experts and backed by our years of advocacy experience.

Why propose the change to law? See the example above.

But why try to pass the bills now?

Future Math

You may ask yourself “Why? What’s the point? There’s a DFL governor, and the House is controlled by Melissa Hortman and Uncle Ryan Winkler?”

Think about it for a moment: the DFL lead in the House is pretty thin, and several of those DFLers are in distant suburbs that went for Trump, or are net-Red districts in normal times. And there’s history – in 2002, the gun rights movement pretty much extincted all the anti-gun DFLers, leading in short order to passage of Carry Permit reform in 2003. And that was at a time when the state wasn’t nearly as polarized on gun issues as it is today. And if Hortman causes the bills to be tabled in the House while it passes the Senate? That’ll be remembered in 2022.

And Governor Walz? If he vetoes such a bill, it’s going to be used as an electoral sledgehammer against every DFLer outside 494 and 694. And it’ll draw blood.

Turn Out

The MN Gun Owners Caucus runs an “Action Center” with info on contacting your legislators, as well as all the other things we can do to move the needle on this. Remember – Senate File 13, and House File 131.

Eventually the Legislature is going to get tired of replacing melted switchboards.

On the one hand, Democrats have (aside from any contrariness Joe Manchin may express) complete control of Federal government for the next couple of years.

What does this mean for law-abiding gun owners?

Well, they are certainly floating the trial balloons already. And Biden (and, perhaps more importantly, Harris) were pretty clear during the campaign: they want to ban “assault weapon”, clap arbitrary limits on magazine sizes, and make it possible to register guns and allow pretty much anyone with a personal beef to get your guns confiscated.

It’s in their DNA, of course. But I suspect there’s going to be a certain urgency about it.

For one thing, even before 2020 there was a solid case to be made that gun culture” is winning the culture war.

And while the mainstream media will never dig into it, there’s a solid case to be made that gun ownership and the culture that goes with it broke even farther out of its traditional white/male/30-60/rural niche and went even more widespread in society.

“First-time gun buyers favor Biden over Trump,” the Dallas Morning News reported of pre-election Texas survey results. “In fact, 51% of first-time purchasers surveyed favored Biden, while 43% favored Trump.”

As you might expect, this complicates matters for Democrats who have long used gun restrictions as an easy way to bash political enemies while doing minimal harm to their own constituents. With gun ownership becoming a nonpartisan taste, restrictive laws threaten to inconvenience and anger supporters as much as opponents.

Sure enough, “Americans’ appetite for gun control is the lowest it has been since 2016,” according to Gallup. And while a large majority of Democrats still favor tighter restrictions, support has declined even in that group by five points. New gun owners, along with long-time shooters, are likely to respond to stricter gun laws with prickly defiance.

And this bit here – which is something I’ve been hoping would evolve for a loooong time:

“Previous studies have proposed two sides of gun culture: one focused on recreational use and a second on self-defense. But the new BU study identifies a third mentality, made up of people who view the defense of the Second Amendment as necessary to freedom in the United States,” Boston University (BU) announced last summer. “This so-called ‘gun culture 3.0’ has increased the most in states that have strengthened their gun laws to the greatest degree, suggesting it may be triggered by perceived threats on individual liberty by the government.”

So my thesis – call it aspirational, if you want, because you’re not wrong – is that the Progs who now control the wheels and levers of federal government need to make their move now, because they may not get another chance.

And given that depending on Joe Manchin’s sympathies (and perhaps a few other relatively moderate Dems in the Senate), the difference between a bill being “Law” and “Oppo research ready for the 2022 campaign to extinct every non-metro anti-gun candidate between the Hudson and the Sierra Madre” might be one vote? That might just moderate the push.

I’m hoping not, of course – I want the progs to put their cards on the table, and have it blow up in their faces in two years.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Does this look like $125? On the other hand, they were delivered right to my doorstep when I know there’s none to be had within a hundred miles, so I’m not complaining.

Not for me, of course, since I lost all my firearms in that tragic canoe accident a while back. Stocking stuffers for the boys and son-in-law. Should be a pretty good Christmas this year.

Joe Doakes

$1.25 a round? I’ve seen 5.56 higher than that. That’s some good shopping.

We may have to talk.

Hypothetically, I mean.

To some observers, gun rights were on the brink of going viral, and in a positive way, before last March. Gun ownership, gun culture, and the notion that the right to keep and bear arms is not merely an essential, but a normal part of regular civic life, were on the ascendant.

One could even point out that the extreme anti-gun stances in “Blue” America were a reaction to that ascendancy in most of the country.

Then came the twin pandemics – Covid and violence tolerated with a nudge and a wink by Blue city governments…

…and it would seem gun control has, itself, been shot in the foot.

It’s not all good news – given that Biden has pledged to be a gun grabber, Big Left may well see that this may be their last decent chance to disarm the nation.

SCENE: Mitch BERG is standing, socially distanced, in line at the Q-Fanatic Barbeque in South Minneapolis. Focused on the smell of the delicious brisket, he’s caught by surprise as Avery LIBRELLE walks in behind him.

LIBRELLE: Merg!

BERG: Oh, shhh….sure enough, it’s Avery. What’s new…

LIBRELLE: You wingnuts are paranoid. [Switches to that condescending coo-ing voice that “progressives” use as they parrot this particular chanting point] Nobody is coming for your guns.

BERG: Why do you say that?

LIBRELLE: You said the same scare tactic of Obama, and he never came for your guns.

BERG: Obama had some blue seats in red states to defend – had he let slip his inner id on guns, he’d have extincted them. Well, extincted them faster, because in a lot of America a “blue state Democrat” is a little like a “dodo bird driving an AMC Gremlin”.

LIBRELLE: So – he didn’t come for guns!

BERG: He was a lot of things, but not politically stupid.

LIBRELLE: Biden is even more centrist on the issue than Obama was. So no [switches back to the condescending coo-ing voice] Nobody’s coming for your guns.

BERG: So that’s your final answer.

LIBRELLE: Of course. Paranoid wingnut.

BERG: Got your phone handy?

LIBRELLE: I lost it. Let’s use yours.

BERG: Naturally. [Pulls up Joe Biden’s campaign site, scrolls down to paragraphs 6-10]. Go ahead and read that.

LIBRELLE: [Silently mouths the words]

BERG: Either you’re lying and he is coming for our guns, or he’s lying on his campaign website.

LIBRELLE: Well, of course he’s coming for…those guns.

BERG: So in one line, you’ve gone from [mocks the cooing tone] “nobody’s coming for your guns” to “we’re coming for the guns a bunch of people who don’t know the difference between a firing pin and a crochet needle think you don’t really need to have“. That was fast.

LIBRELLE: [Mocking tone] All right, you got me. Joe Biden’s gonna break into your house and take your guns.

BERG: So in two lines, we’ve gone from “Nobody’s taking your guns” to trying to mock me for catching in covering, badly, for your own lie.

LIBRELLE: Trump banned bump stocks.

BERG: Bad Trump. Don’t change the subject.

LIBRELLE: Hey, can you lend me ten bucks?

BERG: Why?

LIBRELLE: I need to run over and buy some spray paint to paint to paint “Meat is Murder” all over this place.

BERG: Ask them [BERG points a thumb toward unamused counter guy]

LIBRELLE: Oh, great idea. I…

But BERG has already left.

And SCENE.

Wouldn’t it be funny to hear her say, “No, I do not own A gun. Not one single, solitary gun. I own a Mighty Shitload of guns, and have ammo for all of them! So There!”

Joe Doakes

As long as she drags the SCOTUS into giving strict scrutiny to gun rights cases, I don’t care if she’s got her grandpa’s .25 automatic diassembled in different parts of her house.

But Joe’s right – ACB having a collection that rivals Ted Nugent’s would be pretty cool.

Record number of women and minorities seeking concealed carry permits.

When Harris gets elected and her first Executive Order bans all guns, will the New York Times headline read, “Women and Minorities Hardest Hit”?

Joe Doakes

Should Harris/Biden win, and the Senate flip, and given the left’s predilection to overreaching when they get power, I suspect the first mid-term is going to get pretty sporty for any Democrats outside major metro areas.

I suspect that’s why Big Left has been trying to beat down the NRA, frankly. Not that that’ll help ’em much.

…when a politician slips up and tells the truth.

Whenever a Democrat condescendingly coos “nobody’s coming for your guns”, remember – always tack a tacit “yet” onto the end.

The first requirement of an orderly society is order which must be imposed by an impartial judiciary.  That cannot happen when the judicial system is afraid of violence.

***

Old:

From: Chief Judge
To: All Employees

You may have read or heard that the Court House was locked down today for about 15 min. After a sentencing hearing on a homicide, the families of the defendant and victim engaged in a dispute that was broken up by deputies. Soon after, gun shots occurred on Wabasha and 6th St.  Deputies locked down the courthouse as a result of the gunfire. It is not clear to me if the events were related. 

Based on information I have received, no one was injured and bullet casings were collected. The matter is under investigation. It appears that at no time was our courthouse security compromised. The deputies took swift and appropriate action throughout this disturbing incident.

New:

From: Chief Judge Joe Doakes
To: All Employees

In the past, when the judicial system was subject to violence, we hid and hoped to be killed last.  From now on, when a violent situation arises, all employees shall report to the nearest Arms Locker where the Master at Arms will distribute restraints, gas masks, and weapons, at which time use of deadly force to protect both judicial property and employee lives is authorized.  Employees may stand their ground to do so; the requirement to retreat is suspended.

***

That ought to help. Now, let’s talk about the George Floyd trial, and about Supreme Court nominees.

Joe Doakes

The policies that’d go into effect if Mitch Berg were in charge – suffice to say it’d be more than judicial branch employees.

Once the governor declared “state of emergency” related to the breakdown of public order, the order to retreat would go the way of the Hibbing chopstick factory, and the sign of a weapon in the hands of a violent mob would serve as reasonable threat of death or great bodily harm, and one’s property would be every bit as defensible as lives.

Make me Governor, and this, I promise.

When law-abiding citizens realize they can’t count on their government for justice – and they are – they’ll establish order for themselves. As we noted earlier, that isn’t always a “good” thing in any sense a modern American would understand.

But for the first time since the thirties – the seventies, in some quarters – people are thinking about it:

NSSF president and CEO Joe Bartozzi spoke at the 2020 Gun Rights Policy Conference over the weekend where he delivered the news on the surge in ammunition sales. He also noted that gun sales were 95 percent higher in the first six months of 2020 than they were during the same time period in 2019.

Bartozzi noted there were nearly five million first-time gun buyers in the first part of the year. He explained that “of all firearms sold to first-time gun buyers, 40 percent were sold to women and personal protection was by far the main purchase driver.”

He suggested there are a few driving factors behind the current surge in gun and ammo sales — one of the key ones being the anti-gun rhetoric of Joe Biden. He suggested Biden looks at gun makers as “the enemy” and recounted Biden’s vow “to bring them down.” He observed that the talk of “mandatory buybacks” of certain firearms is a driving force as well.

We noted some time ago that in most of the country – geographically, at least – gun rights have long since gone viral, and stand to win the parts of the culture war that’s taking place there.

Has the last six months moved the needle in Blue America? We’ll see.

Fleet Farm, Labor Day Weekend. No .22, .223, .357, .38, .40, . 45, 5.56mm, or 9mm. Cabellas, the same. None expected. 

People who have confidence in their civic institutions do not panic about defending their families. 

Democrats have much to answer for.

Joe Doakes

As we noted the other day – people seek order.  If government doesn’t provide it, they’ll do it for themselves.  That’s not always a pleasant thing. 

When people can’t trust “the system” to keep them safe, they take matters into their own hands.

Italian immigrants – with social, religious, linguistic and cultural impediments to assimilation, cutting both ways – brought their underworld organizations from the old country to get some order (at a price) in their lives.

Ditto the Irish in New York and Chicago, and Jews all over the place.

Blacks? Remember Malcolm X and the Black Panthers?

And now? Middle class Minnesotans of all races, creeds and backgrounds. are strapping up. Gun purchase background checks (which, remember, only apply to handguns and “assault weapons”; shotguns, varmint rifles and plinkers require no contact with the government) are up well over 50% between August 2019 and last month.

And – as we’ve observed elsewere – the new buyer is a lot less likely to fit the stereotype Big Left puts out:

Dave Amon, an agent at Gunstop of Minnetonka, said the demand shows no signs of slowing especially as the changing role of law enforcement is in the spotlight, the Star Tribune reported.

“I’ve seen a lot more single moms that are scared and need something to protect them,” he said. “They’re scared when people talk about defunding the police.”

Given how long the DFL has bet on gun confiscation in the past year – clearly drooling over taking control of the Senate – I wonder if this is going to slow down the rush to grab, or accelerate it to try to get ahead of broad social acceptance?

Being a pessimist, I choose “B”.

Via Gary Gross.

“Prog” columnist looks at the statute and the evidence, concludes Kyle Rittenhouse will likely be acquitted.

I don’t disagree – and find that there’s ample grounds for caution for all the rest of us that take the Second Amendment seriously.

I homed in on these two passages:

When [the first “victim”, Joseph] Rosenbaum, who was unarmed, finally cornered Rittenhouse, he grabbed for the teenager’s gun. Multiple shots rang out, and Rosenbaum fell, mortally wounded.

Did Rittenhouse have a reasonable belief under the circumstances that if Rosenbaum got his gun he would suffer death or great bodily harm? Jurors in Wisconsin are instructed that “reasonable” means “what a person of ordinary intelligence and prudence would have believed … under the circumstances that existed at the time.”

And this bit here:

A third victim, Gaige Grosskreutz, 26, of West Allis, Wisconsin, who survived, first held up his hands in a gesture of surrender at a distance of a few feet. In one of his hands, he held a gun. But when he “moved toward” Rittenhouse, prosecutors said, Rittenhouse fired, striking him in the arm.

That final shooting “will be the most serious problem” for Rittenhouse at trial, Kling said. ”The guy did have a gun in his hand. But he wasn’t pointing it at or threatening Rittenhouse.”

My first carry permit instructor, the last Joel Rosenberg, used to put it this way: “You’ll be making a life-or-death decision in a split second, likely under incredible stress, in the dark, with incomplete information. The prosector will have weeks and months in a warm, well-lit building, protected by metal detectors and deputies, to decide whether you were right”.

Another of Joel’s sayings: “Shooting in self-defense is a choice between losing your life, and ruining it”.

Because while there’s a lot of rhetoric about deterring the madness, to say nothing of resisting it, it’s still incredibly risky, and under normal circumstances – and even some garden-variety extraordinary ones – best avoided:

Overwhelmingly I hear from the professionals that their plan for dealing with riots and mayhem is “Don’t be there.” Check the ego. Back away from the social media siren call to “be part of the solution.” Inserting yourself into a riot (AKA “war zone”) where we now know there are armed violent criminals (often felons) who are there with the expressed intent to do extreme violence to someone is, in my view, just foolish.

It’s said that good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement. I sure have found that to be true a lot of times. In flying, we say you have a skill bucket and a luck bucket. You hope to fill your skill bucket before using up everything in the luck bucket.

For your consideration.

Just curious about the vigilance committees the NAACP formed in Minneapolis, after the riots. 

624.61 ARMED ASSOCIATION.

It shall not be lawful for any body of persons, other than the National Guard, troops of the United States and, with the consent of the governor, sons and daughters of veterans and cadets of educational institutions where military science is taught, to associate themselves together as a military company with arms, but members of social and benevolent organizations are not prohibited from wearing swords. Any violation of this section shall be a misdemeanor.

Should I expect to read about charges being filed, soon?

Joe Doakes

I’ve also noticed a certain…difference in tone in covering groups of “people of color” and immigrants (including a number that I consider friends) arming up to defend their property, and white people doing exactly the same thing with exactly the same motivation.

Pennsylvania county offers drive through carry permits, whereas in Ramsey County I had to make an appointment a month in advance and it took them another month to process it.

Joe Doakes

Minnesota government reflects the passive-aggression of its supporters.

Minneapolis Police Chief tells residents to prepare to be robbed, to hand over cars, wallets and cell phones, to obey criminals. 

Wonder if lack of law enforcement will affect the rape situation around the U of M?  Outstate parents still thinking of sending their daughters to college in Minneapolis might want to reconsider.
Speaking of reconsidering . . . do Minneapolis crime victims have any thoughts on reviving Stand Your Ground legislation?

Joe Doakes

It’s been a little depressing, reading the number of Powderhorn Park residents on some of the neighborhood social media who think that they deserve what they’ve got coming to them.

And when you think about it, they’re right, although not for the reasons they think. They think their “privilege” makes them justifiable targets.

Call it schadenfreud, but I say it’s “60 years of voting DFL as if it’s the only option you have”.

But there are a few that are getting the message.

The Czech Republic is debating implementing a constitutional guarantee in line with our second amendment:

A few years ago, the amendment passed through the lower house of the Czech parliament but was stopped in the upper house. The proposed language read as so: “The right to defend one’s own life or the life of another person with a weapon is guaranteed under the conditions laid down by law.”null

Since then, the center-right Civic Democratic Party has won a majority in the Czech Senate. And this week, the Czech government unexpectedly announced it would endorse the plan to add the language. The amendment now needs a 60 percent supermajority in both chambers to become — somewhat appropriately — only the second amendment to the Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms.

Former president of the Czech Police — and the most vocal champion of the bill — Martin Červíček, says that it’s meant to counter the “disarmament tendencies” of the European Union. Which sounds like a worthwhile cause.