Category: Grass Roots
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Obvious + Impossible
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…
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Hypothetically Speaking
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails about a story I’ve been wanting to touch on all week: You know those “Good Guy with a gun” stories that Liberals scoff at as Sexist White Supremacists Compensating for Something? This Edina woman isn’t scoffing. If only there were some way society could assume responsibility for protecting the…
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Attention, North Carolina Democrats
There is only one reason to not vote for Mark Robinson for Lieutenant Governor this fall. And that reason is racism. Carry on.
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These Are The Barricades
The similarities in demographics in population between Virginia and Minnesota are inescapable. Both states are large, solid red expanses of land and people, surrounding small, densely populated democrat dominated Metropolitan areas. And of course, both states have Democratic parties prone to going wild on orgies of spending and power grabbing whenever they get unfettered power.…
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The News
The Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus podcast is back. I know this, because I am producing and ‘anchoring” it this year. The first of what should be weekly podcast during the legislative session is out today – A look ahead at the legislative session starting tomorrow with chairman Bryan Strawser and political director Rob Doar. Check…
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Quiz Time
Think you know MInnesota gun laws? Take the quiz from the MN Gun Owners Caucus and find out how you stack up.
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Limited Time Offer
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails: The recent synagogue shooting has Jews thinking about buying a gun. Fine with me; but a gun is not a rabbit’s foot. Simply having one in your possession doesn’t avert bad luck. You need to know how to use it. I’ve been shooting for more than 40 years. I…
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Surge
Big Left wants to believe – or, more proximately, wants the public to believe – that the National Rifle Association – America’s oldest civil rights organization – is on the wane. It‘s just not so: The National Rifle Association’s four flagship magazines added nearly 350,000 subscribers between February and June of this year, reversing more…
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It’s A Start
Americans like their guns: The Small Arms Survey estimates there are 393,300,000 civilian-owned firearms in the United States. The survey, performed by the Graduate Institute of Geneva, estimated the United States military has about 4.5 million firearms. It put the number of firearms owned by police throughout the United States at just over 1 million. That means American civilians own nearly 100…
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Old White Guys
Let’s give credit where credit is due – the Strib’s Richard Chin did an excellent piece on my good friend Sarah Cade yesterday. Cade is described as a “young, biracial and passionately liberal…gun nut” – and is a great face for the changing population of shooters and 2nd Amendment activists in Minnesota. Cade, a millennial…
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My Day At The Gun Rights Rally
I took a very very rare Saturday off from the NARN (with a pre-recorded show) to attend the big gun rights rally last weekend. The rally – co-sponsored by the MN Gun Owners’ Caucus, the NRA and the RNC – drew around 3,000 people. The Strib, sure as can be, called it “hundreds”; it was just…
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When Making Your Plans For Tomorrow
Tomorrow is the Gun Owners Rally at the Capitol. Big Left has sunk a lot of money into Minnesota, thinking they can roll back the 2nd Amendment rights for the law abiding that the good guys have won over the past 20 years. It’s our chance to show just how wrong they are. How important…
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Just Like Old Times
I couldn’t make it to the hearings today down at the Senate Office Building – but the guys at the MN Gun Owners Caucus have been sending pictures. And the story they tell is heartening. The good guys outnumber the Dreamsicles pretty heavily; the MN Gun Owners Caucus has adopted a black T-shirt design, and…
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Freedom Friday
The record number of background checks received by the National Instant Check System indicate – the second record in a row set on Black Friday – indicate enough firearms were sold in one day to outfit every single active duty Marine: According to the FBI, over 200,000 background check requests associated with the purchase of…
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Chalk It Up To Video Games?
Millennials trend left on everything but guns – where they turn into Real Americans. Polling in gun politics is notoriously murky—much lies in the crafting of the question—but demographers have consistently reported a conservative streak in millennial attitudes on guns. Respondents aged 18-29 are the least likely in the country to support a renewed ban on assault…
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Represent!
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails: Texas woman shoots dead an armed home invader. A private citizen using a pistol for self-defense? That’s gonna mess up Penigma’s narrative, right there. I think it was more Dog Gone’s narrative, although they shared some elements. At any rate – Ms. Gone’s narrative has been moot for…
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The Gang That Couldn’t Not Shoot, Straight: Thanks For The Marketing!
During the many years when Representative Heather Martens ran “Protect” Minnesota, the organization developed a reputation as being dodderingly, genially incompetent – like a neighborhood garden circle where everyone forgot to bring gloves. In the year or so since the Reverend Nancy Nord Bence took over at “”Protect” Minnesota, the image has morphed into a…
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Pistol Protocol
Joe Doakes emailed me this request: The case is over. The next one hasn’t happened, yet. This is the time to restart the conversation about the Pistol Protocol. Please run this letter on SITD. Joe Doakes So here is the letter: Open letter to politicians, cops, citizens: I write to enlist your support for law-abiding…
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Why I’m A Second Amendment Voter
I detest litmus tests. I always have. They’ve always struck me as a way to avoid needing to think too hard about things, especially politics; as a way to avoid having to deal with the nuances that are inevitable with a realistic appreciation of the world around you. But over the last year years, Second…
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Wages Of Complacency
With the collapse (for now) of the Democrat majorities in Saint Paul and Washington, and especially the election of a pro-2nd-Amendment president, with the concomitant appointment of a suitably pro-2nd-Amendment replacement for Antonin Scalia, the threat to our Second Amendment rights has ebbed just a bit. The pace of gun purchases and carry permit applications…
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The Mission For Today – And The Next 10 Months
As this is being published, there’s a hearing going on down at the State Office Building. With that in mind, let’s run down the current situation for the two Second Amendment bills we’ve been following: Deadlines And Commitments: As of today: “Constitutional Carry” is pretty much dead for this session; House Public Safety passed it,…
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Time For Some Action
Gun owners. When we’re on the defensive – as we were 3-4 years ago, here in Minnesota – we are the most motivated people in politics. We make people sit up and listen – or we throw them out of office. But when times are less perilous? It’s another story. And it’s understandable; unlike…
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Grassroots Win!
After being the targets of a whooole lot of Bloomberg spending (and a few Dreamsicles pestering them), the Savage City Council last night dealt a humiliating rebuke to Moms Want Action, Everytown, and Bence’s Biddies, refusing to even take up a proposed gun store ban within city limits. This from the MNGOPAC: Thanks to the…
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“You Won’t Be Seeing Me Again”
The FBI released the details of their initial investigation into the Saint Cloud mall mass stabbing last month, including the first public look at the store video. MPR News covered it. Warning; the video is graphic, if you haven’ been completely desensitized to violence: The investigators also praised Jason Falconer. Falconer’s actions are instructive to…
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Neerja Bhanot
It was thirty years ago today that Neerja Bhanot won India’s highest honor for bravery in peacetime, the Ashoka Chakra Award when her jetliner, Pan Am Flight 73 from Mumbai to the US, was hijacked by terrorists from Abu Nidal, who were specifically targeting Americans. Wikipedia takes up the story: After 17 hours, the hijackers opened fire…