Our Elite Lefty Alt Media

After spending a few weeks going full-blown fanboy over the Pillsbury Foundation/Bloomberg Youth’s “gun buyback” last weekend, the leftymedia has its feelings hurt by the mockery the conservative alternative media (including this blog) has heaped on the “events”.

The piece, by the inevitable Corey Zurowski, is entitled “Gun fans mock Minneapolis’ buyback program over crude homemade shotgun” – after the shotgun that our Joe Doakes noted at one of the buybacks.

legal shotgun

Oh, we mock the buybacks for a lot more reasons that that.

We mock the buybacks because they don’t affect crime. Never have, never will.

They didn’t take any guns “off the street”; virtually all the people turning in guns were middle-aged folks from the surrounding area who were trading junk guns for more in gift cards than they’d ever get from a buyer.

We mocked the bald-faced graft – the transfer of money from Pillsbury Foundation donors and Minneapolis taxpayers (via the dozen or so cops that were working the “events”) to – let’s be charitable – “artists”, as well as enterprising rummage-salers.

We mocked the media (smile, Corey Z!) for their unability or unwilingness to dig past the press releases; at both buybacks they ran out of gift cards after *maybe* 10-15 guns were turned in. If the buyback “bought” more than 30 guns, no witness can confirm it. Most of the guns were garbage that were “donated”, AKA “thrown away” at the buyback.

The shotguns *was* functional – just go google “Slamfire Shotgun”; you can do it yourself. The homemade shotgun was a prank, a joke played at the (literal) expense of the smug, sanctimonious, ELCA-haired dreamsicles running the events – but probably the LEAST mock-worthy part of the event.

Oh, and we mock Corey Zurowski as a “reporter”;  in the caption of the photo of the homemade-yet-parodic shotgun ,he sniffed “Gun fans allege this primitive weapon was turned in a Minneapolis’ buyback event. There’s just no evidence that it actually happened.”

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Click to enlarge

But then, in the final paragraph of his own article, Zurowski carries a quote from the Minneapolis police’s public relations officer: “The gun in question was turned in,” says Minneapolis police spokeswoman Catherine Micheal. “Our people inspected it, found out it was operable, however crude the construction, and that’s why it was accepted.”

So yeah, we do some mocking there, too.

And it’s absolutely glorious.

Iowa “Minnesota” Flim-Flammers

We’ve written at some depth in the past about Minnesota Gun Rights – an astroturf fundraising group that raises a lot of money and generates a lot of strident social media about 2nd Amendment politics in Minnesota, but has never actually delivered any significant results.   A bipartisan selection of Minnesota’s most committed pro-human-rights legislators repudiated MGR a few years back.

In 2014, they dropped a few boxes of literature in the Roz Peterson race in Burnsville – and claimed credit for the victory.  This, and a couple of misplaced ads on AM1130, were their total effort that cycle.

In this primary cycle, they sent a lot of email to the Hackbarth/Bahr race, and also direct-mailed GOP activists in the Daudt/Duff race.

Well, guess what?

13876490_658436934304188_5987754586542672190_n

MGR is claiming credit for Cal Bahr’s victory over Hackbarth in HD31B – as seen in the social-media meme that’s been circulating all day today

Near as I’ve been able to find from my sources on the subject, MGR’s entire “campaign” in the Bahr/Hackbarth contest was email.

But let’s break it down:  Tom Hackbarth had:

  • become not especially popular in his district anymore
  • lost the endorsement of a district with a very well-organized party unit.
  • not lost the endorsement of either of Minnesota’s legitimate human rights groups (GOCRA and MNGOPAC/MNGOC), due to his flawless human rights voting record – but then, Bahr looks very strong on the issue, too, and both groups noted it).

So sure.  Of course a couple of emails from MGR did the trick.

Of course, MGR expended even more effort in the Daudt/Duff race next door in 31A, apparently even sending paper mail – a sign of real commitment.

And the results?  Daudt stomped Duff.

Rob Doar of MNGOPAC/MNGOC said in social media “[MGR] swung much… much harder at Daudt, who won with over 72% of the vote…If they had any sort of political power, it surely would have manifested next door in 31A.  They are riding coattails, spinning stories…”

Friends don’t let friends repeat MGR claims.

Whose Time Has Come

Church (synogogue, temple, mosque, where-ever) is the last place most people think they’ll have to confront violence.

But today’s world shows us that sometimes even when you don’t think you’ll be confronting violence, violence confronts you, whether you’re Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Sikh, or whatever you are.

Lt. Col. Rex Grossman will be conducting one of his “Sheepdog Seminars” in Shakopee this Saturday.  There are still tickets available.

And there’s a discount for GOCRA members – admission is $49.50 instead of $69.  If you need to join GOCRA to get the discount, by all means do!

 

Rights

I’m not going to talk politics, here. I’m going to talk morality and ethics.

First: as a general rule, it’s considered immoral to make someone accountable and responsible for something, but to withhold the rights needed to carry that responsibility out. It’d be wrong to say “raise this kid!” without giving someone the rights to, y’know, raise the kid.

Right?

Second: If someone said to you “I have the right not to be hit by a tornado”, you’d think they were nuts – right? Your rights don’t affect nature – do they?

Likewise, if someone said “I have a right not to get hurt while driving”, you’d likely respond “there is no “right” to be exempt from bad luck, equipment failure, or even human negligence – your own, or someone else’s”.

No – in both cases, you have the *responsibilty* to protect yourself, and especially your family, from these dangers that nature, technology and human nature throw at you. You listen to the sirens and haul the kids down to the basement; you check your tires, you make sure your kids are belted in, and yourself to boot; you watch for drivers who seem impaired or reckless, and drive defensively. You have the *right* to take action to meet your responsibility to *avoid* having human nature, mechanical nature, or Mother Nature harm you and yours.

So in this past week and a half, since the atrocity in Orlando, a lot of people have been arguing about the Second Amendment. One line I’ve heard a lot is “your Second Amendment right doesn’t trump my right not to get shot!”, usually from people who think they’re making a show-stopper point.

They’re half right; the Second Amendment trumps nothing. Literally. Because there *is* no “right not to get shot”. There is only a responsibility to try to deter, deflect or end threats to your community, to you, and your family.

Like Mother Nature, human nature is full of ugly surprises and perversions; people who want to take what’s not theirs (criminals), people who think that violence is a means to a political end (terrorists), some who think killing is their ticket to immortality (rampage killers) and, every so often, someone who thinks their will to power is more important than your life, liberty and happiness; none of them have the “right” to do any of it, but that doesn’t prevent them from doing it anyway.

Do you have a “right” not to be affected by the worst human nature has to offer? In an abstract sense, maybe – but discussions of “rights” with criminals, terrorists, madmen and tyrants are about as useful as discussions with tornados and flat tires.

You don’t have a “right” not to be affected by perversions of human nature, any more than you have a right not to be affected by tornados, earthquakes or blowouts. But you do have that responsibility.

To meet that responsibility, you have rights; the right to take actions that protect everyone; you don’t need a permit to check your tires, to take your kids to the basement when the sirens go off [1]…

…and the *right* to defend you and yours from the worst of human nature with a firearm (among many, many other options – from speech, peer pressure and dogs, to locked doors and motion lights, through restraining orders, police calls and the like). The Second Amendment doesn’t grant this right; our creator did, just like our rights to speak, worship, publish, and so on. To try to suppress that right – the right to uphold that responsibility to protect ones self, community and family – is as immoral as giving people any other responsibility without rights.

There is no more “right not to get shot” than there is a “right to shoot people” [2].

——

OK, I lied. There’s some politics in here too.

Some people who should know better have been given to stroking their chins and intoning “y’know, the 2nd Amendment exists and is a right – but we’ve rolled back other rights, like the right to own slaves”.

Sure – we’ve changed the Constitution. The 13th Amendment abolished the “right” to own other humans – an institution that was morally repugnant BECAUSE it stripped away the other human’s rights. Basic principle, here: one person’s rights can not infringe other peoples’ rights.

But abolishing the Second Amendment – or more likely, trying to ban a class of firearms – has less in common with the 13th Amendment than the 18th, which banned alcohol. Like Prohibition, the gun grabbers believe that if they just regulate what people can get their hands on, they can repeal human nature itself!

Prohibition made everything that it was trying to help, even worse, and had unintended consequences that were far worse than the original problem (all-time high crime rates, ballooning government spending, contempt for the law).

Naturally, this’ll be different.

Anyway – you don’t, ever, get more freedom by taking other peoples’ freedom away.

[1] although don’t give the Saint Paul DFL any ideas

[2] other than in self-defense, naturally

One For Your Mental Library

I commend this article – Why I “Need” An AR15″, from the left-leaning “Medium”, by apparently left-leaning writer Jon Stokes – to all of you who have an interest in the Second Amendment, pro or con.

Those of you who oppose the Second Amendment – or even just “assault weapons” – should read it to unlearn some of the complete fabulism that a sloppy and incurious (at best) media has brought to the subject.

Those of you who support the Second Amendment can fill in your intellectual war chest with some new arguments; as, indeed, I did.

For that matter, the disclaimer at the beginning is pure gold:

some 5 million Americans have decided that they do, in fact, “need” an AR-15. Are all of these people bloodthirsty savages? Delusional survivalists? Military fetishists? Insecure men with tiny… hands?

If you’re prepared to answer ‘yes’ to all of the above and consider the case closed, then please move on and don’t read anymore. This article isn’t my attempt to justify anything to you — it’s not a defense of what’s in my gun safe or of the AR-15 itself. If, for you, my AR-15 ownership is prima facie evidence of my mental instability, sexual inadequacy, lack of a conscience, or what-have-you, then I honestly don’t care what you think about this issue. You can go back to broadcasting your own moral superiority on social media, and I can go back to tuning you out until your rage therapy session is over.

(Nota bene: While my comment section is intended to be a vibrant, diverse conversation reflecting many points of view, comments I deem to reflect the point of view in the second-to-last sentence – AKA “stupid” comments – will be deleted without fanfare.  Disagree with me all you want.  Do it stupidly in almost every other post on this blog, past, present or future.   But not here.   That is all).

Worth a read.

Lie First, Lie Always: Audio Carnage

Andrew Rothman of the Gun Owners Civil Rights Alliance was apparently on WCCO yesterday.  “Protect” MN put out an email blast for its badly-informed chanting point bots to call in – which I doubt worked especially well.

StraightOuttaFacts

I was extraordinarily busy over the weekend, so I didn’t get a chance to listen.

But “Protect” MN’s email blasts are always low entertainment (emphasis added):

Dear Heinrich

Mr. Rothman is one of the most vorciferous

advocates for the gun lobby in our state.

And Nancy Nord Bence is one of the most vociferously bad spellers in Minnesota public life.

He makes his living teaching Permit to Carry classes and representing the most extreme views of the NRA at the Capital

No.  No, he does not.  He earns his living in a day job like the rest of us.

This is the level of accuracy one expects from “Protect” MN.

I may just listen to the podcast for the carnage.

If You’re Looking To Get Your Carry Permit…

…or are coming up for renewal, this is gonna be fun.

GOCRA is doing a fundraiser tomorrow – a Carry Permit training class conducted by Professor Joe Olson, the guy who wrote Minnesota’s carry permit law.

You will get, officially, the very best legal training on carry permit laws available – straight from the metaphorical horse’s mouth.

Proceeds go to the Gun Owners Civil Rights Alliance – the people who’ve pretty much single-handedly beaten the orcs in Minnesota for the past three decades.

Oh, yeah – registration ends today!  Get on it!

The Dreamiscle Ghouls

Today’s the day all the gun-grabbers have planned for their big…day.  They’ll be having their little events, wearing their orange t-shirts, looking a little bit like human Dreamsicles.  And they’ll be marching their marches, doing their speeches, yadda yadda.   I wouldn’t be surprised if the huge papier-mache heads turned up.

To pimp the event, The Rev. Nancy Nord Bence sent this out yesterday:

Dear Heinrich,
According to the Star Tribune, “In the first five months of 2016, 123 people have been shot in Minneapolis–97 of them on the North Side–compared with 65 during the same period last year. At the current pace, north Minneapolis will eclipse last year’s total of gunshot victims by late September.”

Let’s let that sink in.

At a time when Minnesota’s murder rate outside North Minneapolis has sunk to levels half that of Norway, and competitive with the rural west, the North Side is turning into Beirut.

Could we perhaps have a crime problem?

Why, of course we do.  Seems like common sense, doesn’t it?

What’s to be done about escalating gun violence in the urban core? How are we to protect the families and children living in communities where flying bullets and wailing sirens are becoming ever more commonplace?
There has been a lot of finger pointing: at the gangs, at the police, at the legislature. As I stated in a letter published in the Star Tribune yesterday, the problem is multi-faceted and requires a multi-faceted response.

That sounds almost reasonable!   Of course the problem is “multi-faceted”.  Everyone knows this.

And in fact, for a brief, shining moment, Rev. Nord Bence almost sounds like she’s aiming for “reasonable”.   She comes sooooo close…:

And everyone who understands that we can protect gun rights…

…before making the inevitable detour into loopdieland:

…without handing over our right to live in safe communities to the gun lobby, and that common sense gun regulation is absolutely necessary and long overdue, and that what is really lacking is not the knowledge of how to solve the problem of gun violence, but the courage to do so.

And right there, my bemusement and, let’s be honest, mild mockery turned into toxic disgust.  Behind that Dreamsicle Orange is a toxic hatred.

People are dying.   Children are afraid to play outside.  Near North is a shooting gallery.

And after disclaiming “finger pointing” at gangs, cops or politics,  The Rev. Nancy Nord Bence wants to blame it on “the gun lobby?”

What she’s saying is “people – mostly (but far from all) who live in places where the crime rates are plummeting as the number of legal gun owners soars – standing up for their Second Amendment rights is what is killing people in North Minneapolis”.  

The Rev. Nord Bence is using those bleeding, broken, largely black bodies to take a smug, dim whack at the “gun lobby” – which, in Minnesota, is “Minnesotans”.  

In her own way, The Rev. Nancy Nord Bence may be an even more toxic, irrational figure than Heather Martens; behind Heather Martens’ comical uninfored bumbling was a non-profiteer who really didn’t know what she was doing;  behind the Reverend Nord Bence’s ELCA hair and veneer of reason is toxic bigotry.

 

Like Protesting, But For Upper-Middle-Class, Kenwood/Crocus Hill Matrons

I made it down to the Senate Legislative Office Building – AKA the Tom Bakk Mahal – at 7AM this morning for the big Michael Bloomberg pep rally.

As usual, the Real Americans were out on the street at 7AM on the button.

As of 7:11AM – twenty minutes before the doors opened – there were five criminal-protection advocates, and over two dozen Human Rights supporters.

The Human Rights groups were there, showing a little Minnesota hospitality, distributing coffee and donuts to the assembled crowd, outside and (when the doors opened) in:

img_0200.jpg

Setting up the coffee stand at 7AM. The criminal-safety advocates liked the coffee and donuts as much as the Human Rights supporters.

Soon, the doors opened, and the lines formed inside to get the 250 tickets.

Of the first 50 or so people in the line, probably 3/4 were maroon-shirt-wearing Human Rights advocates. The criminal-safety advocates came dribbling in after 8AM, presumably after their sustainable yoga classes.

And it was kinda funny.

As we noted yesterday, this whole event – “hearings” called by Senator Ron “I Went To Harvard, You Know…” Latz in “support” of bills that can not go forward, because the committee deadline was several weeks ago – is a sham.  It’s a fake hearing.  It’s a pep rally for the Bloombergs, held up until late April because Bloomberg had to focus their money and time on states where they have a chance of affecting policy, few as they may be.  Minnesota is waaaaay down the list.

And I had a few observations.

“Turnout”:  As I noted the other day, Senator Latz scheduled this meaningless hearing at 8:30 AM on a Tuesday for a reason; he knows that Minnesota’s gun owners have jobs, kids, families and lives, and all of them need attention at 8:30 on Tuesday morning.

And that’s who turned out; about 80 working, middle-class Minnesotans – blue-collar, white collar, technical people, businesspeople, men, women.  Regular folks.

On the other hand, the gun-grabbers who showed up this morning fit two basic descriptions:

  1. Non-profit employees and other people being paid to be there
  2. Retired or semi-retired upper-middle-class white liberals with that “Volvo-driving Saint Olaf alumni ELCA church member from Crocus Hill / Kenwood / Linden Hills” vibe about them.

Why bring it up?  Because the  battle over guns is a battle between classes; between the “let me take care of myself and my family” class and the “you will take the rights we grant you and you will like it” class.

The criminal-safety supporters were handing out little “Moms Want Action” stickers. By the way – just try to buy a “Moms Want Action” T-Shirt, anywhere. While GOCRA hands out the maroon shirts to anyone for any kind of donation, or even no donation at all, the Moms pretty much vet applications for their t-shirts. They literally keep a database of Human Rights activists to not sell to. These two ladies, by the way, are right about the middle of the Moms’ demographic.

And the “Crowds?”   That was the interesting part.

This is the criminal-safety crowd’s “Lobbying Day” – the day they try to turn out their full force to descend on the Capitol.  By my count, they managed maybe 70-80.

Now – even though today’s bills don’t matter, and it wasn’t the Human Rights community’s lobbying day (we wrote about that about six weeks ago – GOCRA turned out two hundred for Gun Owners Lobbying Day last March) – which is kind of hilarious, “lobbying” when the committee deadline has passed – and it was a work day, the good guys, the Human Rights advocates, turned out about the same number of people.

On a workday.

For a meaningless hearing and a ridiculous farce of a Bloomberg-paid event.

Of course, had it mattered – like Michael Paymar’s gun grab bills three years ago – the good guys would have had 600 maroon shirts on the scene from 8AM ’til midnight.  Every time.

Who’s got the momentum?

Postshriek:  I had to leave before the hearings started; unlike most of the criminal-safety advocates, I have a day job with some actual non-political demands.

As I was walking out the door, I was on the cell phone with a friend who was asking about the event.  I saw a woman – sixty-ish, with a face that had not a single laugh-line in evidence, but plenty of frown lines and scowl lines, if you catch my drift.   She was carrying an anti-gun protest sign.

I held the door for her, as I described the crowd in my private phone conversatoin, in terms that expressed a little disbelief that this was the best the criminal-safety groups could manage.

The woman turned to me and said, uncomfortably loudly, “thanks for laughing at us!”

Somewhat non-plussed (and trying to multitask), I responded “you’re welcome”.

I mean, what was I supposed to say?

The Slow Advance Of Progress

Last week, Mississippi became the ninth “Constitutional Carry” state – allowing any citizen who is legally entitled to carry a gun to carry, without need for a state permit (which was the system in Minnesota until 1974, by the way).

And in the wake of that move, North Dakota legislators sound like they’re maneuvering to make the state the tenth state to not require law-abiding citizens to jump through hoops to exercise their Constitutional rights.

Rob Port:

I spoke with Becker about the legislation last night, and he said it’s an important issue for our state.

“A Constitutional Carry law removes the restrictions that are an impediment to ‘the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed’ clearly stated in the Second Amendment,” he told me.

If Constitutional Carry passes, and when – not if – it is a complete success, it will be much harder for Minnesota’s pro-dictatorship groups (ProtectMN, Moms Want Action, Everytown For Big Brother) to yap about it.

 

A Tale Of Two Rallies

Yesterday was Minnesota Gun Owners Lobbying Day – where Real Minnesotans came together to lobby their legislators to pass Second-Amendment-friendly legislation, and shun the stupid bills that Michael Bloomberg is paying for.

And since the legislature was busy talking about all the bills they were introducing, the other side – to the extent you could call it that – was also at the Capitol.

Let’s compare and contrast.

The Herd:  Here is the “group” from the pro-slavery group “Moms Want Action”.  12795444_968288993264081_1091895865801671749_n

Count ’em.   That’s 26 people.  And most of them were being  paid, directly (DFL pols, people on the Bloomberg payroll) or indirectly (cops representing the Police Chiefs Assocation) to be there.

If one-third of the people in that photo above were not present for vocational reasons, and being compensated in some way for their time, I’d be amazed.

In other words, at the most Moms Want Action drew eight “activists”.  And that’s being generous.

10557737_1307821325898351_1701097658400438802_o

Drone photo courtesy Dustin Doyle

The Pack: Meanwhile at the foot of the Capitol Mall, there was a different crowd – distinguisted by being an actual crowd.  It was GOCRA’s “MNGOLD” group – or as the sensible refer to them, the “Real Americans”.
1078558_968289009930746_361960396492997776_oI was proud and honored, by the way, to have been invited to be the Master of Ceremonies.   We were joined by an array of speakers, each of them authorities in their area of the issue; Speaker of the House Kurt Daudt (who pledged a lonely death for all of Bloomberg’s bills this session), Oleg Volk (who talked about life without freedom in his native USSR), Rep. Jim Nash, a second-Amendment leader in the House, Professor Joe Olson, the longtime leader of GOCRA, as well as GOCRA president Andrew Rothman and Rep. Tony Cornish, who noted “a bill won’t get passed if it never comes up for a hearing” – which, in his committee, none ever will.

I counted about 170 people – mostly younger, almost exclusively working people, outdoors in temperatures that hovered below 40 degrees as the rally started,  taking a few hours off from their mostly private-sector jobs to come and fight for freedom; most of the crowd, clad in their maroon GOCRA t-shirts, went straight in to the Capitol to buttonhole their legislators and let them know the votes they expected (and to thank the good ones for the pro-freedom votes they made, if applicable).

And not a single one of them was there because it was their job (other than the state’s NRA rep).

That is, conservatively (how else) about seven times the crowd of unemployed/underemployed wannabe social justice warriors and other layabouts that came out to work toward your enslavement.  Or more like 20:1, if you just count people there voluntarily.

If it’d been a Saturday – or a vital hearing – the odds would have been 2-3 times as strongly in the Real Americans’ favor.

Welcome to hell, pro-slavery activists.

High Noon. Today.

Come on down to the Capitol (lower mall) today at noon for Minnesota Gun Owners Lobbying Day.

There’ll be a few speakers – I’m MCing – but the important part is each of you.  The whole idea is this; we, the people, are going to head into the Capitol and lobby our legislators to support good gun bills, and oppose the stupid ones.

This has a huge effect on the legislature.  Having hundreds of the good guys in their maroon Gun Owners Civil Rights Alliance (GOCRA) T-shirts, all over the place really starts a few of ’em thinking (especially when they compare the crowds to the pathetic drizzle of nattering crones who show up for ProtectMN, Code Pink and Moms Want Action rallies).

So I do hope to see you down there.

High noon!

TANGENTIAL QUESTION:  I wonder how much street crime there’ll be around this rally?

Pig, Meet New Lipstick

There’s a new sheriff in town at “ProtectMN”.

She’s got size two shoes to fill.

And they’ll be having a party to talk about it tonight:

Dear Heinrich,
Come meet the new Executive Director of Protect Minnesota and learn how YOU can help prevent gun violence in our state. The Rev. Nancy Nord Bence is excited to meet you, share important information prior to caucusing on March 1, and hear your ideas for the growth of our coalition. Wine and appetizers will be provided.

After “Protect” MN’s last decade in the legislature, one might think the appetizer would be “crow”.

But I imagine they’ll be knocking back the vino, all right.

DATE: Thursday, February 25, 2016
TIME: Open House from 6:30-8:30pm

I’m pretty sure you need to be on the guest list to show up.

It’s right in the middle of the AM1280 Debate Party, so I won’t be able to attend.

Coincidence?  I think not.

LOCATION: Protect Minnesota Offices, 2395 University Ave W, Suite 204, St. Paul MN 55114. (That’s in the Security Building on the corner of Raymond and University.) Street parking is free after 5pm. Come to the entrance on Raymond Avenue and our doorman will let you in.
Hope you’ll join us!
The Rev. Nancy Nord Bence

www.protectmn.org

Welcome to the battle, Reverend Nord Bence.  I’ll extend you the same invitation I’ve been extending to your predecessor, Heather Martens, for the past decade; you can come on my show any Saturday afternoon and talk “gun safety”.  Hopefully you’ll be less pusillanimous than your predecessor.

And just to show you I’m all about the same goals you are, I’ll do this for you:

Audience Participation:  What advice do you, the smartest comment section in town‡, want to give Rev. Nord Bence?

Go!

‡  Well, most of you, anyway.

Why We Fight, Part I: History

In Charles C.W. Cooke’s fantastic piece in National Review last week on the power of emotion in the gun debate, he made an excellent point; facts and statistics aren’t enough.

We Real Americans absolutely crush the gun-grabbers at every turn on the facts and the statistics.

And it shows; the American people are casting off the detritus of decades of leftist, statist propaganda; gun control is now a minority position (and while support for gun control even at the worst was a mile wide and an inch deep, America’s shooters are passionate and committed), and the NRA is more popular than President Obama.

But it goes way beyond facts.

So this week, I’m going to leave statistics aside for a moment, mostly, and focus on the the philosophical, historical, and yes, emotional reasons to support the Right to Keep and Bear Arms.

Continue reading

They Wanted A Fight?

Kevin Williamson on the Democrats’ contempt for the rule of law, to say nothing of the First and Second Amendment:

If the Democrats want to do away with the Second Amendment, let them begin the amendment process and see how far they get. We should challenge them to do so at every opportunity.

In reality, the Democrats have declared war on the First Amendment, voting in the Senate to repeal it; they have declared war on the Second Amendment at every turn; they also have declared war on due process and, in doing so, on the idea of the rule of law itself, beginning with the notion of “innocent until proven guilty.” That isn’t liberalism — it’s totalitarianism.

That’s a winnable fight, and we should welcome it.

I’m just going to shut up and urge you to read the whole thing.

The New Poll Tax

The Anoka County Sheriff’s office has announced, to some fanfare, that they are lowering the fee for carry permits from $75 to $10 for people on active duty in the military.

Which, on the one hand, is great.

But then I had two thoughts:

Rights:  I support our military – especially their right to not be as undefended as a pack of hamsters when not covered by Rules of Engagement overseas.

But are they more entitled to their civil rights and liberties than the rest of us?  Should government be deciding which citizens have easier access to their Second Amendment rights, any moreso than one’s First, Fourth, Fifth or Fourteenth Amendment rights?

This is, in a way, a throwback to the bad old days, pre-2003, when a law-abiding citizens’a access to their Second Amendment rights – their ability to get a carry permit – was directly related to their clout and access to local government officials. It’s more benign, of course – it’s the same shall-issue policy once the fee is out of the way – but $10 is easier to cover than $75, no matter who you are.

That’s the danger when government gets into the business of doling out our freedoms to us instead of us doling its power out to it; it starts picking winners and losers.  And that’s what this is, even if we generally support this particular group of winners.

The Sheriff’s Nest Egg:  Sheriffs charge a wide range of fees around the state; Ramsey County is up around $100, along with most of the other Metro counties, if I recall correctly; others are much cheaper.

But the fee covers the cost of a department employee taking an application (which the applicant fills out), filing it, and at some point entering the applicant’s data into one or more databases to see if there’s a disqualifying hit.  Then the state prints and mails a card.

What’s the actual cost of this process, in terms of government time and materials?  Estimates vary – law enforcement is pretty tight-lipped about it – but it’s somewhere between $5 and $20.  And I’m no expert, but I’d say Anoka County has just given us a “tell” about the actual cost.

Which means plenty of Minnesota counties are putting away huge nest eggs of carry permit application fee money.   It’s become a tax on law-abiding citizens exercising their tights – not much different than the poll taxes that got ruled out of existence decades ago.

Congrats, Anoka County servicepeople, and enjoy your new benefit in good health.

But think about it, everyone.

Challenge Accepted!

This morning, I did something that has become almost as rote and perfunctory as showing that Nick Coleman is wrong about…well, anything; I fisked a Heather Martens op-ed.   It’s one of many, many such efforts, and I’m sure it won’t be the last.

But buried at the very, very bottom of the op-ed was something…different.

And Finally, Something Remotely True, And Historic!  We may have witnessed some history, here – Heather Martens closes out with something that is both substantial and true.

Although not in the way she might think:

Journalists ought to do their homework,

Yes.  If they did, they’d cut Heather Martens off from any further attention.   I’ve built a long history on this blog, over more than a decade, now, of showing you something that’s almost up to the level of a Berg’s Law; that Martens has never, not once, said a substantial, true, original thing about Gun Rights or gun issues.

But she’s finally said something that I agree with wholeheartedly.  And so should every shooter:  she wants the media to…

…force the gun lobby and its friends to defend their indefensible opposition to important new policies, and stop misdirecting the conversation by setting up straw men to destroy.

I agree!  It’s time for Heather Martens and the Strib to get to the facts [1]!

So on behalf of my friends in Minnesota’s gun rights movement, I accept Heather’s challenge; to set up a debate between Heather Martens and any gun-grabber activists or lobbyists she wants to bring along, and a couple of us from the Gun Lobby:  perhaps Joe Olson, Andrew Rothman, Bryan Strawser and/or myself.

There, the journalists and activists can force us to defend the policies we support, live on camera!  Allow both sides to question, and cross-question, each other, live and without a net!

Heather Martens; for all of the flak I’ve given you over the past decade and change, this is your brilliant, shining moment.

This is too important to skip!

Heather Martens:  Challenge Accepted!

PS:  Naturally, we’ll charge admission, and donate the proceeds to a mutually agreed-upon charity.

Continue reading

The Endless Drip, Drip, Drip Of Heather Martens

Just because Michael Bloomberg and all his money have decided to put Heather Martens on the sidelines in Minnesota’s Second Amendment “debate” doesn’t mean that the Twin Cities media isn’t dutifully lining up to give her a smooch on the hindquarters; she had an op-ed in the Strib on Sunday, in reply to an editorial by the Strib’s DJ Tice – one of few voices of relative reason on the Strib’s board.

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Before we start, let’s remember the central fact about Heather Martens:

Heather’s Law:  It’s almost up to the level of a Berg’s Law, although Berg’s laws relate to universal behavior; perhaps Martens’ behavior is universal among gun-grabbers. The Berg’s Law committee will consider this during its next meeting.

At any rate; the central thing to remember about Heather Martens is this:


Heather Martens has never, not once, uttered or written a substantial, true, original statement about guns, gun rights, gun owners or gun law.


She may have said some true things about guns – but nothing she thought of herself (things like “8,000 people were killed by firearms” are true, but they’re other peoples’ stats).  She may have some some substantial or true things in her life – but not about guns or gun laws or even “gun safety”.

Her defenders – and there are no doubt a few people among the couple dozen who know she exists who aren’t Human Rights supporters who routinely eat her lunch – may try to dispute this – but I have yet to meet anyone up to the challenge of contesting it with me, least of all Ms. Martens.

But while most journalists would steer forever clear of a “source” that routinely, constantly, forever provides them with false, even risible, information, the Twin Cities media still beats a path to her door – often with comical results.

Lie #1:  Anyway, Martens writes in the Strib:

For two decades, the gun lobby has controlled the national policy of weakening U.S. gun laws. Its solutions haven’t worked. In the U.S., we have 88 gun deaths a day, most of them suicides.

Now, Martens is a perfectly fine human being, but when it comes to Second Amendment policy, she is a vapid trifle – which wouldn’t matter if she ever told the truth, or were even accurate.

But even Martens knows that over the two decades she mentions, gun crime has dropped by half – faster still in places with more “liberal” gun laws.

What makes this troubling is that the Gun Grabber movement seems to have switched to a “Lie About Everything And Hope The Low-Info Voter Buys It” strategy.

Lie #2:  Next, Martens writes:

Guns are poised to surpass car crashes as a cause of death.

Well, no.   They’re not, except if you read the stats in the most ludicrously tortured way possible.

Not Quite A Lie; Just Dumb:  Martens continues:

Yet Tice holds proposed gun violence prevention policies to a ridiculously high standard: Will they stop all gun deaths?

Given that the right to keep and bear arms is on par with freedom of speech, religion, press, assembly, security in your home, trial by jury and all the rest, the standard isn’t ridiculously high.

But since Martens wants to romp and play in the world of ethics:

A public-health-based standard asks instead: Does the policy measurably reduce gun death and injury?

Well, now we’re onto something.  Voilá – the policies pushed by gun rights supporters have helped reduce the gun death and injury rate by almost half, and they’re still dropping (outside certain cities paralyzed by pathologies of Democrat party governance).

If Martens is interested in “public health”, that would seem to be important, right?

Lies 3 and 4:  Onward:

Leading public-health expert Daniel Webster of Johns Hopkins University provides careful analysis based on research.

Well, no; as a generation of Second Amendment activists have shown, he crudely hammers public health fact into a form that fits a political agenda.

But let’s focus, here:

In a TEDMED talk, he aptly compares effective gun polices to the public-health-based campaign that dramatically reduced drunken-driving deaths in America without banning cars.

Webster notes three basic principles common to preventing both types of deaths:

1) Limiting access for inappropriate users: Just as a history of drunken driving can keep alcohol abusers off the road, effective gun policies prohibit access to guns by those with a history of violent or reckless behavior. Requiring a background check on every gun purchase stops prohibited buyers at the point of sale. Since the passage of the Brady Background Check law, 2.4 million sales to prohibited buyers have been stopped.

Some prohibited buyers – most notably Adam Lanza – have been stopped.  Many more perfectly legitimate buyers have come up with false positives.  But the beef comes next:

But gun-show loopholes and unregulated Internet sales let too many people legally avoid a background check.

And there are two lies.

First;  go to a gun show.  Try to buy a gun.  You’ll be asked for your carry permit, or (in Minnesota) your “permit to purchase”, or run through the NICS database that Martens mentions approvingly above.  You don’t buy guns at gun shows without a background check anymore without something indicating you’re clean.

Second?  “Internet Sales” – the legal ones – go through a federally licensed firearms dealer.  Where you take – taa daaaaa! – a NICS check!

Lie #5:    She continues:

2) Holding users and sellers accountable: Accountability for drunken drivers and those who sell alcohol to prohibited buyers has been a key to success. Gun dealers, too, should be held accountable for unsafe practices…The gun lobby, for all its disingenuous bluster about “enforcing existing laws,” has induced Congress to protect reckless gun dealers from lawsuits,

Well, no.  Congress has protected legitimate businesses from frivolous lawsuits designed to drive the firearms industry out of business through endless frivolous litigation. And it’s worked.  Much to Heather Martens’ disingenuous chagrin.

Not Technically A Lie – But Just Plain Wrong:  Martens decides to wax technical – or, more likely, copy and paste a Violence Policy Center chanting point:

3) Incorporating new technologies: For cars, it was air bags and seat belts. For guns, it is smart-gun technology (guns that can recognize their authorized user and operate only for them) and microstamping of bullets to identify crime guns.

Tell you what:  I’ll use a “smart gun” when the cops and military use them.

Or to put it in terms Martens might understand?  I’ll use a “smart gun” when she allows her daughter to be operated on using a procedure that is both highly experimental that that absolutely no reputable surgeons support.

Lies #6-9 – And They’re Dumb Ones: Martens turns the corner for what passes for her big finish:

Change is coming. Since Sandy Hook, community support for gun violence prevention has grown exponentially.

No, it hasn’t.

A recent Quinnipiac poll found a 93 percent national support rate for background checks before all gun sales.

It was a vague question that not only ignores the fact that something like 98% of all legal gun sales already have background checks, but counts on the survey-taker not knowing it.

It reminds me of the survey question gun-grabbers used to throw about; “85% of Americans favor gun control”.  But when you got into suggesting specific types of gun control, that “support” fell like a greased brick.  In the early eighties, at the height of the gun control movement.  Like all such questions, when you get into specifics, and start relying on actual information, that “Support” drops fast.

The historically underfunded gun violence prevention movement has attracted millions of dollars in new resources and thousands of newly engaged activists.

The gun control movement has always had liberals with deep pockets – including Michael Bloomberg, who could buy the NRA with pocket change.

What it doesn’t have is small donors.

Per-household gun ownership is declining,

(Blink blink blink)

driving the gun lobby to increasingly extremist positions.

Like, apparently, simultaneously noting the drop in violent crime rates and electing an extreme gun-grabber president who has brought more people into the shooting sports than any previous President has.

We have begun winning at the state level — most recently in Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Washington, New York and Oregon, where background check laws have been strengthened without banning guns.

And crime has done…what?

But Wait:  There has been a disburbance in the force.

Heather Martens not only said something true and factual – but she had a good idea!

Coming at noon today.

No Cigar

Political movements rise and fall.  It’s part of political life in a democracy with a free market of ideas.

Of course, there’s nothing that the purveyors of central intellectual planning would like more than for the National Rifle Association to fade into obscurity. In this CNN article, the writer quite tangibly palpitates at the idea.

Could the National Rifle Association ever face a similar fate? Most Americans probably don’t think so. When a gunman murdered nine people at a community college in Oregon earlier this month, the President seemed to express what many Americans were thinking when he said, “Somehow this has become routine. … We have become numb to this.”

There’s a pervasive belief that any attempt to tighten gun laws would be futile because too many politicians are afraid to defy the NRA. But there are at least four examples from American history — including two snatched from recent headlines — where ordinary people and unforeseen events defeated a seemingly invincible lobbying group, and hardly anyone saw it coming.

Could the NRA vanish from political prominence? Of course.

But the article is wrong on three points:

Apples And Axles:   The author – John Blake – picked four groups as examples of “popular” opposition overturning “powerful lobbying groups”:  The “Anti Saloon League”, the “Tobacco Lobby”, the “Cuba Lobby” and AIPAC.

They’re all lousy comparisons:

  • The “Cuba Lobby” became less relevant with the end of the Cold War.  Not to say they’re not right.
  • The big defeats of the Cuba Lobby and AIPAC that Blake cites were the establishment of relations with Cuba, and the jamdown of the Iran treaty executive agreement.  Both were single-issue decisions by an ideological executive – in the case of the Iran “agreement”, very possibly a violation of the law.
  • The “defeat” of the tobacco lobby was a result of decades of public health propaganda (which happened to be largely correct, outside the canard of “second hand smoke”) that didn’t need to be politicized to be effective (although it often was anyway), and cost billions and billions of dollars.
  • The Anti Saloon League was opposed by an equally-large mass of countervailing opinion; this opinion took 15 years to get organized (Prohibition was nearly 100 years in the making); The ASL was, in fact, more analogous the gun control mement, and its opposition was more similar to the Second Amendment Rights movement between 1985 and 2000.

Which brings us to the second point:

NRA is the Vox Populi:  I’ve non-joke joked for nearly three decades now; the left has been jabbering about class warfare for a couple centuries.  And they finally got one; the battle over guns.  But they’re the patricians, and the Second Amendment movement are the uppity peasants.

As Jeffrey Snyder pointed out in his seminal essay A Nation of Cowards, that’s the reason the left has spent the last fifty years so knotted up about guns; not because they care about anyone’s lives, or “gun violence”; but because it’s the vox populi giving them a big bad veto, saying “the nannystate has its limits”.

In the early nineties, at the start of the Clinton Administration’s gun control efforts, the NRA reached a then-record membership of 4 million – people who paid a minumum of $35 a year for their memberships, frequenlty more.  At the time, the various gun grabber groups reached a peak strength of around 150,000 – at a time when “membership” meant, in most cases, saying “I’m a member!”.  The “Million Mom March” may have peaked out around 10,000 members, at a time when all a Mom had to do was…march.  Or indicate an interest in marching.

And focusing on the NRA is misleading in and of itself – because…:

The NRA Is Just A Part Of The Movement:  The NRA deploys some serious muscle at the federal level.  But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

The Second Amendment human rights movement is a mosaic of dozens, maybe hundreds, of smaller groups that do most of the heavy lifting in the states, where most gun legislation takes place.  In Minnesota, the bulk of the actual work is done by GOCRA and MNGOPAC, with several other groups helping out in the various trenches as well.  The NRA has always been a utility player in Minnesota; they had almost nothing to do with Shall-Issue; they helped with the lobbying in 2012 through this past session, but they are part of a cast of groups, not the big gorilla.

Here’s the real measure of support; when GOCRA says “turn out to the capitol” to show legislators where the real political brawn is, hundreds of people from all over Minnesota turn out in a sea of maroon shirts; the Bloombergs might be able to get a couple of dozen wan-looking Highland Park “progressives” accompanying their half-dozen paid, mercenary lobbyists.   It has more in common with the people who rejected Prohibition than the people who enacted it.

And this process has only accelerated as the distribution of information has become more decentralized.  In 1993, the Gun Owners Action League (the predecessor of GOCRA) had to print and mails its newsletters at great expense, to a database maintained on heaven only knows what.  Today, grassroots gun rights groups can, and do, form around facebook pages and online discussion forums, and with a little work and diligence and messaging can actually go on to persuade the unpersuaded.

The same dynamic holds for the anti-gun side – but at the end of the day, all they seem to draw is liberal plutocrats with deep pockets, and people who look like they got lost on their way to a live presentation of “This American Life”.

Backwards:  So in its lust to silence the peasants, CNN has gotten things more or less inverted:  the NRA is not only utterly unlike the four “unbeatable lobbying groups” that they cite, but they aren’t even the real issue.

The real issue is this:  the part of America east of the Hudson and west of the Sierra Madre thinks the Second Amendment is at least a weird throwback, and at most a threat to their version of civilization.  Real Americans treasure the Second Amendment as all other civil liberties, and will fight for it as they have for the past forty years – without regard to the group that carries the flag.

The Boogeyman

The NYTimes’ “Room For Debate” feature – which generally gathers a bunch of liberals and a token conservative or two to laboriously discuss issues – currently features the question “Is the NRA Still Invincible”.

This time, the series features a piece by Glenn “Instapundit” Reynolds, who notes, quite correctly, that it’s a matter of trust – and that as people trust government less and less, they are forced to trust themselves more and more.

“But that’s just paranoid!”, the left will respond.  “Government is…all of us”.

No it’s not.  Government is a bureaucracy that serves, primarily, itself.   And its actions, and indeed its statements, are less and less trustworthy as we go.

“Huh? What do you mean?”

As Reynolds points out – in 2008, Barack Obama pointed out that “we’re not coming for your guns”.  Last week, though, he listed as his model for gun control Australia – which carried out a gun confiscation that was incredibly draconian by Western standards.  And even when they stay out of the realm of specific proposals, it doesn’t help that whenever they open their mouths, they’re lying.  Every time.  No exceptions.

Is the NRA invincible?  It’s irrelevant; in many states (Minnesota included) the NRA is a marginal player.  It’s the people that make the Second Amendment human rights movement a juggernaut.  Not invincible, mind you; we came within a cat’s whisker of losing the Second Amendment 40 years ago.  We can’t let our guard down like that ever again.

Kimpotent

Minnesota’s gun-rights movement has carried out probably the best single grassroots political reformation in recent state history; over the course of 20 years, Minnesota has gone from being an anti-gun state that flirted seriously with Chicago-style gun bans in the eighties, to being a state with a decent shall-issue law and a reasonable chance of debating “Stand your Ground” and even “Constitutional Carry” in coming years, provided some elections break the right way.

More than that?  The pro-Second Amendment human rights movement in Minnesota is a bipartisan front; Republicans throughout the state have joined with DFLers through most of greater Minnesota – who’ve learned, in some cases the hard way, that most of Minnesota outside the 494-694 ring hold their Second Amendment human rights in high regard.

To the point where the DFL apparently has to keep their lobbying to Metrocrats and DFL machine-players who have nothing to lose.

Like Rochester DFL rep Kim Norton, who’s leaving the House after this next session, and wants to go out in a blaze of big-government, criminal-coddling glory, apparently.

Gun rights supporters are none too pleased with Norton’s announcement that she’ll push for stricter gun laws during her final legislative session next year…

Norton, who is not running for re-election in 2016, said she has received about 50 emails so far. The vast majority of those emails are from people who do not live in her legislative district. She said she has no intention of giving up on her plan to introduce a bill tightening gun rights. Among the ideas she plans to push is one prohibiting guns in the Capitol complex saying, “I don’t feel safe at work.”

She added, “Many of my constituents have asked for change.”

Rep. Norton; it’s entirely possible you’re not safe at work.  Same as everyone else in the Rice/University neighborhood, which has become one of Saint Paul’s sketchiest.

But it’s not because of the people who were covered by the Capitol carry restriction (carry permittees had to notify the Capitol Police if they planned to carry in the Capitol complex) – who are absolutely no danger to anyone, legislator or not.  It’s because of the same, common criminals who threaten all the rest of us, and who don’t bother getting permits or notifying Capitol police, any more here than they do in Chicago.

In other words, your proposal is as useless as any other gun control measure – and utterly pointless as well.

Speaking of which:

Norton said she is fed up with gun violence and wants to sponsor a bill with “common sense” changes to the state’s gun laws. Among the changes she’d like to see is a system making it easier to track gun ownerships. She compared it to how if she sells her kayak, she has to register who she sold it to.

I agree.  It’s high time we deregulated kayaks.

The good guys have responded:

The Minnesota Gun Owners Political Action Committee sent out an email urging its supporters to email the Rochester DFLer and tell her they oppose her efforts. In an interview with the Post-Bulletin earlier this month, The gun rights group’s email begins, “Just when you think anti-gun politicians in Minnesota have gotten a clue, one pops up and proposes what they call ‘common sense gun law changes.'”

In an interview, the group’s political director Rob Doar said his organization has serious concerns with the idea of establishing any sort of gun registration system…He said the idea also raises privacy rights concerns, with there being a potential for the data to be hacked. He noted that Canada decided to scrap its firearms registry because it proved to be expensive and ineffective.

With emphasis on expensive.

And ineffective.

So, DFLers; are any of you outside the 494-694 loop who are planning to run for re-election planning on signing on to this?

Sound off!