As of today, the official number of carry permittees in the state of Minnesota is over 200,000.

SCENE: Washington DC, April, 1861. Heather Martens is being interviewed on the upcoming secession over slavery: “if abolishing slavery were a good idea, the government would’ve already done it”

SCENE: Honolulu, Hawaii, November, 1941. Heather Martens is being interviewed by the Washington Post or guarding complaints about the security at Pearl Harbor:  “If there was anything to worry about at Pearl Harbor, I’m sure the government would’ve already taken care of it.”

SCENE: quote from Heather Martens, heard this morning on the Jack and Andrew show, on the lesser talk station: “I’m sure if arming military personnel were a good idea, the military would’ve already done it”

Only one of the quotes above is “real” in the literal sense of the term.  But in another way, they’re all still perfectly accurate…

Do guns in the hands of the law abiding citizen reduce crime?

They certainly reduced three crimes, this past Monday, In different locations, within a few hours of each other.

Don’t tell Representative Martens.

Better yet – tell her.

In the wake of the Sandy Hook school shooting, the vultures at the Brady Institute for Gun Grabbing filed a large, punitive lawsuit against Lucky Gunner, an ammunition vendor where Adam Lanza apparently purchased his ammunition.

The courts threw out the suit with prejudice, ordering Brady to pay over $111,000 in court and legal costs to Lucky Gunner.

Lucky Gunner is donating the entire cash award to gun rights organizations around the country – depending on their vote totals in a national poll.

And the good folks at the Gun Owners Civil Rights Alliance would deeply appreciate as many votes as they can get.

Let’s say, hypothetically, that you want to join a gun rights group.

Let’s say that you don’t read this blog – or worse, you read it, but don’t take it seriously. So you don’t know, or haven’t taken seriously, the news that the group “Minnesota Gun Rights”, is basically a Potemkin fundraising front the transfers money from Minnesota to Iowa, and spends a bare minimum of it on Minnesota political campaigning.

You send in your hard-earned money.

And when you do, the website shows you this: 

“These are the people that we report to – not a boss 1,000 miles away who doesn’t understand Iowa and what Iowans want”.

That may be the most hilariously ironic slip of all this group’s hilariously ironic slips.

If you were this fictional person, who might now be wondering “hey, maybe there’s a point to all the things that people’ve been saying about Minnesota Gun Rights“, you might follow up by asking the people looking out for your Iowegian Minnesotan gun rights a few questions:

• What “backroom deals” are you referring to, and what specifically was wrong with them?  What rights did they cost me, or anyone, in Iowa Minnesota?
• Precisely what “bribes” are you referring to?  That sounds pretty serious, so please be very specific.
• What rights have existing groups – the NRA, GOCRA and others – “bargained away”?   Again, since I’m a concerned shooter, this sounds really serious.  Please be very, totally, utterly specific.

Let me know if you hear back from them.

Wherever you live.

The Tea Party and me go way back.

In 2009 and 2010, I spoke at a couple of the big Tea Party rallies, including the big Tax Day 2010 rally at the Capitol, as well as more in other, smaller locales.

That’s me. Tax Day, 2010, addressing a couple of thousand people at the Tea Party rally on the State Capitol Mall. First person to call me a Camicia Nera gets smacked.

At the time, the Tea Party was a fairly organic thing; lots of little groups of people, angry about Obamacare and taxes and immigration and gun control and the general sense that Obama was going to sap the bejeebers out of whatever liberty, economic future and choice we had left.

One of my big memories of my big speech was asking the crowd “How many of you voted Republican in 2008?”. About half the crowd cheered.  “How many voted Democrat?”  A few people cheered, gingerly.  “How many voted Ron Paul?”   Many cheered lustily.  “How many would rather jab a screwdriver into your skull than vote for Ron Paul?”  Other cheered with gusto. “How many of you didn’t care because you hated politics?”  Many, many cheered.

What made the Tea Party so fun at the time was that it was that, as I discovered in my speech, it was a little bit of everyone.   And it worked; the Tea Party, and its outpouring of energy, was disproportionally responsible for flipping both chambers of the Minnesota House in 2010.

It was the biggest political tent I’d ever seen – because nobody involved knew enough to try to keep anyone out (except, of course, for liberals carrying signs designed to make the Tea Party look bad; we kept them out pretty handily).

The Tea Party – at least a part of the big, decentralized whole, anyway – seems to have unlearned that vital lesson.

Jack Rogers and Jake Duesenberg have built up a pretty big network of Tea Party groups around the metro.  The groups involve big monthly meetings, speakers, lots of education…

…and, well, I’m not sure what.

The other day on the Tea Party podcast with Jack Rogers and Jake Duesenberg, they took a run at the Gun Owners Civil Rights Alliance – one of the most accomplished, successful civil rights groups in the state.

Here’s what they had to say:

To closely paraphrase Duesenberg (it’s the first half of the clip above) – GOCRA does some big things, but they do it by playing the political game with politicians.  By doing this, they make incremental improvements, but fail to go for the BIG improvements in gun rights.

I think Duesenberg is trying to compare GOCRA’s approach – he calls it “Access-Based”, which to the non-access-based is a term that means “belonging to the country club” – with some of the more confrontation-based groups, whose model is based more around making a big noise (almost always in front of people who vigorously agree with you).  Groups like “Minnesota Gun Rights”, the Iowa-based group we’ve written about in the past, as well as some of the “liberty” groups that focus on building large groups of followers, and then…

…well, we’ll get back to that.

Of course, if you want to focus on confrontation, it helps to show you’re able to go politically medieval on your opponent.  For example:  while GOCRA certainly can work the “access” angle, they can also bring the political pain; ask the Capitol legislative assistants and receptionists how many phone calls they get when GOCRA puts out a call to their troops to melt the phone lines.  The phone lines melt; tens of thousands of calls, emails, letters and visits follow.  And behind those calls are votes; when GOCRA decided to confront the outstate DFLers in 2002 on “Shall Issue” carry reform, every single outstate DFLer that’d voted against carry permit reform lost their election.   Carry permit reform followed in the next session.

After 25 years of “access-based” lobbying mixed with “kicking opponents asses at the polls”, GOCRA has achieved something any grass-roots group should sit back and study; we’ve got a legislature where the GOP is 100% pro-gun, and where even the DFL is about evenly split, giving pro-gun forces a solid majority.  Think how much shooters in Colorado – where the push this past session was led by the “confrontation-based” National Association of Gun Rights, and was a complete fiasco – would like to have such a situation.

And between the combination of access-based influence carrots and “Bring the Pain!” political sticks, GOCRA got a hell of a lot done this session; barring gun confiscations in emergencies, repealing the capitol felony trap, expanding carry permit reciprocity, and bringing Minnesota into line with federal law on Suppressors and purchase of long arms in noncontiguous states.   Is there more to do?  Absolutely; much of it depends on getting a GOP governor into office.

So what has the Tea Party done lately?

I’m not saying that to needle Jack and Jake; I say let a thousand flowers bloom.

But when you say “GOCRA would like…” to a legislator, they sit up and pay attention – either because they like or respect GOCRA and its leadership, or because they loathe but fear them for what they can do at the polls.   And when you’re trying to get policy passed, being liked or feared are equally useful.

So here’s your question:  when it comes to influencing votes on policy, do people like and respect the Tea Party (or Jake’s guest, “Liberty Minnesota”, a libertarian group that seems to spend a lot of time riffing on Republicans and, occasionally, obliquely, DFLers) enough to extend themselves on their behalf when  it comes to voting on policy?

Or, failing that, do they legitimately fear what the Jack and Jake Brigade is going to do to them at the polls in November?

As someone who was doing the Tea Party before the cool kids were involved, I’d love to see the Tea Party legitimately do all three.

Can anyone honestly say they do?

Because until they do, they’re no better than the Libertarian Party; a bunch of people sitting around a room vigorously agreeing with each other.

Bonus Question:  To pick a constitutional liberty out of the ether for an example; how do you think “Constitutional Carry” – changing Minnesota to a “no permit” state, like Vermont, Alaska, Wyoming, Arizona or Kansas – is going to happen:

• Via a judicious combination of carrots and sticks, both during sessions and on the campaign trail, to get the Legislature to pass it, or
• People sitting around in rooms bellowing about how awful it is that it hasn’t been passed yet?

Any bets?

When I first got involved in politics, and political punditry, 30 years ago the gun control movement was pretty much at its apex.

The media glibly reported that “85% of Americans favored gun control” (although naturally they never broke out what form of gun control those 85% favored).

Accurate and honestly reported or not, the surveys had a point; a plurality, if not a majority, of Americans were uncomfortable around guns.

I’m not exactly sure what the answer to this poll question would’ve been in 1985 – but the verdict today is unmistakable:

 A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that just 22% of Likely U.S. Voters would feel safer living in a neighborhood where nobody was allowed to own a gun over one where they could have a gun for their own protection. Sixty-eight percent (68%) would feel safer in a neighborhood where guns are allowed, while 10% are not sure.

The national survey of 977 Likely Voters was conducted on June 8-9, 2015 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence.

This poll is not grounds for complacency, much less overconfidence.

But it does show how powerful at least one facet of conservative ideology can be, when a group of motivated grassroots people search their minds to it, and devotes the time and patience it takes to make the changes stick.

Governor Dayton has reportedly signed HF878, the Public Safety omnibus bill that included five second-amendment-related provisions:

• Barring thengovernornfeom confiscating guns during states of emergency
• enacting carry permit reciprocity with several other states
• allow Minnesotans to buy long guns in non-contiguous states
• eliminated the capitol felony trap
• allows Minnesotans to own and use their federally-licensed suppressors.

This is a big win for human rights.

Thanks to Governor Dayton for heeding the overwhelming will of The People, and signing the bill.

Thanks also to a newly-active NRA, to MN-GOPAC and to GOCRA, as well as to the legislators who made it happen.

And thanks to you, the Real Minnesotans, for speaking out so loudly and clearly.

What does this mean for next session? More on the show this weekend, and on the blog next week.

A few hours ago, we discussed the fact that public safety omnibus bill containing five very important expansions of Second Amendment rights has passed the House, the Senate, and the conference committee with a bipartisan majority.

Now, here’s what we need you to do about it.  Minnesota’s Second Amendment activists – GOCRA, MNGOPAC and the (newly-active) NRA are asking for your help.

And they’re asking for it today.  Even right now.

Get On Those Phones: Minnesota’s Second Amendment advocacy groups have called upon you, the Second Amendment supporter, many times to contact your legislators. And you – we – have delivered; your calls and emails have crushed all opposition in the past. All but the most ardent metro Democrats fear and respect Minnesota’s Second Amendment movement.

Now, it’s time for Governor Flint- Smith Dayton to know your polite, civil wrath.

Here’s The Plan: here’s what we need to do:

1. Call Governor Dayton and ask him to sign SF878
Telephone: 651-201-3400
Toll Free: 800-657-3717

2. Email Governor Dayton:.

3. Sign the petition to Gov. Dayton.

4. Share on Facebook and Twitter with hashtag #notSilentMN

We need to go beyond lighting up his phone lines.

We even need to go beyond breaking all previous phone call records.

We need, figuratively if not literally, to melt the capital phone system into a puddle of copper slag. We need to give the governor’s staff PTSD from the sheer number of incoming phone calls. We need to cause the capital phone system to violate laws of quantum physics.

Start now.

Seriously. Pick up your phone, and call the governor’s office at 651-201-3400 or 800-657-3717

Be polite – but let him know that an overwhelming bipartisan majority in the legislature is not to be trifled with.

Here’s the good news: over the weekend, an overwhelming, bipartisan majority of Republicans and Democrats, in both the House and Senate, voted for the public safety omnibus bill as finalized by the conference committee.

How overwhelming was the majority?

Here’s how overwhelming:

That is a veto proof majority in both the House and the DFL-controlled Senate.

How important is this? This bill will:

• Abolish the capital felony trap – by recognizing that the Capitol police have instant access to the database of carry permit holders, just like every other cop in the state of Minnesota.
• Bar the governor for ordering the confiscation of firearms during emergencies. The governor of Minnesota has immense, wide-sweeping emergency powers, almost completely unregulated by law. This will prevent the situation that new Orleans residents ran into after Hurricane Katrina, with government officials and police going door-to-door to confiscate firearms, rendering citizens defenseless in the face of looters.
• Legalize the ownership of federally licensed suppressors – mufflers for guns.
• Allow Minnesotans to buy a long arms from non-contiguous states.
• Make Minnesota permits reciprocal with many more neighboring states. This is great if you, hypothetically, constantly wind up having to stop at gas stations in Moorhead or East Grand Forks, to avoid inadvertently becoming a felon in North Dakota. Again, hypothetically.

So that’s the good news.

The Bad News – Governor Flint- Smith Dayton has said that he will veto the bill, over the suppressor provision.

Of course, the photo above – the votes for a bipartisan, vetoproof majority passing the bill – might give Governor Flint-Smith Dayton pause. Getting a veto overridden is embarrassing.

You know what else would give her him pause?

We’ll talk about that at noon.

“Protect” Minnesota – the gun grabber group that’s been washed away from the front of Minnesota’s gun-grabber crowd by a sea of Michael Bloomberg money – is having an event.

And not just any event.  Nosirreebob – it’s their “signature” event (emphasis added):

Dear Heinrich,

I’m pleased to invite you to our signature annual event at the Capri Theater on Monday, June 29.

SAFE: A Benefit to End Gun Violence is a celebration of community and safety featuring a musical theater concert to benefit Protect Minnesota. Directed by Joshua Campbell, SAFE! is a concert with performances from some of the most renowned local theater artists: Aimee K. Bryant, Ann Michaels, Jennifer Grimm, Kasono Mwanza, Tre Searles, and Katie Bradley.

So I wonder if the esteemed cast and crew are getting paid for this “benefit?”  Director Josh Campbell appears to be a working actor/director (much respect!) – i.e., one would expect he’d be too smart to do it gratis.

The show features songs from pop, rock, and musical theater that celebrate safety and community with short plays, scenes, and monologues reflecting on gun violence interspersed throughout. If you’ve been with us the past two years, you know that this will be a show you won’t want to miss.

Now, this will be the third year for this particular event (or so Rep. Martens’ email says); representatives of the Human Rights movement have found themselves barred from the event in the past.

But I may just try to make a point of being there on the “red carpet” to see who shows up

(It’s Monday, June 29th at 6:30 PM at the Capri Theater, 2027 West Broadway)

In recent weeks, we’ve spoken of the plague of Second Amendment activists who believe that by putting all of our effort into Constitutional Carry – making all state gun laws equal to Alaska, Vermont, Wyoming, Arizona and Kansas – we’ll solve all our problems.

Note:  this works only in thoroughly libertarian-conservative states like Kansas, Alaska, Wyoming and Arizona, or places with ornery shooting traditions like Vermont.

How counterproductive would it be in a more purplish state, like Minnesota?

Well, in Minnesota, the Human Rights movement focused mostly on passing practical, attainable legislation (like the Omnibus Public Safety bill, which needs your support).

How about Colorado?  Formerly a red state, now pretty much sickly purple and likely to keep sliding, the legislative movement to repeal the post-Sandy-hook magazine restrictions (Coloradans are limited to 15 rounds) faced an uphill battle at best.

Enter “Rocky Mountain Gun Owners” – affiliates of the same “National Association of Gun Rights” that is also the parent for the controversial “Minnesota Gun Rights”, as well as similar groups in Iowa, Mississippi and Kansas.   RMGO joined with the anti-gun Bloombergers in opposing a public safety omnibus bill that would have repealed the magazine ban.

How did that work?

How do you think?

RMGO and NAGR stomped their feet and demanded full Constitutional Carry, from a legislature that’s controlled by anti-gun Democrats, and will likely remain that way for some time.

The problem with these groups is that playing checkers very loudly is no substitute for knowing how to play chess.

Much more on this in coming weeks.

While legalizing firearm suppressors has gotten most of the attention this legislative session, I think the most vital part of the Public Safety Omnibus bill is Rep. Newberger’s “Katrina Bill”, which would bar the state government from confiscating citizens’ firearms during a state of emergency.

How important is this?  As we speak, in Maryland, the government is clamping down on the availability of ammunition…

…which is another way of making civilian firearms useless.  Of course, during Hurricane Katrina, the local police went door-to-door, confiscating firearms.  Current Minnesota law allows the state governnment even more-onerous leeway than Maryland law.

And a quick note to the “Minnesota” gun groups that advocate focusing only on “Constitutional Carry”; even if that were to pass, it wouldn’t affect state emergency powers.

This bill needs to pass.

Back in the seventies and eighties – the nadir of gun rights in the US – the antis used to cite a statistic; “85% of Americans support gun control”.

It was misleading and out of context, of course; the question asked if people supported any form of gun control.  By that metric, “wanting to keep guns out of the hands of felons” is “supporting gun control”.

But the fact remained; a significant number of Americans, deluded by two decades of anti-gun propaganda in the media, had come not to appreciate their Second Amendment rights.

And that has changed.

According to Pew, a decisive majority of Americans oppose gun control.

Exactly two years after President Obama’s bid for gun control following the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting died in Congress, a new poll has discovered a huge shift in public opinion to backing Second Amendment gun rights and away from controlling gun ownership.

The reason: Americans now believe having a gun is the best way to protect against crime, 63 percent to 30 percent.

Pew Research Center found that while support for gun control once reached 66 percent, it has dropped to 46 percent while support for gun rights has jumped 52 percent, the highest ever in the past 25 years.

Despite years of the media and educational/industrial complexes best efforts, and hundreds of millions in “progressive” plutocrat money, Americans have figured out what our self-appointed “elites” can’t seem to; more guns in the hands of the law-abiding equals less crime.

You know what’s the most glorious thing about this effort?  The whole thing, nationwide, is entirely grass roots.

Perhaps the GOP should outsource its messaging effort to the shooters.

I need to get in shape.  The best way to do this is to win the Olympic Decathlon – because those people are in the best shape in the world.  I’ve decided that if I’m going to do anything about my physical fitness, it’ll be “win the Olympic Decathlon”.

“But Mitch”, you may ask, “how do you plan on getting into that kind of shape?”

You’re not paying attention.  I said my goal is to “win the Olympic Decathlon”.  It’s not to “spend years training to be in the Olympic Decathlon”.  Training is not winning.  They’re completely different words.  If I win, by definition, I’ll be in amazing shape.

“But Mitch”, you may continue to hector me, “nobody, not even the most amazing athletes, competes at level without years of…”

And I’ll cut you off right there.  You’re clearly not listening.  I’ll win the Olympic Decathlon.  Then I’ll be in shape.  Any questions?

Jeez,  You people are such Real Athletes In Name Only (REANOs).

Much Ado About Ado:  We’ve written before about the entire group of organizations aligned with the “National Association of Gun Rights” (NAGR), including “Iowa Gun Owners” (IGO), and their Minnesota “cousins”, “Minnesota Gun Rights” (MGR).  I put “cousins” in scare quotes, because the groups are really one and the same; they’re both run by the Dorr Brothers out of Des Moines; occasionally, they don‘t even get all the “Iowa” references out of their Minnesota fundraising materials.  It’s gotten to the point that a bipartisan group of pro-Second-Amendment legislators – including some who supported MGR in the past – have come out against them for raising lots of money but not actually doing anything with it.   Their defenders note that they did drop some fliers and ran two – two! – radio ads supporting Roz Peterson in Burnsville; their detractors note that their lack of registrations with the state mean they were strictly limited in the amount of money they could spend – as in, $1,500 or so – and that the Peterson race was not decided on gun issues and, for that matter, nobody thinks their involvement made a stitch of difference in Peterson’s victory.

But that’s yesterday’s news.

This week, the Iowa Firearms Coalition fired a broadside at IGO for opposing an omnibus gun rights bill.

Give Me Everything I Want, Or Give Me Nothing I Need:  The omnibus bill covers a wide swathe of gun rights projects:  preventing the media from getting permittees’ personal information, removing the ban on parents teaching their kids to shoot, making permits attach to the person rather than the gun, allowing people whose permits are denied to seek reimbursement if the denial is overturned, and a slew of other things (that make me praise the wisdom of the crew that wrote Minnesota’s carry law.

And IGO is against it.   Instead, they are pushing – as they did two years ago – a “Constitutional Carry” bill”, similar to the laws in Alaska, Arizona, Wyoming and Vermont.

Nothing wrong with Constitutional Carry; it affirms that the Constitution grants us a right to keep and bear arms; no law-abiding citizen should have to ask, or pay, the state to exercise their rights.

Nobody disagrees.

But IGO is under the impression that any effort spent on “lesser” bills legitimizes state control over your right to keep and bear arms, and reduces the chance of winning full constitutional carry.  And so they’re fighting against Iowa’s Omnibus Gun Bill:

This same group actively lobbied against the Shall Issue concealed carry reforms we passed 5 years ago. If they had their way we’d still be holding out for a “perfect firearms bill” that never had a chance at passing. Had they been successful hundreds of thousands of Iowans would not be able enjoy the freedom to lawfully carry concealed weapons that we enjoy today. Instead of working to protect and enhance the Second Amendment rights of Iowans by any means possible, this group of gun owners would rather gamble everything on improbable, all or nothing, high stakes bills. This approach is almost always guaranteed to fail and their track record proves it. Not one single piece of pro-gun legislation they’ve sponsored has ever reached the Governor’s desk, let alone been signed into law.

Now they’re up to their same old tricks, working again in lock step with Bloomberg and Company, this time to kill Iowa’s Omnibus Gun Bill.

Long story short, IGO is helping the Bloomberg repress gun rights in Iowa.  And unless you live in Wyoming or Alaska, winning Constitutional Carry is going to be long, drawn-out process of winning hearts and minds, rather than my campaign to win the decathlon.

Problem is, they want to do the same thing in Minnesota.

“Incrementalism Is A Four Letter Word”:  Every gun rights group that matters has “Constitutional Carry” as a goal.  Some – the NRA – are exceedingly pragmatic about it.  Others – GOCRA – see it, correctly, as something that, like “Shall Issue”, is going to take years of lobbying, education and hard political work.  This includes teaching a legislature – which is is mostly pro-gun, even on the DFL side – the benefits of Constitutional Carry in a state that, in case you hadn’t noticed, isn’t much like Wyoming or Arizona.

But IGO, and it’s Minnesota cousin branch office MGR, take the tack that spending time and effort on anything “less” than Constitutional Carry not only legitimizes the gun control that exists, but makes it less likely we’ll ever get Constitutional Carry.

Both claims are absurd, of course; gun control was imposed piecemeal over decades as media and liberal propaganda affected voters’ attitudes about guns; undoing the attitudes will take time (although the process is well underway).   Does anyone think that the gun movement should have held off on filing the Heller and McDonald cases, and waited for the One Big Case To Throw All Gun Control Laws Out?  Does anyone think winning “shall issue” in Illinois makes it less likely that Illinois will ever further loosen their restrictions?

Magical Thinking:  NAGR is run by one Dudley Brown – who was highly involved in Ron Paul’s various campaigns for President.  The IGO/MGR’s Dorr Brothers are  linked to Ted Sorenson, an Iowa Ron Paul mover and shaker at the center of a scandal involving Michele Bachmann.   Some of MGR’s most prominent adherents in Minnesota were also heavily involved in the Ron Paul effort, and are still involved with “Liberty” groups.

Nothing wrong with that.

Except that too many “Liberty” groups believe that if you “stick to your principles” and think big thoughts and accept no compromise, freedom just happens.

I’m oversimplifying, of course.  Or perhaps I’m overcomplicating.  If there’s one thing I’ve noticed about many of the ranks of Ron Paul / “Liberty” supporters, it’s that they want to change the world in big ways, but they seem to eschew the idea of doing it through the political process, which they seem to deem too corrupt.

And so MGR, like its IGO home office, has gathered about it a lot of people who want big changes, and like to think and argue big thoughts about those changes…

…but can’t spell out a way to actually get the law changed so that their big ideas become actual policy.

I’ve tried.  Oh, Lord, I’ve tried. I’ve challenged MGR supporters; “You want Constitutional Carry or nothing? OK – in a state where the idea of “people carrying guns without permits” scares the crap out of at least half the voters, and whose votes count as much as yours do, how do you get to passing a law?”

The answers get more and more vague the more you press them, and always devolve back to one form of “magical thinking” or another.  *

At any rate; beware of people promising big results if you just belieeeeve.  And give.  Because in politics more than most parts of life, if it sounds too good to be true, it is.

(more…)

When it comes to Second Amendment rights groups, I’ve always said “let a thousand flowers bloom”.

You prefer to fight the national fight by proxy?  Send your $35 to the NRA.  Want to get more into the thick of things nationally?  Contribute to the Second Amendment Foundation.

Wanna affect what happens in the Minnesota legislature?  Support GOCRA.  Wanna affect who gets elected to the Legislature?  Support MNGOPAC.  Feel like taking it to the streets?  The Twin Cities Carry Forum is the place to go.

If you want to donate money to an organization that seems to have little tie to Minnesota, that is closely linked to a network of similar organizations that seem to do more harm than good in the legislature in other states (Iowa, Colorado and Mississippi), which probably means it’s a good thing all that Minnesota fundraising has no visible impact in the Legislature itself?

A bipartisan group of pro-Second-Amendment legislators would like to have a word with you about that:

This bipartisan group of legislators, most of whom have been key leaders in pushing back the Bloomberg-financed gun grab bills, are urging you not to be fooled.

Now, I’ve written a bit about “Minnesota Gun Rights”, as well as “Iowa Gun Owners” and the “National Association of Gun Rights” in the past year and a half.  And I get two questions about the subject:

• “Berg, aren’t you connected with GOCRA?  Isn’t this just trying to thin out the competition?”:  I’m “connected” with just about everyone in the Second Amendment movement.  I network like a madman.  Hello – I’m a blogger and talk show host; I go where the info is. And no – “competition” is good, where the goal is “who can be the first to drag Governor Flint-Smith kicking and screaming to the table to sign the legislation we want”.  As I believe I and the sixteen oversigned legislators have established, MGR isn’t really competing on that front.
• “MGR stands for Constitutional Carry – GOCRA, the NRA and MNGOPAC don’t.  If we pass Constitutional Carry, we won’t need any of the other legislation.  Why waste time?”:  That’s a little like saying I’m swearing off dating until Morena Baccarin returns my calls.  I mean, if I get into a position where Morena Baccarin returns my calls, great – but until I do (and I’m not), what then?    Saying “We’ll accept nothing but Constitutional Carry, and any lesser legislation merely accedes to government’s power to regulate  your God-given right to self-defense”.  Which is true – in a philosophical sense.  The law is not philosophy.  If the Minnesota gun movement had adopted that idea in 1994, we’d still be begging our police chiefs for carry permits, mostly in vain.  And the simple fact is, until we get a pro-Second Amendment governor, and legislatures that are not just mostly pro-Second Amendment (as they are today) but very strongly so, we’re not going to get Constitutional Carry.  Minnesota is not Arizona or Wyoming or Alaska.  By the way, passing Constitutional Carry won’t solve many of the other gun related issues – like reciprocity, the Capitol felony trap, or the right to purchase in non-contiguous states.  It just won’t.
• “Isn’t ‘Shall Issue’ just a moneymaker for the carry permit instructors that run GOCRA?”:  No more so than fund-raising over a pie-in-the-sky proposal that is years away from passage, assuming everything goes perfectly from an electoral perspective (which Minnesota Gun  Rights is doing absolutely nothing to assure).

More later.

Up there with Easter, Christmas, the Fourth of July and Thanksgiving, this coming Saturday is one of the most wonderful times of the year.

It’s the Shooter Show at Bill’s Gun Shop and Range in Robbinsdale.

Shopping for a new gun?  Dozens of manufacturers will be there, showing their wares.  Bring a driver’s license, buy a box of ammo, and you can test fire any of the hundreds of pieces for free.  Prices are coming down from the panic-buying highs of a couple years ago, so it’s a great time to buy!

Plus – door prizes and giveaways (accessories, goodies, and even firearms), charity raffles (ditto), and…

…ahem…

…full-automatic machine gun rentals.  Buy a box of ammo, take your pick, pony up, suit up, and poke more holes in more paper faster than you ever knew possible.  Last year I shot the M1928 Thompson and the KRISS.   This year?  I’m focusing on the Bren, and/or the BAR.

Oh, yeah – I’ll be doing the show from Bill’s, live from 1-3PM on Saturday.  Stop out and say hi.

Why yes – I’ve been looking forward to this all year long.

“Stand Your Ground” is back.

The bill – which would do nothing but remove the “duty to retreat” from self-defense on your property and in your car – was slandered as a “Shoot First” bill three years ago when it was passed by a bipartisan majority in both chambers (which, as an aside, is positive proof that the opposition was looking for the stupid vote; does anyone knows what happens to the person who shoots second?).  Governor Messinger Dayton issued a veto that was bought and paid for by big anti-gun interests; the metrocrats that controlled the Legislature at the time didn’t override him.

This year’s edition has a bipartisan slate of authors, a decisive majority of support in the House, and enough support in the Senate to make it interesting…

…and a governor – Tina Flint Smith – who will veto it forthwith (by pulling wires attached to Mark Dayton’s writing hand).

Of course, the point with this bill – and Senator Branden Petersen’s “Constitutional Carry” bill – is to do what the Second Amendment movement did over the previous two DFL-controlled sessions; rack up anti-gun votes by DFLers in greater Minnesota.  The DFL got trounced outstate in the 2014 elections in large part on the strength of gun votes; it can happen in the Senate in 2016.

Which is exactly how we got “Shall Issue” carry permits 12 years ago.

I worry at times that the lessons from the Carry Permit battle have been lost to a generation of pro-gun activists.  Shall Issue took from 1995 to 2003 (and again in 2005) to pass.  Eight years (with another year of maneuvering around a pet DFL judge).  It involved playing political chess, not checkers.

So suit up, people.  Winning your freedom isn’t for the faint of heart.

Tonight, and Thursday morning, the legislature is going to be debating a bill – HF722, sponsored by representative Jim Newburger – which would prevent government from confiscating civilian firearms during states of emergency.

This is no idle worry; after Hurricane Katrina, the police went door to door through the storm ravaged neighborhoods, confiscating peoples firearms, leaving them helpless in the face of looters and thugs.

There are going to be two rounds of hearings:

• Tonight at 6 PM, in the Civil Law committee. This will be in room 500, at the State office building. You can park for free in lot AAA, at Aurora and rice, after 4 PM – and meters are generally open along John Ireland Boulevard after business hours, too.
• Thursday morning at 10:15 AM in the Public Safety committee. This will be in room 10 at the state office building.

Second Amendment humans rights advocates are on the offensive, this session – but that doesn’t mean anything is a shoe in. Showing up at hearings, or calling your legislators, is still essential.  Maybe moreso than ever.

Any DFLer who votes against this bill is essentially tipping their hand; they won’t “waste a crisis”, and if offered the chance will use that crisis as an excuse to extort firearms from the law abiding citizen. They need to be held accountable for this 2016

Heather Martens has never once made a substantial, true statement about firearms or the Second Amendment.

Her testimony at the Minnesota House was more of the same: Martens claimed that silencers were “designed” to allow people to commit murder and get away with it.

Sure – in the same way that car mufflers were designed to allow hit-and-run drivers to sneak up on victims.

If you want real facts about suppressors, GOCRA as usual has the answers.

This is going to be a big week at the legislature for Second Amendment bills; five vitally important gun rights bills are going to be hitting the legislature in the next week.

End The Trap: Currently, you have to notify the head of capitol security if you are a carry permittee who wishes to carry at any building in the Capitol complex – the Capitol, the office buildings, and even the Minnesota history center, across the freeway. This is what’s called a “felony trap” – an obscure law which happens to be a felony. It’s also obsolete; it made sense, back when carry permits were cardboard chits carried in the wallet, and police didn’t have instant access to computers. But today they do; police can validate a carry permit as fast as they can validate a drivers license these days. This law serves only to trip up people who aren’t clairvoyant about the law, and it needs to go away. Representative Jim Nash Will be introducing a capitol carry bill today,

End The Other Trap: Did you know that it was illegal to buy a gun in a state not directly bordering Minnesota? I’m pretty up on the law, and I didn’t know this. But it’s true – if you buy a firearm from a state other than Minnesota, the Dakotas, Iowa or Wisconsin, you have to transfer it through a federally-licensed firearms dealer. It’s a stupid law, and another felony trap, and it needs to go. And go it shall, if the bill be introduced by Representative Lucero passes into law. Lucero is introducing the bill tomorrow.

Secure In Your Homes A lot of urban legends sprang up in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. One that was all too real? On government orders, the police went door-to-door, confiscating firearms and leaving the remaining citizens disarmed and helpless in the face of looters and gangs. And the fact is, Gov. Dayton could order the same confiscation after any sort of disaster, here in Minnesota, today. Heck, he could order firearms confiscated if he sees the walls pulsing in his office. Representative Newberger is introducing a bill on Thursday that will restrict governments emergency power to confiscate guns from the law-abiding citizen.

A Right of the People – The vast majority of states have a state constitutional provision echoing and reinforcing the US Constitution’s Second Smendment guarantee of the right to keep and bear arms to the people. It’s not redundant; states have Powers reserved to them by the constitution, and it’s good to make sure that they are enumerated. Representative Hackbarth will hopefully be introducing an amendment to the Minnesota state constitution this week.

Noise – if you drive your car without a muffler, you get a ticket. But if you try to put a muffler on your gun – to forestall the hearing loss that can accompany the noise involved in shooting – it’s a state felony.

Minnesota is one of very, very few states that bands civilian ownership of firearm suppressors. They’re called “silencers” by people who know nothing about firearms; they don’t “silence” anything. In fact, a suppressed firearm is still fully detectable I shot spotter, which is the police’s Big beef with the proposal to allow suppressors. They are governed by federal law – it requires a federal license to own a suppressor, so it’s not like this bill will open them up to criminals. Indeed, there has never been a confirmed crime committed using a suppressor of any kind, much less he legally owned one. Ever. Outside the movies, anyway. Hopefully, there will be a bill legalizing federally licensed suppressors in Minnesota next week.

All of you Second Amendment supporters, need to get your dialing finger is Limbird up. We’re going to have all sorts of work to do.

By the way – after this last two sessions, it’s nice to be on the offensive again, isn’t it?

Up until 1974, Minnesotans didn’t need a permit, or a sheriff’s permission, or a card costing $100, to exercise their Second Amendment right to carry a firearm. Minnesotans could carry anything they wanted, subject to their criminal record; they could do it anywhere they wanted to subject to their senses of etiquette.

From 1974 to 2005, Minnesotans had to beg, convince, or suck up to their local police chief to exercise their Second Amendment rights. And since 2004, Minnesotans have had to pay for the privilege of having Minnesota law-enforcement try to prove they weren’t legally entitled to exercise their Second Amendment rights.

So over the context of the past 40 years, things are moving generally in the right direction.

But there is a proposal of footage, floating around somewhere in the legislature, to adopt “Constitutional Carry” – as several other states around the union have. Constitutional Carry means that any law-abiding citizen can carry a firearm, openly or concealed, as long as they don’t have a criminal record that would deny that ride.

Not only is that exactly the way Minnesota law stood before 1974 – it is, in effect, exactly the way it is today; The law abiding jump through hoops to exercise their right to carry, and criminals carry anyway. Just as they did before 1974.

The actual record is clear and unequivocal; law-abiding citizens in Minnesota are phenomenally unlikely, statistically, to commit any kind of crime of all:

I think the proposal is a good one; Gov. Dayton will veto it, of course, but before that we will get some votes on the table before 2016.

But after 40 years of having to pay, and submit to scrutiny, to exercise our God given constitutional rights, I think we need to have a proposal with more teeth to it.

I think we need a Mandatory Carry law.

Under my law, all law-abiding citizens over the age of 21 will be required to have a firearm on their person.

Now, anyone who doesn’t want to have a firearm will be able to exercise that right – by getting a “Permit to Not Carry”. This permit can be gotten one of two ways:

• Pay $100 to your local county sheriff to obtain a Permit Not to Carry,
• Applying to your county sheriff, with proof you have reason not to carry a firearm.

I think that would be perfectly fair. Or, at least, bring a form of Justice after this past 40 years.

It’s been a busy couple of years for Real Minnesotans (and Real Americans) [1].

We’ve had an anti-gun president for six years, and we spent two years with a completely DFL government – and the DFL platform calls for restricting guns in the hands of the law-abiding (“Reasonable gun control that promotes public safety and crime prevention”).  They were energized by the Sandy Hook massacre and, moreso, hundreds of thousands of dollars of Michael Bloomberg’s money.

And it all came to nought, due to the efforts of Minnesota’s pro-Second-Amendment grass roots, especially the Gun Owners Civil Rights Alliance and the Minnesota Gun Owners PAC.

Now, we have a GOP majority in the State House – including several members elected with direct support of Real Minnesota – and a Senate DFL majority that has many significant pro-gun members.

It’s time to go on the offensive.

And that’s precisely the agenda that GOCRA announced on Monday.  Here are the highlights:

•  Right to Keep and Bear Arms Amendment to the Minnesota Constitution – I wasn’t aware that the human right of self-defense wasn’t in the Minnesota Constitution.  Notwithstanding the fact that McDonald v. Chicago incorporated the Second Amendment onto the states, it’s high time our constitution said so too.
•  Ban “Emergency” Orders for Gun Confiscation – Minnesotans are expected to trust to the integrity of the cops.  But New Orleans residents found that that trust was misplaced in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, as cops went door to door confiscating firearms from law-abiding citizens.  This needs to be explicitly banned under Minnesota law.
•  Legalize Firearm Suppressors – Forget what you see in the movies; they don’t “silence” firearms, and they’re not a tool of assassins.  They’re like a muffler for your firearm, just like the one you’re legally required to put on your car, preventing harmful levels of noise from damaging peoples’ hearing.
•  Constitutional Carry – The law-abiding citizen doesn’t have to jump through hoops to exercise their right to speak, worship, publish or assemble or, theoretically, be secure in their homes and possessions (we’ll need to work on that, too).  Why should guns logically be different?
•  Stop Police Departments from Delaying Purchase Permits – Some police departments exercise passive-aggressive liberties in issuing “permits to purchase” firearms.  This needs to be addressed.
•  Remove Redundant Capitol Complex Carry Notification – Back in the 1990s, when the state didnt’ have computers for most of its record-keeping, and carry permits were typed out on Selectrics at your local police station, the current law – you must notify the head of Capitol Security to carry in the Capitol complex, including the History Center – made sense, sort of.  Today, when Capitol Security has access to permit information in real time, it does not – except as a felony trap.  Time to fix it.
•  Self Defense Law Reform – Minnesota self-defense law is fairly simple in statute – but quite complex in its case law.  There are a lot of hidden “gotchas” in self-defense, that can put a law-abiding citizen in jail even though they behaved objectively correctly.  Law with “gotchas” is bad law.  It’s time to fix it.  This is actually the most important one, in my book.

[1] Minnesotans/Americans who believe all ten amendments of the Bill of Rights are rights of the people.

Next Monday – January 26 – will be the first annual MInnesota Gun Owners Lobby Day (MNGOLD).

It’ll start with a rally in front of the Capitol.

After that, we – you, me, all of us – will do something that normally only highly-paid union stooges get to do; lobby the legislature. We’ll go inside, and politely, fairly and civilly meet with every single legislator, and let them know face to face that we’re watching, and that we vote.

Arrange your time off now! I am!

More details from the Gun Owners Civil Rights Alliance (Web, Facebook, Twitter) and the MN Gun Owners Political Action Committee (Web, Facebook, Twitter).

Two weeks from today – January 26 – will be the first annual MInnesota Gun Owners Lobby Day (MNGOLD).

It’ll start with a rally in front of the Capitol.

After that, we – you, me, all of us – will do something that normally only highly-paid union stooges get to do; lobby the legislature. We’ll go inside, and politely, fairly and civilly meet with every single legislator, and let them know face to face that we’re watching, and that we vote.

Arrange your time off now! I am!

More details from the Gun Owners Civil Rights Alliance (Web, Facebook, Twitter) and the MN Gun Owners Political Action Committee (Web, Facebook, Twitter).