This year’s battle to destroy the Second Amendment is dead – at least in DC.

I’ve said it for years; the gun control debate is the most ironic battle in American politics.

The left – the movement that floats on Soros and Rockefeller and Allen and Opperman and Messinger money – loves to paint itself as the party of the working stiff, the fabled “99%”; it likes to pretend the right is white, rich and disconnected from the world.  The left, back to its historical roots, is built on the idea of struggle between classes.

And yet gun control is the most class-focused debate in America today.  Our elites – of both parties, in some cases – loathe the Second Amendment, or at the very least think it’s a quaint doddering relic.  It’s the American mainstreet – the real 99% -that supports the Second Amendment.

The plebeians just keep defying those patricians.

Reason notes this as well:

Whatever the merits and popularity of the specific measures that went down to defeat in the Senate on Wednesday, I think the Establishment fails to appreciate the depth of American support for the Second Amendment. NPR and other media have lately noted a growing libertarian trend in American politics. That’s not just about taxes, Obamacare, marijuana, and marriage equality. It also involves gun rights. After each high-profile shooting, support for gun control rises. But it tends to fall again in short order, as public opinion reverts to the baseline of strong support for gun rights.

And the fact that controlling guns is only a vital issue to 4% of the people indicates that the vast majority know the score; guns don’t kill people, people do.

I’m going to add emphasis below:

I was struck by this poll graphic in the Washington Post on Wednesday. Despite the virtually unanimous support for stricter gun control in the national media, along with other opinion shapers such as Hollywood and the universities, and despite the mass shootings that have received so much attention in our modern world of 24-hour news channels, Americans are becoming more convinced that guns make your family safer.

The media in particular exhibits a persistent form of Pauline Kael syndrome on the subject of guns; they accept gun control as an ideal almost completely without question, and seem nonplussed that the nation ignores them.

But yet they continue their narrative – that the NRA is a astroturf checkbook advocacy group supported by Big Gun and Big Business.  Yesterday, some in the media breathlessly reported the departure of Adolphus Bush from the NRA board as a “blow to the NRA”.

It’s not.  The group’s membership is up nearly a quarter since Newtown.  It’s just shown the entire country that it can shut the media down on Capitol Hill.  It’s just shown it commands more of the hearts and minds of this country’s real people than the President does, at least on the gun issue.

But that’s not the narrative, now, is it?

(SCENE:  Mitch BERG is standing in the line for car tabs at the Saint Paul Sears with Avery LIBRELLE)

LIBRELLE:  I saw your blog post about the restaurant in Mower County that is offering discounts for gun nuts who bring guns into their restaurants.

BERG:  Yeah.  That’s pretty cool.

LIBRELLE:  I’m sure there’ll be a mass shooting there soon.

BERG:  (shakes head silently, with deep weariness)

LIBRELLE:  What this does mean is that they should raise their minimum wage.

BERG:  (wearily)  OK, I’ll bite.  Why’s that?

LIBRELLE:  Because the owner is giving away money.

BERG:  Er…huh?

LIBRELLE:   Discounts.  That’s money he’s giving away.  That means he could afford to increase his staff’s wages.

BERG:   Er, the discount – leaving aside the extent to which it might be a personal protest statement – is what’s called a “loss leader”.  It’s designed to get people to come out, bring their non-gun-carrying friends – to get people in the door.  Once they’re through the door, that’s more traffic, more word of mouth, more potential to win over customers that keep coming back and spending more money.

Sort of like when Chipotle has their Free Burrito Day.  They lose money on that day’s burritos – but hopefully create loyal repeat customers who come back later to pay full price.

LIBRELLE:  Well, if they can do that, they can afford to pay the dish washers and waitresses and counter staff more.

BERG:  Er, why do you think businesses do that?

LIBRELLE:  Because they’re rolling in money at the expense of the worker!

BERG:  No, it’s to increase business.  It’s called Marketing, and Advertising; spending a little money so that there’s more business, which in turn brings in more money, which eventually goes into things like paying off investors and turning a profit and expanding and remodeling and buying a new oven and, by the bye, salaries.   Because a successful restaurant can afford to give a raise, while an unsuccessful one can’t even retain workers.

LIBRELLE:  Giving away the workers’ money in this way is like the Bush Tax Cuts.  That money is needed.

BERG:  Government doesn’t need to advertise or market.  And even if the money were “the workers’ money”, it’s part of marketing a business, to try to make it successful  Like spending money on advertising, or on having clean restrooms and unripped seats, or laminated menus, or quality ingredients and attractive preparation and presentation; it’s about making people come to your business, and then making them want to come back.

But – and I can’t stress this enough – the business’ revenue is not “the workers’ money”.  The person or people who started and run the restaurant – which provides the jobs for “the workers” – has the job of using that money to the business’ best advantage, to promote and maintain the business.  Which includes paying salaries.

LIBRELLE:  It’s more important that they pay the salaries.  Without the workers, the owner is nothing.

BERG:  Er, what now?

LIBRELLE:  It’s the workers that make the business.  Without the workers, there’d be no business.

BERG:  I’m sure that’s news to every sole-proprietor entrepreneur out there…

LIBRELLE:  Look at Bain Capital.  Mitt Romney didn’t even show up to work for months at a time.  And yet the janitors had to show up every day.  Bain could have prospered without Romney, but not without janitors.  The janitors deserved the money more than Romney.

BERG:  (Stands, gobsmacked in stunned silence)

LIBRELLE:  Without those janitors, Bain would have failed.

BERG:  So you’re saying that janitors can manage venture capital better than managers can empty trash and sweep floors?  Or that restaurants would spontaneously form in Mower County without someone to rent a building, set up a kitchen and a counter and some tables and buy some inventory and hire and train some cooks and waiters and dishwashers.

LIBRELLE:  Of course not.

BERG:   OK, then…

LIBRELLE:  I’m saying that without janitors sweeping the floors, the capital would never have been managed.  Without a dishwasher, there’d be no restaurant.

LOUDSPEAKER:  “Number 36”

BERG:  Oh, that’s my number.  What’s yours?

LIBRELLE:  Oh, I don’t have one.  I just love hanging out here.

BERG:  (shuffling toward the window)  You what?

LIBRELLE:   Yeah.  It’s a great lesson on how business should work!

BERG:  Huh.  Wow.  And to think some people say liberals don’t understand business.

LIBRELLE:  I know.  Right?

(And SCENE)

(more…)

Mower County restaurant in southern MN offers a discount for customers exercising their First Amendment rights (or, as it’s referred to in 1930’s gangster movies and in the not-very-imaginative media and absolutely nobody else, “packing heat”):

Steve Nagel owns Langtry Cafe in the Mower County community of Brownsdale. Nagel says every Thursday is “conceal and carry day.” Customers carrying their guns to the restaurant will get 15 percent off your meal. And if you carry a gun openly, it’s a 25 percent discount.

Nagel’s restaurant has hosted conceal-and-carry permit classes in the past. KAAL-TV reports two classes next month are already sold out.

Nagel says most of his customers have a permit to carry, so he doesn’t mind giving them a discounted meal for demonstrating their Second Amendment rights.

Note to Twin Cities restauranteurs; do you have any idea what an enthusiastic market shooters are?

Just saying.

Liberals will occasionally try to sound “moderate” by claiming to favor “partnerships” between government and business.

These “partnerships” usually amount to one of a couple of things:

• The worst of both worlds; the inefficiency of government combined with the lean capitalization of a business
• The government picks a winner

In neither case do things work out well, as a general rule.

Except with this example, perhaps the most successful public private “partnership” in all history.

Just saying; if my financial planner hasn’t put a ton of money into Glock USA and Sturm Ruger, we’re gonna have to talk.

The Democrats nationwide are fond of trumpeting the factoid that “police chiefs’ organizations” and “police unions” roundly favor gun control.

Of course, police chiefs associations are dominated by top major-city cops, who pretty universally serve at the pleasure of liberal democrat machines.  And the Minnesota Police and Peace Officers’ Association is pretty closely tied with DFL-dominated unions, so their opinion is always an extension of the DFL party line on any issue.

When you get into law enforcement groups that depend on popular voting for their jobs – like the Sheriff’s Association in Minnesota, for example – things get a little less predictable.

But what if you polled actual street cops?

Second Amendment rights groups have long known, at least anecdotally, that actual policemen – as opposed to the uniformed politicians they report to in major cities and larger suburbs – roundly support the Second Amendment and the right, and competence, of the actual law-abiding citizen.

But now we know for real:

Among the findings of a survey by the industry website PoliceOne, which tallied responses from 15,000 verified active and retired law enforcement professionals, police overwhelmingly favor an armed citizenry and are skeptical of any greater restrictions placed on gun purchase, ownership or accessibility, editor Doug Wyllie said.

The survey found that 91.5 percent of respondents believe a federal ban on the manufacture or sale of semi-automatic weapons would have no effect or a negative effect on the reduction of violent crime.

There are bad apples on the street, of course.  But most cops know the simple truism that the likes of Representatives Paymar and Martens, Senator Lumberg Latz and Governor Messinger Dayton can’t quite retain; the law-abiding citizen, whether they’re carrying a revolver or an AK47, isn’t the problem.

In the four months since Sandy Hook and the Administration’s declaration of war on the law-abiding gun owner, twice as many states have strengthened their observance of the Second Amendment as have weakened it.

Although note that the Wall Street Journal article on the subject and its attendant illustrations…

…invert the meanings of “strengthen” and “weaken”, in their New York-centered way.

And yet the media continues to claim astronomical percentages of the people support anti-gun legislation.

…that if I voted for Mitt Romney, government would intrude into my private life.

And they were right!

(NOTE to all of my “Liberty” friends who thought Romney and Obama were precisely the same; I don’t recall Mitt proposing anything quite like this.  Please illuminate.  Thanks).

No, that’s not (just) the Gophers’ ranking in Big 10 football.

It’s the Mercatus Center (and George Mason U’s) assessment of Minnesota’s relative level of freedom among the fifty states:

The state’s taxes are higher than average, but otherwise the state’s fiscal policy does not deviate much from the norm. Minnesota spends more than average on parks and public welfare. Selective sales taxes (not including alcohol, tobacco, and utility taxes) and individual income taxes stand out as particularly high.

On most regulatory policies Minnesota fits comfortably into the middle range of the states, but the state does stand out in a favorable manner for the quality of its court system and for miscellaneous regulations—mostly due to lack of a certificate-of-need (CON) law. On the other hand, Minnesota scores poorly on health insurance and labor market freedoms. Mandated benefits add 53.7 percent to the cost of a policy without mandated coverages, and the state requires both rate bands and “prior approval” of new rates in both the small group and nongroup markets.

On both firearms and marijuana policies, Minnesota is quite a bit more regulated than the average state. The state is ripe for change in both areas.

And to those among you who will doubtlessly call Mercatus a conservative tool, here are their recommendations:

• Trim taxes and spending in [areas suggested earlier in report].
• Roll back health insurance mandates (for example, mandates for speech and hearing specialists, osteopathy, dietitians, occupational therapy, reconstructive surgery, port wine stain removal, ovarian cancer screening, infertility services, and Lyme disease treatment). Even having average health insurance mandates would have raised Minnesota four places on regulatory policy.
• Enact legal recognition of same-sex partnerships.

Cool widget in this study? If you believe that single-payer healthcare and gun control equal freedom, you can do your own map using your own criteria.

For for it.

As it happens, my fairly libertarian map (stressing personal, fiscal and regulatory freedom)…

…tracks pretty closely with the original.

James Taranto notes that while “Universal Background Checks” will have no effect on crime – serving as they do only to further harass and hamper the law-abiding, and price more low-income shooters out of the market – they will infringe on peoples’ privacy rights.

Currently, Federal Firearms License (FFL)-holding dealers perform these background checks online or via phone.  FFLs, by the way, are pretty tightly regulated; it’s not something you get for the asking.  On the other hand, Universal Background Checks would require all private transfers to get the background check.

And that means everyone:

Currently access to the FBI’s background check system is limited to licensed firearms dealers, who have an incentive not to abuse it lest they lose their license. If it’s opened up to all prospective sellers of guns–that is, to everybody–what’s to prevent someone from abusing it, say by requesting a background check on [Anti-gun WaPo columnist] Greg Sargent, who presumably has no interest in acquiring a gun?

The system only gives a yes-or-no answer as to whether the putative buyer is eligible to own firearms under federal law. But if you’re looking to dig up dirt on someone, a “no” answer on a firearms background check would give you a nice clump of it.

It’d put a big info-trawling tool into the hands of the unethical.

Think that won’t get abused?

Look at the last ten years in the history of Twin Cities’ leftyblogging and ask if you want that crowd to have access to a “there’s trouble here!” flag on every man, woman and child in the country.

I went to the House Public Safety Finance committee hearings on the Paymar and Lesch gun bills last night.

More on the event itself a little later.

But I thought this bit was interesting.

The hearings were scheduled for 5:30.  At around 4:45, House staff started passing out copies of an amendment that Paymar reportedly planned to propose for the bill.  Here’s the link to the amendment.  Paymar – the committee chair – waived the Legislature’s new 24 hour waiting period on amendments to get it in for the hearings.   He also passed the word that no public testimony would be taken.

Recap:  45 minutes before the committee hearings – which took place at 5:30PM on March 21 – the DFL committee chair distributed an amendment that fundamentally changed the tenor of Rep. Lesch’s bill.

Now take a look if you will at the time-stamp on the file.  I circled it, so that even I can’t miss it:

9PM the night before. That’s right around 20 hours.

So I have a few questions:

Rules, Apparently, Are For Peasants: From the House permanent rules, section 6.22:

6.22 PUBLIC TESTIMONY. Public testimony from proponents and opponents must be allowed on every bill or resolution before a standing committee, division or subcommittee of the House.

Paymar’s amendment substantially changed Lesch’s bill, by adding a niggling background check restriction to a bill that largely focused on reporting information and sentencing criminals.

How does this not rate public testimony?

Ethics Are What The DFL Says They Are:  Paymar waived his party’s own rule on the waiting period for amendments to jam down a fundamentally bill-changing amendment, sitting on it for nearly a day after reneging on his “promise” to Rep. Hilstrom before dumping it outside the hearing room 45 minutes before the hearing.

If only the ethics committee could hear about it.

If Only We Had An Institution, Full Of Highly-Trained People With Years Of Experience Asking Questions And Who’ve Convinced Themselves That They Are A Monastic Elite Apart From Society With A Mission Of Keeping Institutions On The Straight And Narrow.  Perhaps With Printing Presses And Transmitters:  More on this later.

Michael Paymar is going to attempt to jam down amendments wrecking perfectly good bills – like Hilstrom’s and, to an extent, Lesch’s – which are supported by a bipartisan majority of the House.  He’s going to do it because the DFL’s lotus-eating metrocrat pandits find guns in the hands of the plebeians distasteful.

There’s really no other reason.

For a decade, I referred to former longtime Minneapolis machine senator Wes Skoglund by the sobriquet “Lying Sack of Garbage”.  The reason was simple; every time he opened his mouth on the subject of firearms and the Second Amendment, he lied.  Every.  Single.  Time.

Skoglund left office some years back, apparently out of fear that carry permit holders from the Crips were stalking him.  And for the years since then, Representative Heather Martens has had to carry the load of lying about gun owners, firearms and the Second Amendment, during what were the lean years for the gun-grabbing orc movement.

But it’s a new day for the DFL, and a new leader has stepped up.  Michael Paymar is everything Skoglund used to be.

After saying “Universal Registration” was off the table on Tuesday, he turned around and said it’d be offered as an amendment yesterday:

Only a few hours earlier, Paymar reached an agreement with a fellow committee member, Rep. Debra Hilstrom, DFL-Brooklyn Center, that gutted his universal background checks bill. In exchange, Hilstrom agreed to a bill that would extend background checks to private sales made at gun shows — but not to other private sales, such as those made over the internet or among neighbors or friends.

Paymar said at that time that the agreement kills universal background checks for all private sales, but that closing the “gun show loophole” was a major step forward.

On Wednesday he said, “The agreement we had with the Speaker is that Rep. Hilstrom would agree to the gun show loophole language, and that the Speaker would allow a vote on the House floor.” But once that more limited bill reaches the floor, Paymar said, an amendment will likely be offered to re-insert universal background checks.

“I refuse to let the Legislature take a walk on this thing,” Paymar said. “I refuse to let the leadership not be accountable for a bill not coming to the floor.” He added, “I can’t believe we’d walk away from the Legislative session and not have a vote on it, up or down.”

Rep. Tony Cornish, R-Vernon Center, a member of Paymar’s committee and a leading advocate for gun-owners rights, accused Paymar of “trickery and deceit.” He said Paymar assured members Tuesday night that universal checks were dead.

“And now he’s overtly admitting, that was just for committee,” Cornish said. “I think he’s going to lose a lot of DFL support.”

Let’s hope so.

I’ll quote Paymar from the Strib piece again:

“I’m not giving up on this,” Paymar said. Once a bill comes to the floor, he said, “I am guaranteed that someone will offer an amendment that will offer each member, Democrat and Republican, the chance to vote on this issue. I want people to take a stand on this issue, up or down.”

So do I.  I want to see every Martha Forging DFLer put their vote on the line on that amendment. Oh, my, yes.  I surely do.

Michael Paymar.  The new Lying Sack of Garbage.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

The European Union told Cyprus it had to raise 6 billion Euros in order to get 4 billion more from the EU to bail out its banks. Cyprus waited until banks closed last Friday to announce a “one-time” tax on bank accounts. Accounts with less than 100,000 Euros would pay 6.75%; larger accounts would pay 9.9%, all automatically deducted and sent to Berlin.

The idea is . . . unpopular. Cypriot banks are still closed to avoid massive runs of people trying to grab their money before the government does.

It occurs to me, this isn’t a new concept. Didn’t Larry Pogemiller propose a shift away from income taxes toward net worth taxes about six years ago, in a bid to shift the burden of paying for a Nicer Minnesota away from “working families” over to “wealthy retirees?” I don’t remember the automatic deduction feature in his plan, but the basic idea is the same. In fact, it’s older than that. When asked why he robbed banks, Willie Sutton famously replied: “Because that’s where the money is.”

To heck with being an outlaw, Willie should have been a government bureaucrat! He was just ahead of his time, is all.

Luckily, that could never happen here. The President might have the Constitutional power to drop Hellfire missiles on unsuspecting Americans, but he can’t just take money out of their bank accounts. He can’t, right? Right?

Joe Doakes

Don’t be silly.

We’re “doing fine”.

Another Tuesday, another hearing:

VICTORY GOES TO THOSE WHO SHOW UP

Tomorrow (Tuesday, March 19) at 10 a.m., the House Public Safety Committee will hear and vote of HF237, Rep, Paymar’s Punish Gun Owners Act.

We need to show up in large numbers to tell the House members to REJECT the infringing bill and instead hold a vote on Rep. Hilstrom’s Criminal Control bill, HF1325.

Please show up as early as possible for good seats, and wear a maroon shirt (or your GOCRA shirt, if you have one!)

The meeting will be held in Room 10 of the State Office Building.

I can’t make it, but if you’re anywhere near the Capitol I certainly hope you can.  And make sure you join GOCRA – the single most effective advocate in Minnesota for the law-abiding gun owner, and perhaps one of the most powerful grass-roots political organizations in the state.

I shot this video on a recent tour of Senator Ron Latz’s office at the Capitol in Saint Paul:

That explains a lot.

(more…)

The Southern Poverty Law Center – which is sort of the intellectual NKVD of the hard left – is publicizing its “list of patriot groups” to be watched.

“Patriot” in scare quotes, by the way, is the SPLC’s shorthand for “hate”.

Here’s the list in Minnesota:

• Alarm & Muster: The Modern Day Alarm Riders – Statewide: This is a national group.  Gotta say I don’t know much about ’em.
• Constitution Party – Redwood Falls:  Huh.
• Genesis Communication Network – Eagan: The broadcast home of libertarian on-air professor Jason Lewis as well as conspiracymongering huckster Alex Jones.
• John Birch Society – Statewide: Question for you: outside of SPLC news releases, when was the last time you even heard of the John Birch society?  I used to say that if the JBS didn’t exist, the left would have to invent them – but at this point, it’s more like “keep them on life support”
• Oath Keepers – Statewide:  The idea of getting law-enforcement agents and the military to pledge to uphold the Constitution even if asked not to is “hate”? 
• The Republic for the united States of America and The Republic for the united States of America — Republic Congress – Statewide: Huh.
• Tenth Amendment Center – Statewide: I supposed limiting the power and scope of government, as the 10AC advocates, is a hate crime in the eyes of the SPLC.
• We Are Change – Duluth: Fighting government abuse?  So hateful.
• We the People – Shoreview: I’ll believe ’em when I see ’em.

Wonder what I need to do to get on their list?

Heck, maybe we all already are!

The Shorter Anti-Unionization Activist: “Unionization would force us to,raise prices. Forcing us to unionize to accept state aid payments would cause me to stop accepting kids who get state assistance. Providers can already join the union; in eight years, out of 11,000 providers, exactly 57 have joined. I already work hard on improving the quality of the care I provide. By the way, the stories of unethical behavior on union reps’ parts in the card check process are true and omnipresent. We are independent businesspoeple! If we wanted to work inside of a larger organization, we’d have stayed with our old careers!

The Shorter Rep. Nelson (author of the union jamdown bill, and a carpenters union activist in his per-legislative life): Unions all help provide better quality care, training, and standards.

The Shorter Response To Nelson From Providers: Um, those are the job, in order, of existing licensing authorities, and myself.

The Shorter Pro-union Daycare Provider: I’m a loving nurturing person. I teach my kids. Aren’t teachers unionized?

The Shorter Union AFSCME Rep’s Case, with the actual thought completed in parentheses This bill won’t force anyone into a union! (It’ll merely give a mass of unlicensed fly-by-night providers the right to compel all you licensed providers to unionize to if you get state money.

The Shorter Committee Chair Joe Mullery: Unions don’t skim anything.  

The Shorter Mary Franson (leading opponent of jamdown, and a former provider herself):. This bill isn’t about improving care. It’s about enriching union officials and funneling dues money to the DFL-supporting unions.

The Shorter Carly Melin (27-year old second term rep who was carted directly to her district after graduating from Hamline Law just in time to meet residency requirements, and neither has kids nor any notable non-legislative post-law-school job history): Hey! Don’t insult the unions!

The Shorter Results:. Six in-the-bag-for-the-unions DFLers “yes”, five Republivans “no”.

Republican “xeroxes” a bill:  Leftymedia chants indignantly.

Democrat not only copies and pastes a bill from a special interest group, but allows that special interest’s registered lobbyist to sit in in the role of a legislator to introduce and read the bill into the record?

{crickets}

Berg’s Seventh Law may be the single most prescient thing I’ve ever written.

I’ve never been much of a movie-goer.

Part of it is that for much of my childhood – the part where real movie addicts got “going to the theater” in their blood – my hometown didn’t even have a theater.  There were always other things to do.

Part of it is that I spend so very little time in front of the TV watching things – and while I spend plenty of time in front of the computer, it’s almost always writing, either for work or, well, this.    The rare times I sit still and try to just consume, I usually fall asleep.

So the list of great movies I’ve never seen, or seen parts of, but not in sequence, or not the the whole thing, is a very long one.

One of them, until this past weekend, had been Schindler’s List.  Believe it or not.

But it was on FX on Saturday night.  And I took a rare night of doing nothing, and chugged a Red Bull and watched the whole thing.

Never seen it?  Don’t go in on a night when you’re feeling down on the human race.  Here’s the scene where the Nazis decide to ship the Jews out of the Krakow Ghetto:

It gets worse, and more depressing.

It’s because humanity, at its core, is rotten.  That fact is at the core of the Judeo-Christian worldview, and it’s been proven in the absolute human absence of that worldview, which was one way you could describe the Holocaust.

How to describe humanity?  I’ll leave it – partly for a little comic relief – to one of the greatest philosophers of our time, Dr. Perry Cox:

With that in mind, what actually separates us – the United State of America – from what you  saw in the video above?

Two centuries of small-“l” liberal democracy?  Sure.

A legal system that, at the moment, works?  You bet.

But Germany was a western country.  It was part of Western Civilization; the home of Bach, Händel, Schubert, Einstein (speaking culturally, not in terms of borders), Kafka, Beethoven.  Not a “liberal democracy”, necessarily, by the time Hitler took office – Germany had suffered some very hard times.

And that’s the point.

It took a bad outcome to a war, and a decade and a half of economic misery to turn what was one of the wealthiest, most educated “first world” nations, the culture of Mozart and Schubert, into the stormtroopers.  It took a demigogue at the head of a mass movement, one who tapped into long-standing cultural antipathies toward a cultural boogeyman at an opportune time, to turn the nation of Göthe into the nation of Amon Göth:

Has our Democracy ever been threatened with this?

No – leaving out all of history’s imponderable “what ifs“, we have not.

And how do we assure it stays that way?

You really have two options:

Have faith that government will always stay good.  Or at least “not evil”.  That judges and courts and laws and tradition will always hamstring not only the tyrants and murderers, but the tyrants who are murderers.  That, irreducibly, means trusting to human nature.  And it can, hypothetically, work.  And it can, hypothetically, fail miserably.

But that is the leap of faith that Second Amendment opponents like Alice Hausman and Heather Martens and Rahm Emanuel want you, The People, to take.

The other option?

Make sure the people – no, The People – are equipped to make certain government stays on the straight and narrow.  Make sure the people have not only the right to tell the government “you’re getting out of bounds”, but the ability to enforce it.

Want to see what the Second Amendment is about?  This is it.  Preventing what you see in Schindler’s List – preventing government from turning on the people, from metastasizing into a self-sustaining engine of evil.

That is the choice; trust in human nature’s desire to curb its worst aspects, or counterbalance it with sheer numbers.

I’m not saying the likes of Alice Hausman and Heather Martens are depraved totalitarians.

I am saying that depraved totalitarians need a society full of Hausmans and Martenses and Bidens and Emanuels and Michael Paymars, people more willing to empower government in spite of knowing the failings of human nature than they are to trust The People, to have a shot.

And that’s why some of us fight for the Second Amendment.

To: Rahm Emanuel, Capo Di Tutti Politici, City of Chicago
From:  Mitch Berg, Ornery Peasant
Re: Today’s US 7th Circuit Decision

Dear Mayor Emanuel,

Suck it.

That is all.

Two weeks ago, we noted that “Representative” Alice Hausman handed the job of reading “her” gun grab bill over to registered lobbyist Heather Martens.

Martens represents “Protect Minnesota”, a gun “safety” “group”.  I put “group” in scare quotes, because if the “group” has more than half a dozen “members”, I’d be frankly amazed.

But “Protect Minnesota” has a big budget, and big-money donors.  They are what’s called a “Checkbook Advocacy” group – a “public interest” group with few if any members, but lots of money and powerful lobbyists.  “Protect Minnesota” can be fairly and accurately called “astroturf” – fake grass roots.

So – Alice Hausman turned her chair over to a checkbook advocacy group.

We’re not done yet.

Earlier this week, we wrote about the bipartisan push to scupper the “RoboCop” bill in the Legislature.  As we noted, DFL committee chair Ron Erhard was basically a marionette for  yet another checkbook advocacy group, the “Traffic Safety Coalition”.

The TSC is another checkbook advocacy group affiliated with the Robocop industry – which is closely politically and financially tied with Chicago strongman, former Obama majordomo and possible Democrat presidential candidate Rahm Emanuel.

John Gilmore at Minnesota Conservatives unpacks the various groups involved; refer to the link just above for the ties to Emanuel:

  Shortly after I received the cheerleading email for this legislation, I sent it to a number of extremely competent republican activists. Suffice it to say that we tweeted the results of what we found simply by using The Google.

Could not, you know, alleged reporters do the same? Work backwards from the front group Traffic Safety Coalition to Redflex, the Australian company who bought four lobbyists (and apparently at least two GOP senators) to push the legislation, to Resolute Consulting, who “manages” the Traffic Safety Coalition non-profit! Who owns Resolute Consulting? Greg Goldner, a thug who has greased the skids for the loathsome, greasy Rahm Emanuel.

Oh: Redflex got into a lot of trouble in Chicago, too. If you’re too corrupt for Chicago, you set some kind of record. Redflex actually stopped trading its stock recently because of investigations into its affairs.

And Gilmore notes the laziness of the local media’s “coverage” of the story:

Worse, the Traffic Safety Coalition is lazily termed by the Star Tribune as “a national non-profit.”

A non-profit! Lars Leafbladism™ strikes again. If it is a non-profit, only pure motives can obtain. A front group for a thug PR guy of Rahm Emanuel’s Chicago? Why, who would suggest such a thing?

Well, nobody in our media, to give the rhetorical question a literal answer…

At least some police departments are, finally, teaching the victim pool in our nation’s “gun free zones” that sitting quietly and waiting to be butchered doesn’t actually prevent any deaths.

Law enforcement agencies have begun adopting a new policy on so-called “active shooters,” encouraging civilians to take safety into their own hands and take down gunmen who threaten them at work or school.

This approach is gaining momentum in the wake of tragic incidents in Newtown, Connecticut and the Oikos University shooting in Oakland.

At San Jose Evergreen Community College, police have trained teachers, staff and students to follow specific guidelines during this kind of emergency.

The campus police chief credits this training for their coordinated response last December when a gunman was thought to have entered one of their buildings. “Some folks even said I know now whether it is time to hide or the right time to fight back,” said Chief Raymund Aguirre.

Fighting back works.

As we saw in the Clackamas Mall shooting, three days before the Sandy Hook shooting last winter, fighting back with a gun works even better.

Eventually someone will put two and two together; if resisting murderers is good, resisting them with lethal force is better.

We’ll have a related story – and one that ties in with my “Urban Renewal” piece the other day – coming up at noon.

Last week, it came to our attention that the local lefty alt-media was shilling for the DFL meme that anti-gun Representatives felt “intimidated” by the presence of all the gun owners – people with carry permits who’ve passed criminal background checks, and are thus most likely less apt to resort to violence than, well, the Representatives and Senators on the panels – in the audience.

I feel I should respond to this.

I’ll neither confirm nor deny that I have a carry permit, a handgun, or permission to carry in the Capitol complex.  If I do, I would never carry openly, primary out of deference to the warped sensitivities of the ones complaining; “pick your battles”, I always say.

But I’ll urge you, gun-grabbing DFL legislator, to be intimidated.

Be intimidated by the fact that I, like most of the pro-Gun Rights people I know, know more about the issue than you do.  Be intimidated that I make the anti-gun, pro-gun control argument better than you, and better than Heather Martens, for that matter – and can then turn around and destroy it.  With facts, history, the law, and a lot of style.

Be intimidated by the fact that I, and most of the pro-Gun Rights people I know, take that superior knowledge out to my fellow MInnesotans, one by one, and win them over, just as we have been for 25 years now.

Be intimidated by the fact that I am one member of what was, 10 years ago, one of the most amazing grassroots political movements in Minnesota political history, the Gun Owners Civil Rights Alliance which, with no help from corporate donors or Rockefellers or PACs, started rolling a big heavy rock up a very high, steep hill in 1995 – and won the issue in 2003, playing a key role in flipping the House of Representatives along the way.

Be intimidated by the fact that GOCRA, and other gun rights groups and the people they represent, are coming back bigger and tougher and more focused than ever before.

Be intimidated by the fact that our movement adds more people every day than will ever show up at a gun control rally, and that every one of those people understands the issue better than any of the anti-gunners, and most of  you legislators as well.

Be intimidated by the fact that we have energy, savvy, and the grim determination to crush you, rhetorically speaking.  We’ve been through this before.  We’ve run the marathon – the seven-year battle to enact Shall Issue.  You’ve run the sprint.  Who’s going to be still up and standing and fighting in a year?  Two years? Four years?

My gun – if I have one, and if I’m carrying it?  That’s literally, figuratively and statistically the least of your worries.

Columbine massacre survivor Evan Todd has sent an open letter to the President and, by extension, all of the gun grabbers in government and their supporters.

It’s below the jump.

(more…)

We Real Americans – that defined as “Americans who support all ten Amendments in the Bill of Rights, the Second and Tenth as devoutly as the First and Fourth – know that giving any ground with the gun grabbers is a fool’s bargain.  The metrocrat Orcs will exploit any opening we Real Americans give them to harass us, badger us, turn us – the most law-abiding people in this country – into criminals.

The “assault weapon” bans are – or were – stupid, and would not affect crime in the least (or at least would never reduce it).  Magazine restrictions are also of no actual value as anything but harassing the law-abiding, as well as putting them (in rare cases) at a disadvantage to criminals.

But it gets worse.

This just in from GOCRA:  The worst of them all is up on the dock now:

The most dangerous bill this session is not a magazine ban, or an “assault weapon” ban. It’s universal registration, masquerading as “universal background checks.”

It’s called SF 458, and it will be heard on THURSDAY at the state capitol. GOCRA will be there to fight it. Will you?

I’ll give it my best shot.  Hope you can too.

Why is this bill so bad?  For starters, because it’ll tack $25 onto the sale prices of a firearm, plus $25 for permit to purchase – which makes firearms $50 harder to obtain for the poor (who are, after all, the ones the DFL wants to disarm…first).

Worse?  It’s registration!  It doesn’t go by the name, but that’s exactly what it is; a paper trail leading, over time, to every single gun in the United States.

This bill needs to be not just defeated; it needs to be crushed and humiliated.  Any outstate DFLer that supports it needs to feel the wrath of every gun owner in their district, sports or self-defense.  Any Republican who supports this abomination must be primaried and expunged from public life.

No retreat.

No surrender.

No compromise on the rights of the law-abiding.

No mercy for the politicians who get it wrong.

Here’s the hearing schedule; all hearings are in room 15 of the State Capitol. Get there two hours early to get a seat in the hearing room, or use overflow seating with a closed-circuit feed of the hearings.

Please let us know if you plan to attend (and which session) by sending an email to volunteer@gocra.org.

Thursday, February 21
Noon: SF 235, 458, 69

Thursday, February 21
6 p.m.:  Public testimony on SF 235, 503, 69, 458, 557, 520, 400, 413 and 568

Friday, February 22

Noon: SF 503, 557, 520, 400, 413, 568

You can read summaries of all gun grab bills at the Gocra website.

And remember; don’t commit a felony! Only liberals get away with gun crimes, so please remember to notify the DPS as required if you intend to carry at the Capitol. GOCRA’s simple instructions are right here.

Alice Hausman’s gun grab bill focused on so-called “assault weapons” – now turns to shotguns.

Shotguns are a fearsome weapon, close-in – deadlier than assault rifles in some cases; British special forces have long used the Benelli semi-automatic hunting shotgun as their favorite weapon in the jungle.

But this part of Hausman’s bill is no less bizarre and ill-informed than the rest of it; it’d ban any…:

3.16(4) semi-automatic shotgun that has one or more of the following:

(i) a pistol grip or thumbhole stock;

(ii) any feature capable of functioning as a protruding grip that can be held by the nontrigger hand;

(iii) a folding or telescoping stock;

(iv) a fixed magazine capacity in excess of seven rounds; or

(v) an ability to accept a detachable magazine;

It’s aimed, seemingly, at weapons like the Russian-built Saiga…:

…which is basically a 12-gauge semi-automatic AK47.

But the Mossberg 930  – it’s semi-automatic, and holds eight rounds…:

…is also covered.

In the meantime?  It doesn’t cover pump-action shotguns with all the same goodies…:

…which are almost exactly as deadly.  But “pump” sounds quaint, while “semi-automatic” sounds, if you’re a DFL staffer or (who are we kidding) Heather Martens, vaguely evil.

I keep saying “it gets dumber”.  Because it does.  Stay tuned.