Category Archives: Big Gun Control

Question

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Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

I visited a woman in the hospital this weekend.  She had a heart attack and was unresponsive on arrival.  The doctors didn’t know if she would make it.  Here’s a note from her husband (I did their estate plan, back when I was in private practice):

“When you are laying in bed at 2:00 a.m and your mind is running the gerbil wheel of ‘what if she doesn’t wake up,  would she want burial or cremation and what do I do with the ashes, keep them or scatter them, and what funeral home should I hire, and who is going to scan photos for the video but would she even want a memorial, and what are her friends’ phone numbers or maybe invite only family, and can we even have a memorial, what are the Covid rules and oh God, what if she doesn’t wake up?’ . . . it’s not as much fun as you might think.  Spend some time talking to your family so they know the plan.”

Joe Doakes

What Joe said. 

Record number of women and minorities seeking concealed carry permits.

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

Joe Doakes

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

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

Ready For An Apology

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Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

I visited a woman in the hospital this weekend.  She had a heart attack and was unresponsive on arrival.  The doctors didn’t know if she would make it.  Here’s a note from her husband (I did their estate plan, back when I was in private practice):

“When you are laying in bed at 2:00 a.m and your mind is running the gerbil wheel of ‘what if she doesn’t wake up,  would she want burial or cremation and what do I do with the ashes, keep them or scatter them, and what funeral home should I hire, and who is going to scan photos for the video but would she even want a memorial, and what are her friends’ phone numbers or maybe invite only family, and can we even have a memorial, what are the Covid rules and oh God, what if she doesn’t wake up?’ . . . it’s not as much fun as you might think.  Spend some time talking to your family so they know the plan.”

Joe Doakes

What Joe said. 

The Washington Post, which endlessly editorializes in favor of stricter gun control laws and bans, writes approvingly of armed citizens carrying assault rifles, shotguns and pistols in the streets of Minneapolis. 

NAACP, which advocates strict gun control laws and bans, is organizing the armed citizen patrols.

Neither of these organizations come right out and say it, but by their actions, they’re basically conceding that I was right all along, and they were wrong. 

I am now prepared to accept their apologies.

Joe Doakes

The good news: we might be starting to see parts of the left (including, unfortunately, some of the worst parts) voting on this issue with their feet.

The bad news: all that energy is going to go into more bad ideas.

Every Once In A While…

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…a prog lets the truth slip out.

“Beto” O’Rourke, fake Latino beneficiary of a fake “Beto-mania” and former Presidential candidate – screwed up and told the truth behind Big Left’s approach to guns; they want them. All of them.

Eventually.

Beto slipped up and, in a fit of trying to re-attain relevance, let the end-game out.

Big mistake for him. And his fellow Progs know it:

During a discussion on ABC’s “the View,” the regular cohost weighed in on the former Texas Democratic Congressman’s recent exit from the 2020 presidential primary. Meghan McCain first mentioned O’Rourke’s position on gun buybacks, arguing that it may have played a role in his decline in popularity…
“He got a ton of Obama staff, and I’ll also say his stance on gun buybacks, Mayor Pete said it was ‘a shiny object that distracts from achievable gun reform,’” McCain continued. “Chris Coons said it wasn’t a wise policy move and ‘that clip will be played for years at 2nd Amendment rallies with organizations to try to scare people to say Democrats are coming for your guns.’ He made a speech about religious institutions get their tax status removed from them because they didn’t support same-sex marriage. He did a lot of, like, battleground culture war, and he ran as the most left, most ‘woke’ candidate and look where he ended up.”
“They should not tell everything they’re going to do,” Behar jumped in then, suggesting that candidates shouldn’t warn Americans the gun confiscation was coming. “If you are going to take people’s guns away, wait until you get elected and then take them away. Don’t tell them ahead of time.”
McCain pushed back, adding, “By the way, that’s what people like me think you’re going to do, so I appreciate his honesty.”

They’re all thinking it – the ones who are honest, anyway.

Never forget it.

No Guns, No Coverage

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When I first saw the headline for this piece on social media, I thought it was Babylon Bee spoofing big modern media:

Kyoto Animation arson killings didn’t get much attention because we couldn’t demonize guns

Sure enougb, it’s an actual USAToday editorial, about the Kyoto Animation Studio mass killing -= which involved arson, not guns, so the American media snoozed it out:

The limited attention here in the United States cannot be explained away on account of distance. Compare the coverage with that of the mosque shootings last March in Christchurch, New Zealand, a location even farther from our shores. U.S. newspapers and wire services featured the Christchurch massacre five times as much as the Kyoto mass murder.
Sure, there are some differences between the two tragedies in term of victim count and motive. Thursday’s attack involved a personal agenda rather than a political one — never raising the dreadful specter of terrorism. The Kyoto massacre may not have been an act of terror, but the young victims undoubtedly experienced tremendous terror as the flames swelled around them and smoke invaded their lungs. 
Mass shootings remain one of the most widely discussed topics here in the United States. By comparison, we just don’t seem to be as unnerved by mass killings carried out by other methods, unless of course they hint of terrorism, be it of foreign or domestic origin.

This wasn’t always the case; when over 90 were killed by an arsonist at the Happyland Social Club in the Bronx in 1990, there was media coverage…

…but it didn’t lead to “National Conversations” about mental health, since that’s a) intractable, b) involves beating on no political opponents.

And I’ll posit this right here: If an insane arsonist killed 34 black people in Chicago, there’d be a similar shrug of the media’s shoulders. Because there’s no political angle to beat on gun owners in between editorials bemoaning “tribailism” in our culture.

Idiots Abroad

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One Ron letnes (it’s his capitalization – and reading the rest of his not-very literate screed, I’m pretty sure it’s not a “style” thing), who writes for “Engage”, the “progressive” Evangelical Lutheran Church’s anti-gun propaganda blog, took a trip to Europe.

And he writes…:

Linda and I spent a month touring Europe this summer. We anticipated a wave of discomfort because of the global immigration demands for life and safety. We anticipated verbal antagonisms and increased gun visibility by persons and authorities. We anticipated the isolation of Muslim and African peoples from events and sites.

In other words, he “anticipated” exactly everything that the narrative police are telling the demented lunatic fringe to anticipate.

Have a free range cigar, Ron.

The Wrong Profile

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The unqualified David Hogg couldn’t get into a junior college in Florida on his merits, but Harvard grabbed him because he’s got the right Social Justice profile. 

Kyle Kashuv – who survived the same shooting – got into Harvard on his merits.  

Or so he thought.  

Kashuv explains in this twitter thread:

Because it’s not enough merely to be a victim (forget about pretty brilliant). It’s about being the right kind of victim. Otherwise, you’re expendable – and, if you’re too obstreporous, must be destroyed.

A Nation Of Logrolled Sheep

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Gun violence is schools is a quarter what it was 25 years ago, even with the tragic mass shootings in recent years thrown in.

But Big Left and Big Media have succeeded in convincing a fair number of people that 2+2=5:

Twenty years after the Columbine High School shooting made practicing for armed intruders as routine as fire drills, many parents have only tepid confidence in the ability of schools to stop a gunman, according to a new poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.
And while most Americans consider schools less safe than they were 20 years ago, the poll finds a majority say schools aren’t at fault for shootings. Bullying, the availability of guns, the internet and video games share more of the blame.

If you tell people the sky is falling often and consistently enough, people will start carrying umbrellas.

Open Letter To Senator Scott Jensen

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To: Sen. Scott Jensen
From: Mitch Berg, Impudent Peasant
Re: Know Your Friends

Sen. Jensen,

Last year, as he got set up to run for re-election as a Republican in decaying purple district, Representative Dario Anselmo made a very visible point of cuddling up to Minnesota’s various gun control groups.

He spoke at their rallies.

He offered his own testimony (his stepmother was murdered).

He sought the grabbers’ endorsement, he could practically taste it.

And after all that, the DFL and the gun grab groups up to which he’d been sucking, endorsed the DFL opponent, who won the race surfing atop of curl of Progressive Plutocrat money. And it’s not just Anselmo. Republicans who cuddle up to Big Gun Control tend to get treated like the kid in junior high who, when the bullies and mean girls ask them to eat a bug to be accepted by the “cool kids”, eat the bug – and have the photos of them eating the bug pasted up around the school.

Don’t eat the bug, Senator Jensen.

That is all.

Un-Hogged

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A Parkland kid realizes he’s been used:

“My whole message is I was propped up as an expert. The whole message was these kids are the real experts,” [Cameron] Kasky told Fox News Radio’s Benson & Harf on Wednesday. “Look, I have some very intelligent friends. Some friends who can intellectually run circles around me, but I’m not the expert in pretty much anything.”

Survivors of the Parkland shooting received wall-to-wall cable-news coverage in its aftermath. Kasky gained national notoriety after telling Senator Marco Rubio of Florida that looking at him felt like looking “down the barrel of an AR-15,” during a town hall weeks after the shooting. Kasky now claims to regret that interaction and says he hopes to meet with Rubio to apologize.

Kasky is also doing something a lot more adults should:

The 17-year-old now plans to start his own podcast, Cameron Knows Nothing, featuring subject-matter experts as part of his mission to change the way he participates in the public debate surrounding gun control and other politically charged issues.

Not tripling down on one’s ignorance (aka “Hogging”) – if this could become a trend…

 

Overheated

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So yesterday, the Feds handed down a yuge win for people who’d make firearms using 3D printers.  A settlement with “radical libertarian” Cody Wilson – who first posted 3D printer files for firearms on his website “defcad.com”, was settled on First and Second Amendment grounds.

And Big Left – in this case, through technology site “Wired” – is having the predictable fit:

“This should alarm everyone,” says Po Murray, chairwoman of Newtown Action Alliance, a Connecticut-focused gun control group created in the wake of the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2013. “We’re passing laws in Connecticut and other states to make sure these weapons of war aren’t getting into the hands of dangerous people. They’re working in the opposite direction.”

When reporters and critics have repeatedly pointed out those potential consequences of Wilson’s work over the last five years, he has argued that he’s not seeking to arm criminals or the insane or to cause the deaths of innocents.

Let’s take a step back for a moment here.

Street criminals don’t have access to 3D printers.  They don’t spend the money for the materials – which are, by the way, still pretty exotic and expensive – to do 3D printer projects.  They don’t have the hobbyist’s drive to do the tinkering that inevitably follows building your own firearm, even from kit parts, much less from parts you “build” yourself using a bleeding-edge technology.  They don’t spend the money on that tinkering (gunsmithing is not a cheap hobby).

The people you need to worry about are the ones who will send their friend or girlfriend or grandma to buy a gun, or steal one of the 400,000,000 that are already out there, in (generally) working order, ready to go.

This reminds me of the “Plastic Gun” controversy 30 years ago, when Glock started marketing polymer-frame guns; “they’ll go through airport security”, Big Gun Control chanted, unaware that the Glock has a barrel, bolt and springs made of enough good ol’-fashioned steel to perhaps even wake up the TSA drone operating the scanner, no matter how hung over they are.

And it reminds me – it’s impossible to have a rational debate about firearms, gun laws, gun crime or the Second Amendment with 99% of the antis – because their entire “knowledge” of the issue comes from erroneous or context-mangled “research”, word-of-mouth gleaned from the ignorant but effusive, dystopian fantasy, and agenda-driven narrative.

 

Why Do Liberals Want Children To Be Murdered (Even After They’re Born)?

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Obama’s education secretary urges people to boycott schools “until gun laws are changed”:

Duncan said in an interview Saturday that the idea was intended to be provocative but that an aggressive approach like a school boycott is needed if gun laws are ever going to change. He has school-age children and said if this idea were to gain traction, his family would participate.

“It’s wildly impractical and difficult,” Duncan said. “But I think it’s wildly impractical and difficult that kids are shot when they are sent to school.”

44 kids in five years.  It’s 44 too many, of course.

But kids are safer in school than at home, on the street, at the mall – anywhere.

Former Secretary Duncan – the poor children of liberal parents managed to survive ’til birth without getting killed; why do you keep putting them in danger?

This Is The Minnesota Gun Control Movement

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Joe Campbell is a PR flak for an agency that does “work” for “Protect” Minnesota, Minnesota’s ghoulish gun-grab group.

Rob Doar is a friend of this blog, a married father and a guy who works his butt off for civil rights, having spent this past session lobbying, pretty much on his own time for the MN Gun Owners Caucus.  He’s one of the good guys.

This is what Joe Campbell tweeted about Rob:

It’s hard to have a civil debate with people who are garbage.

 

Play Progressive Games, Win Progressive Prizes

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Dario Anselmo is the lone Republican representing Edina.

Now, considering the Democrats that run in Edina these days – Anselmo beat Ron Erhardt, after all – it might be fair to say that of the options available, Anselmo passes the Buckley test (the most conservative candidate who can win) under the circumstances.

But as we’ve noted in the past, Anselmo is a prominent turncoat on the gun issue.  He’s one of few Republicans found at Moms Want Action events; the sole gloss of “bipartisanship” in the extreme-left gun control movement.

But if he’d hoped that his accomodationalism would buy him any favor from Big Gun Grab (a wholliy owned subsidiary of Big Left?)

Well, what do you think?

For Anselmo, a bitter lesson was learned this week when, after months of supporting limits to Second Amendment rights in order to curry favor with far left gun control advocates “Moms Demand Action,” his opponent, Heather Edelson, was effectively endorsed. Heather wears pearls; you can’t say she doesn’t know Edina. But this endorsement puts paid to the idea that if Republicans only find the illusory “common ground” with the other side, they will be rewarded for their efforts.

Moms Demand Action is part of “Everytown for Gun Safety,” a radical gun control group largely financed by Michael Bloomberg.

So he danced with the devil, and didn’t even get his thirteen pieces of silver, apparently.

Anselmo was frequently the lone Republican at Moms’ rallies at the State Capitol. This garnered him the approval of Democrats in the media like Lori Sturdevant but at the cost of discouraging his base, for which one could be forgiven in thinking Anselmo believes he doesn’t need.

Having contempt for the people who put you there – even if you don’t really know that – is a bad, bad plan.

Question: wonder if Lori Sturdevant will castigate the Action Moms for their lack of bipartisanship?

Dereliction

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Glenn Reynolds on the institutional deflection after Parkland:

Despite receiving a warning directly from the Russian government, the FBI failed to stop the Tsarnaev brothers from staging the Boston Marathon bombing. Despite having plenty of resources, the Charlottesville police failed to stop a car attack that left a woman dead. The FBI interviewed Omar Mateen, the Orlando Pulse nightclub shooter, and considered criminally investigating him. They didn’t — possibly because his father was an FBI informant.

The FBI also missed numerous “red flags” before the San Bernardino shooting. And despite having lots of warning, the FBI, the Broward County schools and the Broward Sheriff’s Department under Sheriff Scott Israel all failed to stop Nikolas Cruz from shooting up a high school.

And yet these repeated failures — among others — keep getting swept under the rug as we look for “solutions” to the problem of violence. No doubt Israel and the others whose incompetence made it possible for Cruz to kill his classmates were relieved to see our national discourse veer into questions of whether Laura Ingraham should lose sponsors for mocking David Hogg’s college-admissions failures, instead of their own failures to do their jobs.

Deflecting to “gun control” certainly takes heat off of the likes of Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel and the carnage on his watch, and that of his Democrat predecessor Bill “Rifle Up Your Butt” Daley.

Mayors of failed cities do a lot of deflecting, don’t they?

Our Cravenly Dishonest Media

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Channel 11 – which long since gave up any pretense of not being a DFL PR firm – notes that Remington, America’s oldest gun maker, has filed Chapter 11.

Now, people were talking about the likelihood, and even imminence, of Remington’s demise a solid year ago, as the Trump election caused panic-buying of guns (except in certain “progressive” circles) to slow down.

And before that, when people were panic-buying everything that looked like a gun, down to and including pop tarts chewed into gun shapes, people were pointing out that panic-buying was the only thing keeping Remington in business, so unsound was it even during the salad days of 2015-16.

So what did the Kare Bears have to say about it?

It also follows large student-led rallies across the United States calling for stricter gun laws after the mass shooting at Parkland High School in Florida in February.

For that matter, it also follows most of March Madness, the Oscars, and the Tide Pod controversy.  Each of them had as  much to do with Remington’s troubles as the Potemkin Protests.

Proof, Pudding, Etc.

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Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Kid with gun in school shoots girl, shoots boy, gets shot by armed cop in school.  Shooting over.

A good guy with a gun stopped the shooting.  Armed police inside the school immediately engaged the shooter. Nobody died.

Everything we’ve been saying about ineffective gun control was proven true in the Florida school.

Everything we’ve been saying about effective crime prevention was just proven true in Maryland.

But notice the Democrat congressman instantly leaps to the same old idea – background checks.  Didn’t work in Florida, wouldn’t have worked here, but they’re the first words out of his mouth.

Joe Doakes

Seems pretty obvious.

Which hasn’t stopped some of the less-bright lights on Big Left to tell us “who are you gonna believe – the narrative, or your lying eyes?”

You Have The Right To Remain Off The Record. Should You Choose To Waive That Right…

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“I accepted the results of an opinion poll taken in a country where it was illegal to hold certain opinions. You can imagine the poll-taking process: “Hello, Mr. Peasant, I’m an inquisitive and frightening stranger. God knows who I work for. Would you care to obstensibly support the dictatorship which controls every facet of your existence, or shall we put you down as in favor of the UNO opposition and just tear up your ration card right here and now?””

— P. J. O’Rourke, Give War A Chance

I got an email from Minnesota Public Radio news the other day.

And it was a tough call.

On the one hand, I generally think MPR News is above board.  Generally.

On the other, they have gotten funding for “gun violence” coverage from the Joyce Foundation which was, before Michael Bloomberg’s billions inundated the market, the biggest funder of criminal-safety groups in the US.  And while I can’t show a cause-and-effect relationship, I have my suspicions that that funding caused MPR to make some bad editorial decisions.  (I’ve asked MPR News for comment – but they don’t talk on an official basis with plebeians).

I thought about it.

Then I read the website the email linked to (images of survey provided below; click on them to see full size).

 

And I just have to ask (although MPR never answers questions) = are you serious?

Did anyone actually answer?

I mean, I would – I own no guns, because they terrify me, and I’d never shoot another human being for any reason.

But given MPR’s close ties to the Metro DFL, I would just love to know what they were thinking – and what they thought shooters would think.

Dear Pawns

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To:  Parkland High School Students / Sudden Media Stars
From:  Mitch Berg, peasant
Re:  Your sudden stardom

Students,

First things first – I’m sorry for the trauma that happened to you and your school.  You might want to have a word with not just the FBI, but your school board, who was apparently aware of Nik Cruz’s growing madness.

Anyway – condolences.

Now – you’re not gonna like this, but some of you will thanks me, someday.  I’m going to do something none of the adults in your life – especially those people whew flew down from Washington and New York with the bales of airline tickets and hotel reservations, barely hours after the shooting – are going to do.

I’m going to tell you the truth.

You’re being used.

I get it.   You’ve been through a traumatic experience.  But you need to know that none of the things you’re ostensibly campaigning for would have prevented the shooting at your school.

Background checks?  Florida has a huge gap it the mental health information it reports to the feds.  Just like Minnesota.  It wouldn’t – didn’t – work.

Banning “Assault Weapons?”  It’s been tried – you were toddlers when the last ban ended.  Even its supporters said it was just a feel-good law that did nothing about crime.

Bagging on the NRA?  Yeah, that’ll save lives.

Repealing the Second Amendment?   Please.  Mass shootings and denying the right to keep and bear arms is not correlated with mass shootings.

Look, I get it; when I was your age, I thought the NRA was a CIA plot to make gun companies rich.  it was an idea put in my head by the parents and grandparents of the people chaperoning you around DC and the CNN studios.  They are using you as another way to try to turn the tide in a political battle they’ve been losing for thirty years, now.

You are being used as props.  Pawns.  Stage dressing.

Most of you will figure it out someday, with any luck.

That is all.

The Gray Wasteland

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Kevin Williamson sums up a vast expanse of “suck” in re the NYTimes’ coverage of gun issues:

he New York Times is uniquely bad on the subject of firearms. There are two ways to understand that sentence, and both apply: Among major news publications, the Timesregularly exhibits an unparalleled level of illiteracy on the subject of firearms, and it exhibits comparable illiteracy on practically no other subject. Even on such self-acknowledged weak spots as American religion, the Times rarely sinks to the level of outright stupidity that characterizes its coverage of firearms and related crimes.

That’s just the introduction.  It gets worse.  Read the whole thing.

Life Cycle Of Uselessness

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It was over a year ago that we carried the story of the Pillsbury Foundation’s buyback fiasco.   Which doesn’t narrow it down much; while the buybacks last year in Minneapolis were very poorly organized, their effect on crime was the same as any other buyback program.

Nil.

But this buyback was different in one way; unlike other buybacks that just sell guns for scrap (allowing criminals to dispose of crime guns without leaving a paper trail), the guns gathered were doing to be donated to “artists” to do “art” that was supposed to “raise awareness” about “gun violence”.

A friend of the blog writes:

more “gun art” that will never be displayed on anyone’s wall

The Pillsbury folks paid for this apparently

The only thing really on display (at least in the objects pictured) is the paucity of imagination in these “artists”

Look at the things that have created great art over the centuries:  Longing, anger, the search for justice, the search for God, the quest for beauty – lots of motivations.

“Spoiled, subsidized, entitled, Urban Progressive Privilege-sotted pseudo-“artists” barking like dogs on their political masters’ command” isn’t one of them.

Facts In The Dark: If You Get Your News About Gun Crime/Laws/Owners From NPR, You Are Starting The Race With One Leg Tied Behind Your Back

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Over the weekend, NPR came out with a “Fact Check” piece about whether Chicago is “proof” that gun laws don’t affect crime.

Is the “fact check”, well, factual?

It’s NPR and they’re talking about guns. What do you think?

NPR starts with Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ post-Vegas press conference statement:

“I think one of the things we don’t want to do is try to create laws that won’t stop these types of things from happening,” Sanders said Monday. “I think if you look to Chicago where you had over 4,000 victims of gun-related crimes last year they have the strictest gun laws in the country. That certainly hasn’t helped there.”

Pointing to Chicago to suggest that gun laws don’t work is not a new talking point — Trump claimed Chicago had “the toughest gun laws in the United States” in a 2016 presidential debate; his fellow Republican candidate Chris Christie likewise pointed to Chicago as a place with high crime despite tight gun laws.

Now, if you’re a Right to Keep and Bear Arms person, you know what that really means; the idea that tight regulations on law-abiding civlilians owning guns hasn’t the foggiest impact on crime, at best, and a negative impact at worst.  That – crime and death, and how infringing freedom for the law-abiding doesn’t affect either – is what we’re concerned about.

And what does NPR focus on?

The Fussy Tangent:   Hey, at least NPR acknowledges the real problem, sort of:

It’s also true that there were more than 4,000 shooting victims in Chicago in 2016. It’s also true that Chicago has suffered a massive amount of gun crime recently. In 2016, homicides in Chicago sharply rose, mostly as a result of gun homicides, as the University of Chicago crime lab found in a January report.

Gun homicides in the city rose by 61 percent between 2015 and 2016. That helped make the gun homicide rate…25.1 per 100,000 residents in 2016, compared to 14.7 in Philadelphia and just 2.3 in New York.

But never mind all the carnage and death.  It’s Huckabee-Sanders’ assertion that’s the real issue!

But it’s not true that Chicago has the toughest gun laws in the country, as other fact checkers have also repeatedly found…”We generally think of California as having the strongest gun laws in the country,” said Hannah Shearer, a staff attorney at the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. “The whole state’s laws are pretty strong.”

The center has given California an A rating and ranks it No. 1 in terms of the tightness of its gun laws.

Ah.  So law-abiding citizens are disarmed, and criminals are deterred only by the ministrations of the Chicago Police Department – but they’re not the “toughest” laws, according to the abstract reasoning of a gun grabber group?

This is not a “fact check”.  This is an ideological purity test.

It gets worse.

The Mean Streets Of Hammond:  NPR next revisits the old canard; Chicago would be safe, if it weren’t for those darned Hoosiers and Badgers:

It’s important to remember here that Chicago is very close to two states that have relatively weak gun laws: Wisconsin and Indiana. So while it’s easy to pick on Chicago (or any other high-crime city) for its ugly statistics, says one expert, taking bordering states into account weakens this gun-advocacy talking point.

“It’s not a scientific study. It’s an anecdote,” said Philip Cook, a professor of public policy studies at Duke University. “They might have pointed to Washington, D.C., back in the days when D.C. banned handguns and yet had high gun-violence rates. Those bans are only at best partially effective, because the borders are permeable.”

So why aren’t Indiana, Wisconsin and Virginia stacking up bodies like cordwood?    If availability of guns were the problem, then wouldn’t places like North Dakota, New Mexico and Wyoming be shooting galleries?

NPR does try to drill further into the issue:

A 2015 study of guns in Chicago, co-authored by Cook, found that more than 60 percent of new guns used in Chicago gang-related crimes and 31.6 percent used in non-gang-related crimes between 2009 and 2013 were bought in other states. Indiana was a particularly heavy supplier, providing nearly one-third of the gang guns and nearly one-fifth of the non-gang guns.

Other evidence corroborates this — a 2014 Chicago Police Department report found that Indiana accounted for 19 percent of all guns recovered by the department between 2009 and 2013.

NPR has found correlation, not a cause.  Yes, there are guns from other states to fill the black market demand for firearms.  Every single one of them is the result of a felony – a theft (a state felony) or a “straw purchase”, a person with a clean record buying a buy and giving/selling it to a criminal, which is a federal felony.

Is it because Indiana has “lax” gun laws?

Or is it because the US Attorney for Northern Illinois announced that his office wasn’t going to spend time prosecuting “straw buyers” anymore?  Because he wanted to focus his office on politically-sexy prosecutions, and nobody ever got elected to the Senate by showing off a record of  prosecuting gang-bangers’ girlfriends, junior high pals and grandmothers?

So, In Summary:  The NPR “fact-check” ignored the actual point of the Trump Administration’s statement – that gun control and public safety are not in any way linked, and in some cases may be inversely correlated –  to pedantically nitpick Huckabee Sanders’ conceptually accurate statement about the legalities, and issue a deflection about other states’ laws that actually reinforces the Pro-Civil Rights’ side’s point.

Facts In The Dark rules this article as part of the NPR’s effort to be part of Big Left’s Praetorian Guard.  

The New Phrenology

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“Protect” Minnesota is having a “conference”, and they’re soliciting speakers:

Well – certain speakers:

The Northstar Conference Planning Committee is seeking proposals for presentations of 20, 30 or 60 minutes by individuals with appropriate academic credentials and/or recognized professional expertise related to the study or field of gun violence prevention that:

1. Present data-driven and evidence-based research or information about gun violence and its prevention.

2. Relate to one or more of three general subject blocks:
• health care, mental health, suicide prevention
• domestic violence, criminal justice, policy and legislation
• socioeconomic factors, disparities, urban gun violence

3. Have clearly-defined educational objectives that align with continuing education goals for public health, health care, mental health, law enforcement, or other professionals.

4. Are culturally sensitive and take into account the diverse backgrounds and outlooks of those in attendance.

The Planning Committee is particularly seeking presentations that address the following topics:
• racial and ethnic disparities
• adverse childhood experiences
• suicide risk factors and prevention among veterans, seniors, youth, and the LGBT community
• domestic violence risk assessment and prevention
• opioid addiction and gun violence
• the effects of mass incarceration on gun violence
• gun violence in the media
• successful community policing strategies
• effective legislation, public policy, and legal practices

Huh-wha?

Fortunately, a friend of the blog took the time to translate that description into clear, culturally-oppressive English:

Let me summarize that job description:

1. must hate guns with the passion of 1000 suns. Have plan to strip them from law abiding citizens.

2. Find ridiculous way to link gun control to something legit, such as health care and make it appear as yin and yang.

3. Experience with organize protesters and resistance parties in different peoples parents basements.

4. Make sure white people with guns are the enemy as often as possible.

Disregard minority on minority gun violence in its entirety.

Remember – “Protect” Minnesota has never, not once, made a single substantial, original, true statement.  This “conference” looks like it’ll push that to new levels.

Lie First, Lie Always: They Think You’re Stupid

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Further evidence of the statement “”Protect” Minnesota has never – not once – made a statement that was simultaneously substantial, original and true” came to us yesterday in the form of a press release from their “Research Director”, the onimatopaiec Richard Gigler.

Gigler is reading the same numbers I related to you a couple weeks ago, showing that crime has dropped sharply across Minnesota in the last year.

But the takeaway from any given type of evidence depends on a lot of things; in this case, whether one is inept at statistics, or one represents a group that pathologically lies about gun owners and knows their audience isn’t smart enough to know they’re being lied to.

In this case, as “evidence” that “more guns don’t mean more safety”, Gigler notes that the percentage of homicides committed by guns “…rose by 1%”   Of course, they didn’t; they rose by two thirds of a percent, and even that is a statistical anomaly caused by the drop in overall homicides, not a hike in gun homicides (which, as we noted, dropped 23% in the past year!).

But the lie-via-incompetence is worse than that – because the number of homicides dropped, and the percentage of homicides involving a gun “rose” as a fluke of statistical background noise…

…as the number of guns in law-abiding civilians hands rose sharply, and the number of carry permittees hit record numbers.

Meaning that the percentage of guns used in crimes dropped.

Again.

Why do you suppose it is that “Protect” Minnesota can’t tell the truth?