Fake News

It is alleged that there was a shooting incident Saturday night at the Minnesota State fair.

On the one hand, there is footage of… something.

On the other hand? This cannot possibly have happened. The state fairboard banned guns, and a state court upheld that decision.

So clearly, there were no guns at the fair.

I’m not sure who these people think they’re fooling.

Data Point

The school district in rural Spirit Lake, Minnesota is going to have armed staff on premises

“It’s really our obligation and duty to do whatever we can to protect them. And we talk about school shootings, and you have an active shooter, a killer, in your building, the number one way to save lives is to address the killer immediately,” Spirit Lake Community School District Superintendent David Smith said.

This being Minnesota, they are doing with an extra special bureaucratic twist; they are selecting (secretly, and anonymously) 10 staffers, and putting them through some extra training.

Which is way better than nothing; merely knowing that the school is not a “gun free zone“ will go a long way toward detering any potential nonsense.

This being Minnesota, again, there will be dissent:

“I believe there are better ways to go about it, and all kinds of security measures that can take place as opposed to adding more guns into a school building,” said Harold Prior, a Spirit Lake resident and former school administrator.

I always want to delve into the vast self-defense experience of people like Mr. Prior and ask them what they think is “better ways”.

But I will take this – to my knowledge, the first school district in Minnesota to openly lose the “gun free zone“ label – is at least a move in the right direction.

Amateur Hour At Parkland

School shootings have been front-page bait for nearly 30 years. It’s been nearly two decades since Columbine. Nearly ten since Virginia Tech.

And yet official America has learned nearly nothing, and contents itself with waving childrens’ bloody shirts to try to disarm people who didn’t, and never do, do the shooting in the first place.

The Orlando Sun Sentinel has an excellent interactive story showing the extent of the incompetence, breakdowns and bad planning that allowed Nick Cruz to slaughter 17 kids.

And of course, human frailty:

Cruz fires his first shots, killing freshmen Martin DuqueLuke Hoyer and Gina Montalto in the hallway of the first floor.

Taylor, the campus monitor, hears gunshots and races up to the second floor. He ducks into a janitor’s closet. Taylor has a radio but does not call a Code Red.

I’ll rarely second guess someone who exhibits what some might call “cowardice” to avoid getting shot. But the fact remains – Parkland’s security depended on a group of unarmed school monitors who failed to even order an alert that might have locked the school down, much less dealt with Cruz.

The story notes that there were heroes present that day…

Athletic director and campus monitor Chris Hixon is already at Building 12. He enters the double doors at the west end of the hall and runs toward Cruz.
Cruz shoots Hixon, who crawls to take cover in a nearby doorway. Cruz finds him about 30 seconds later and shoots him again.

[Social Studies teacher Ernie ]Rospierski flees with 10 students toward a stairwell as Cruz fires down the hall.
Two of the students, Jaime Guttenberg and Peter Wang, are hit. Wang dies in the hallway and Guttenberg in the stairwell, but others get away as Rospierski holds the door closed from inside the stairwell to keep Cruz from advancing.

…but a good plan, competently executed, is a whole lot better for everyone involved that heroes – especially dead ones.

The story is positively heartbreaking – a cascading tragicomedy of avoidable errors, frailty/cowardice, and official negligence.

Note that at any point, any armed response – any – would very likely have caused Cruz’ psychopathic reverie to break, sending him running away or off to a corner to shoot himself, even if it didn’t incapacitate him outright.

The performance of the Broward County Sheriff’s Office – both Scot Peterson and the other officers who responded – comes in for particular contempt. The department, led Sheriff Israel, who turned into an gun control leader to try to cover his own incompetence, covered itself in shame that day.

And yes, Sheriff Israel bears a disproportionate share of the blame. Although six deputies were on scene while the shooting was still going on, they were as useless as door-to-door salespeople – in large part due to policies pushed by Israel:

Since Columbine, officers are taught to rush toward gunshots and neutralize the killer. But the first Broward deputies don’t rush in.
Broward Sheriff Scott Israel later reveals that he personally changed department policy to say that deputies “may” instead of “shall” rush in.

And they lived down to their leadership – at least two BCSO officers went on the radio to urge their fellow officers to stay well clear of the school buildings.

Of course, not all the cops on the scene were useless simps:

Four Coral Springs officers enter through the west doors, where they see Chris Hixon shot. Two officers pull Hixon out of the building and onto a golf cart. He will not survive.

The Coral Springs officers later tell investigators their training was clear – run toward the gunfire.

Coral Springs Officer Raymond Kerner, the school resource officer at nearby J.P. Taravella High School, would tell investigators:
“Basically, what we’re trained to do is just get right to the threat as quick as possible and take out the threat because every time you hear a shot go off it could potentially be a kid getting killed or anybody getting killed for that matter.”

So there’s that.

Which, in its own way, evades the point; depending on law enforcement, even competent and courageous law enforcement, is not only a chimera, it’s an abdication of an adult’s responsibility.

For The Children

SCENE:  Mitch BERG is out behind his house, turning his city trash barrel right side up, when Avery LIBRELLE turns down the alley, riding a Lime Bike. BERG can’t escape.  

LIBRELLE:  Merg!   It’s time for comprehensive gun control!

BERG:   Of course it is.  Even though none of it can have any effect on gun violence – none at all – and it violates wholesale the rights of the law-abiding.

LIBRELLE:   Hah!   When I heard about Newtown, I stopped caring about your so-called “rights” (makes scare quotes as h…er, sh…er, as LIBRELLE says “Rights”)

BERG:  You did, huh?

LIBRELLE:  Yep!

BERG: For the children?

LIBRELLE:  Yes!

BERG: I hear and understand you completely, Avery.  I did the same thing.

LIBRELLE:  Er – wait.  What?

BERG:  When I saw pictures of the Holocaust…:

…and what happens to the children when people lose their freedom…

…even – no, especially their children, then I stopped caring about the emotions of people who put the word “rights” in scare quotes.

LIBRELLE:   (Absentmindedly looks down at the control panel on the bike) – Hey, Merg – I ran out of stored money on this bike.  Give me your credit card.

(And SCENE)

Prudence

Some Jews are learning the right, prudent lesson from the PIttsburgh Pogrom.

Indianapolis talk radio host Tony Katz describes his epiphany:

What happened in Pittsburgh is my nightmare scenario. For a few years now, on my radio shows in Indianapolis, I have said as loud and as clear as I can that any Jew who attends religious services without a firearm is risking their life and the lives of the ones they love.

But, in truth, I’ve never said it so kindly. I’ve said that nothing in America is more of a soft target than a synagogue on a Friday night or a Saturday morning. I discuss all houses of worship; synagogues, churches, mosques – they are all soft targets. I have argued that laws that prevent carrying a firearm in a house of worship where there is also a school are wrong, and should be changed (and, if necessary, ignored.)

The purpose of being trained and carrying a firearm is to protect yourself AND the ones your love. That means children: your children. Why would you ever put yourself in a position not to protect them? Why, as a society, would we ask this of any parent or guardian?

Read the whole thing.

The logical disconnect among the anti-gun crowd in view of episodes like the massacre in Pittsburgh – “helplessness is strength” – is frankly bizarre.

Ganders

SCENE:  Mitch BERG is waiting for a table at his local Korean restaurant when Avery LIBRELLE walks in behind him.   

LIBRELLE: Merg!

BERG:   Ugh,  I mean, hey , Avery.

LIBRELLE: The kids from Parkland High School returned to class, and they feel like they’re “in prison“.

BERG: Do tell.

LIBRELLE: I’ll read from this article:

“Going to school is really so hard, and now it’s going to be so much worse,” said Isabelle Robinson, a senior. “A lot of the people I’ve talked to are dreading going back.”…MSD students will only be allowed to carry clear backpacks on campus and will be required to wear new student IDs at all times.
There will be an increased police presence on campus, as Gov. Rick Scott provides extra Florida Highway Patrol officers to beef up security and provide support to Broward County sheriff’s deputies. Students will have limited points of entry to the school.
The school district also says it’s considering whether to install metal detectors at the school’s entrances. A letter from Principal Ty Thompson sent to families on Friday said that step has not been taken yet.
“It feels like being punished,” Robinson told CNN. “It feels like jail, being checked every time we go to school.”

BERG: Huh.

LIBRELLE: Its just so unfair.

BERG: Why?

LIBRELLE: These kids are being punished for the crimes of a lunatic…

BERG: …even though they, themselves, did nothing and would never have dreamed of harming anyone ?

LIBRELLE: Yeah!

BERG:   So let me get this straight – punishing innocent people – people who’d have never even thought of committing a crime – because of the crimes of a lunatic is a bad thing?

LIBRELLE:  Every time, no exceptions.

BERG:   Huh.   (Notices the waitress motioning him toward a table)   Er, are you going to get a table or order something?

LIBRELLE:  Oh, no.  I’m just here to offer solidarity to these people and their leader Kim Jong Un.

(And SCENE)

Events Of A Feather

Six years ago, Venezuela banned private firearms ownership,  via a piece of legislation that had to have sent a tingle down Linda Slocum, Erin Maye Quade, Jamie Becker-Finn and Dave Pinto’s spines.   It was done to consolidate and reinforce the control of a government that, one might suspect in concept had to have sent a tingle down Linda Slocum, Erin Maye Quade, Jamie Becker-Finn and Dave Pinto’s spines.

Of course, we know the results; socialism degenerated “unexpectedly” into thugocracy (which, being “haves” in a socialist society, wouldn’t not send a tingle down Linda Slocum, Erin Maye Quade, Jamie Becker-Finn and Dave Pinto’s spines, necessarily – socialism is a wonderful thing for the kommissars).

And here we are today.

The left would like you to consider them separate events.

They are not.

Things The Founding Fathers Never Foresaw

My entire adult life, I’ve considered the Bill of Rights inviolable – with the idea that they’re timeless principles, without which the idea of “Freedom” is pretty much meaningless. I took to heart the saying attributed to Ben Franklin – “He who would trade freedom for security deserves neither”.

But recent events have caused me, after much difficult thinking, to have a change of heart.

It’s time to change one of the Amendments in the BIll of Rights. Not *repeal* it – just change it. *To save lives*.

I’ll be announcing the amendment, and why, on the show tomorrow. 1PM on AM1280.

Another Gun-Free Zone, Another Mass Shooting, And A Couple Good Guys With Guns

First things first:  Berg’s 18th Law is still in full effect;  it’s been mere hours since a man murdered 27 people at Sutherland Springs Baptist Church, near San Antonio; anything you read in the media will be crap.

One thing we do know?  Churches in Texas are “gun free zones”.  Nobody in that church was legally authorized to carry a firearm to defend themselves or their fellow parishioners.

Like nearly all mass shootings, it took place in a “gun free zone”.

Just like David Lillehaug and Nancy Nord Bence like it.

You post your property “no guns allowed?”  I’m not going there.  I’m not spending money, I’m not worshipping, I’m not saying “boo”.  I will consider them a threat to my safety.

No exceptions.

But Wait:  What’s this that the mainstream media is pretty roundly ignoring about the attack?  The shooter was himself shot by…

…an armed citizen:

Stephen Willeford managed to shoot Devin Kelley before jumping in another man’s truck and chasing him down, the Daily Mail reported.

Texas Department of Public Safety chief Freeman Martin said Willeford “grabbed his rifle and engaged the suspect” after Kelley left the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, where he opened fire with an assault rifle and killed 26 people.

And just as law enforcement teaches about mass shootings these days – if you show a mass shooter any resistance, they usually break off the attack, and either give up or kill themselves.

Kelley did both:

The man who killed at least 26 people in a Baptist church in a rural Texas town on Sunday died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, Wilson County Sheriff Joe Tackitt told CBS News in an interview on Monday morning.

Tackitt said gunfire was exchanged between the gunman and two armed citizens during a vehicle chase after the shootings.

The church was a gun-free zone – naturally.   But the rest of Texas was not.

UPDATE 2:  The USAF apparently neglected to report Kelley’s domestic conviction to the NICS – allowing him to buy the guns he used.

Voice Of America

Berg’s 18th Law is still in effect; we don’t know what motivated the Vegas shooter.

But I take heart from this, a guy I’m proud to call a real American hero:

Mandalay Bay being a gun free zone  (and at 400 yards, firing back with a handgun would have been a triumph of optimism over feasibility), the man fought back with the only weapon allowed him, his middle finger – which, were the First Amendment all one needed to protect freedom, would be a fearsome weapon, and was, as it happens the best he could do under the circumstances.

There were apparently many heroes last night.  

God bless ’em all.

More tomorrow.

 

Another Gun-Free Zone…

another terrorist attack:

On Tuesday afternoon, the FBI confirmed the motives of the recent shooting attack at Fort Lauderdale Airport in Florida. The assailant, Esteban Santiago, claimed to carry out the attack in the name of the Islamic State.

During Santiago’s bond hearing, FBI special agent Michael Ferlazzo confirmed that he did carry out the attack in the name of the Islamic State, according to CNN. At this point, it is not yet clear if he is linked with the terrorist group or if it was a lone-wolf, IS-inspired attack like dozens of others that have recently taken place (Nice, France, Berlin, Germany, Orlando, FL, etc.).

While Florida is a shall-issue state, all civilian carry is banned in Florida airports.

Which is why Santiago was unable to carry out his attack, and nobody died.  Right?

They Tend To Be Shoddy Anyway

Levi Strauss and company has opted to make their stores criminal-safe.

Moms Want Action is all tingly about it – which, of course, means royalties for stock photo vendors!~

levipansies

Know how you can tell it’s a stock photo? Because the model is 40 years younger than any female in “Moms Want Action” .

To be honest, I haven’t bought Levis in years; for the same money, Duluth jeans are much much better, and given their clientele, they’re way too smart to post their stores.

But if you’re so inclined, drop Levi Strauss a line.  Their Facebook page is a good place to send a message.

 

“You Won’t Be Seeing Me Again”

The FBI released the details of their initial investigation into the Saint Cloud mall mass stabbing last month, including the first public look at the store video.  MPR News covered it.

Warning; the video is  graphic, if you haven’ been completely desensitized to violence:

The investigators also praised Jason Falconer.

Falconer’s actions are instructive to anyone who is a carry permittee, and – with a little luck – to voters this fall:

Thornton said Adan had asked Falconer if he was Muslim. Falconer, said no but saw the knives and identified himself as an officer.

Adan initially turned away from Falconer and the officer followed repeating that he was law enforcement and ordering the man to drop the weapons.

If you were a citizen with a carry permit and a legally-carried handgun, at this point, you’d have a bit of a conundrum.

The Minnesota self-defense statute allows lethal force in self-defense to protect one’s self “or another” from death or great bodily harm.  But case law also establishes a “duty to retreat” (outside one’s home) – you have to undertake all “reasonable” means to avoid the use of lethal force.

What is “reasonable?”  For your purposes as a citizen, that will be decided by a county attorney.  As Joel Rosenberg used to say, while you, the citizen, had seconds to decide whether to defend yourself or not, under immense stress, often under low-light or confusing conditions, with a lethal threat bearing down on you, the county attorney will take days or weeks, in a well-lit, warm office, with sheriff’s deputies guarding him, to decide that question.  And at the end of the day, it’ll likely be at least in part a political decision; a DFLer will often file charges (although we’ve been surprised in the past), while a DA in Kandiyohi or Pennington counties will hail the shooter as a hero.

In other words, it’s vague.  Intentionally so; county attorneys like to have lots of discretion; they don’t like to have to work under all sorts of immutable rules any more than you do.  Of course, you and I don’t hold peoples’ lives, freedom and lifes’ savings in the palms of our hands, either.

That was the crux of the”Stand your Ground” law that passed the Minnesota legislature in 2012 with a decisive bipartisan majority, only to get vetoed by a governor who was acting as a marionette of big-money anti-gun special interests; put the benefit of the doubt on the side of the law-abiding citizen.

Oh, yeah – and the next time some gabbling anti-gun hamster asks “why does anyone need more than seven shots?”, you can show them what happened in Saint Cloud; Jason Falconer is an expert “three-gun” competition marksman and marksmanship instructor, an absolute master of the craft of putting pieces of lead into things.

And here’s what happened (I’ve added emphasis):

“Upon following Adan into Macy’s and repeatedly announcing his authority and commands to drop the knives, Adan ran toward Falconer with the knives raised two separate times, then continued to crawl toward him with a knife in his hand even after being shot during to separate prior charges at the officer,” Thornton said.

Falconer fired 10 rounds, striking Adan six times, he added. Store video showed Falconer shooting while backing away from Adan as the attacker continued to approach with his back turned.

Adan fell to the ground multiple times after being shot and still had a knife in hand. He tried to get up a final time using a store sign for balance.

So – an expert marksman (and cop) fires ten shots at contact range, and misses four times (which is actually abnormally good, even for point-blank range engagements); he scores six hits, during most of which the attacker kept charging.

If the shooter had been less expert, and hit the attacker fewer times?    If the attacker had been high, or dissociative?  If the defender had a smaller-caliber firearm (Falconer’s pistol was a 9mm)?  If the defender didn’t have any unobstructive, flat, clean room to back-pedal away from a charging man with two knives?

If there’d been more than one attacker?

Even with a “large” magazine, a defender in that situation could very well have learned what a Thanksgiving turkey feels like.

The lesson for the law-abiding gun owner?

No compromise.  No retreat.  No surrender.  

None.

So Let Me Get This Straight

Australia bans vast swathes of political and cosmetically inconvenient guns – drawing the favorable attention of Barack Obama and Hillary Herself.

Thing is, Australia never really had a “gun problem”.  They had a couple of mass shootings, to which the political class responded with pure emotion.

And now?  Years after they banned most politically-charged weapons?  Well, who’da thunk it, they have a gun problem.

(The kind where criminals have guns, and use them on each other and on their innocent victims.  Not the “law-abiding citizens can protect themselves” kind of “gun problem” that so exercises Minnesota’s “gun safety” community).

Chill

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Rep. Keith Ellison introduced the Campus Gun Policy Transparency Act which would require colleges to disclose their policies relating to guns on campus.  He claims existing federal law requires colleges to publish campus safety information but not specific policies related to guns.  In addition, he claims colleges are not required to report gun-related crime statistics.

 “Students have a right to know if their fellow students are bringing guns to class.” 

No, they don’t.  They don’t have a right to know if their fellow students had an abortion, voted for Democrats, worship in a mosque or drive a Prius.  Those are all private activities, nobody’s business but your own. 

 There is no evidence that guns on campus cause crime (and that’s not due to lack of reporting statistics – if there were lots of shootings on campus, emergency room records would be conclusive proof).

 The only possible reason for requiring a federal campus gun policy but not a campus abortion policy, mosque policy or campus Prius policy, it to chill Second Amendment rights.

 So, pretty much par for the course for Democrats.

 Joe Doakes

To a conservative, rights are endowed to us by our creator.

To a liberla, “rights” are perks granted to us by a benevolent government.

Imbalance

Joe Doakes emails us a link to a post by Clayton Cramer, who compares murder rates in Idaho and western Canada:

Idaho: 2.0/100,000

For the Canadian provinces:
Manitoba: 3.43
Saskatechewan: 2.13
Alberta: 2.52
Yukon: 6.88
Nunavut: 10.93

Yet all those provinces have Canada’s restrictive gun control laws.

Alhough, at least anecdotally, people in Saskatchewan and Alberta were the least obedient to Canada’s gun control laws when they were passed.

But I digress:

Idaho at that point had a shall-issue concealed weapon license law (now,  no licenses are required).  I can buy a gun without background check or waiting period, either at a licensed dealer or a gun show.  Friends own machine guns, completely legally.  Idaho is very similar demographically to Saskatechewan, Alberta, and Manitoba.  If gun availability or porous borders make , Idaho should be substantially worse than those Canadian provinces, not better.  Of course the gun control nuts don’t care about murder rates; this is really about cultural disparagement.

And cultural conquest.

I’m Sure This Is A Surprise…

…to the clueless; Chicago – the city with all the gun control that “ProtectMN” and Michael Bloomberg want (with the possible exception of “the disarmament of everyone else”) is seeing violence at a record clip:

July 2016 was the “deadliest July in 10 years” for heavily gun-controlled Chicago: Sixty-five individuals were shot and killed.
Moreover, according to the Chicago Tribune, such death figures do not set a new record — they simply tie a record set in 2006, when 65 individuals were killed in the month of July. This brings Chicago’s homicide total to “nearly 400” for the first seven months of 2016 alone. The number of homicides for the whole year of 2015 was 490.

“Assault weapons” are banned.  It’s exceptionally difficult for a law-abiding citizen to get a carry permit (although two of them have prevented mass shootings in the past couple of years alone); gun stores are essentially banned.   There is no way to measure the ratio of guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens to criminals, but it has to be among the lowest in the country.

This is the world Nancy Nord Bence wants to bring you.

Go Figure

We were warned.

Oh, you betcha we  were!

The media’s chicken littles parroted the narrative they so, so desperately wish, hope, pray is true; that the average, law-abiding American citizen, left to his own devices and all of his human rights, is a fundamentally depraved actor, motivated by rage and hate, looking for an excuse to stick it to someone.

At worst, it’s the ultimate manifestation of Berg’s Seventh Law; the left is transferring their own manifest rage onto their enemies.

At best?  They’re wishing they had a lot more company among the ranks of America’s depraved.

And it’s just not happening.  The media warned us that open civilian carry, legal in Ohio, would end up in a bloodbath.

Of course it didn’t happen.

The New York Times ominously reported: “However, given the recent tumult around the country, some leaders are anxious that the environment could turn dangerous. Members of one group made up of current and former members of the military called the Oath Keepers, who have shown up at other tense events heavily armed, say they again plan to carry weapons into Cleveland.”
NPR forewarned: “With tens of thousands of protesters expected in Cleveland, those gun laws could mean confrontations between pistol-packing delegates and protesters.”

And Vanity Fair cautioned about a security nightmare: “In the wake of a deadly sniper attack during a protest last week in Dallas, where open-carry laws reportedly made it difficult for police to tell the difference between potential suspects and marchers carrying legal firearms, there are rising concerns that similar open-carry laws in Ohio risk turning the Republican National Convention into a security nightmare.”

The total number of shootings?

Zero.

Nothing.

Bupkes.

As usual.

Rumor Mill

To: Betsy Hodges, mayor, Minneapolis.

From: Mitch Berg, ornery peasant

Re: Rumors

Mayor Hodges,

Over the weekend, the rumor mill announced that you had told a gathering somewhere in Minneapolis you were planning on holding a “gun buyback”.

Please, please please please please please, oh please, please please please please please, I beg of you; go ahead with it.

You simply have to. I beg of you, with all my heart.

That is all.

UPDATE:  Rumor mill says it’ll be held August 27 at thePillsbury United Communities, or somewhere in that vicinity.

Scenarios

SCENE:  Mitch BERG is working on the potato boxes in his backyard.    Avery LIBRELLE walks through the back gate into BERG’s back yard.

LIBRELLE:  Hey, Merg!  The case of workplace violence in Orlando proves that it’s time for America to get serious about guns.

BERG:    We did.  Or at least parts of the country did; the parts that ratcheted up the penalties for gun crimes, and seriously prosecuted straw buyers, saw a marked decrease in gun crimes.   Of course, that wasn’t “sexy” enough for the Democrat-run governments of most major cities – so while the rest of the nation’s crime rate plummets, in major Democrat-run cities it’s rising…

LIBRELLE:  I’m already bored.   The Orlando workplace violence episode proves that guns are no defense.

BERG:   It showed that a cop working security was in the wrong place at the wrong time, and that Mateen, unlike most mass shooters, didn’t fold up when he ran into resistance.   As might befit someone who was carrying out a terror attack, as opposed to someone just seeking immortality as a spree killer.  That’s just a theory…

LIBRELLE:  …I’m still bored.

BERG:  Well, bore yourself with this; had a any person in that club had a legal, permitted firearm, they could have stopped the shooting.

LIBRELLE:  Can you guarantee that?

BERG:   There are no guarantees in life.  But I’d like to talk you through three hypothetical scenarios.

LIBRELLE:  Don’t make me bored!

BERG:   What’s with the boredo…oh, never mind .

Scenario 1:  You’re out at a bar.  Someone starts shooting.   People around you are getting hit left and right.

Suddenly, a schlub nearby sees an opportunity while the shooter is shooting the other way; they draw their legal handgun, and they kill the attacker.

LIBRELLE:  That’s unrealistic.

BERG:  Why?

LIBRELLE:  The attacker would shoot them first.    They’d sense they were about to be attacked, and turn and kill them.  Which would just make it worse for everyone else in the club.

BERG:  What, you think mass shooters are superman ninja warriors or something?

LIBRELLE:  Doesn’t matter.  That never happens.

BERG:   By my count, it’s happened at least sixteen times in recent years.

But that  brings us to the second scenario.  Let’s say a citizen draws, and misses, or doesn’t kill the shooter, and the shooter kills the citizen.  That’d be tragic – but it’d throw the shooter’s plan off, and give people time to escape in the confusion, and probably safe at least a few lives.

LIBRELLE:  You’re dreaming.

BERG:   Well, it’s happened.  But it probably beats the third scenario.

LIBRELLE:  Which is?

BERG:  (Very, very quietly, with an air of fervent, quiet concentration).  You’re at a bar.  (LIBRELLE listens intently; BERG continues, quietly).  Shooting rings out.  People are dying left and right.  But the bar is a gun-free zone, and everyone in the bar followed the law tonight.  So there’s exactly one armed person in the joint – the mass shooter, motivated by hate, or desire for immortality, or on a terror mission.  And the shooter keeps on going, blasting away, killing defenseless person after defenseless person (BERG grows quieter, leaning toward LIBRELLE, who leans closer as well), killing everyone around you until…

(BERG stops)

LIBRELLE:  Until wha…

BERG:  (At a whisper) he lifts his gun, and (BERG yells at the top of his lungs) BOOM!  RIGHT AFTER YOU PROJECTILE CRAP YOURSELF WITH FEAR, HE BLOWS YOUR F****NG HEAD INTO A MILLION F****NG PIECES ALL OVER THE WALL!

LIBRELLE:  (Leaps backward eyes, wide  with fear, transfixed, hyperventilating).

BERG:  Your choice.

LIBRELLE:  (Quickly shuffles out of BERG’s back yard).

BERG:  Seriously, Avery.  It is your choice.

(And SCENE).

Darn Those White Conservative Christians

Orlando murderer Omar Mateen – a man who seems to have mixed sexual confusion and extreme millenarian Islam on his way to becoming the worst mass-shooter in US history – was giving off warning signs even in childhood:

At age 14, he said he could shoot an AK-47 and mimicked an airplane flying into the World Trade Center. At 26, he bragged to courthouse co-workers of terrorist ties. Weeks ago, at 29, Mateen sought to buy heavy-duty body armor and bulk ammunition.

Many of his violent outbursts aped or celebrated Islamic terrorism and he repeatedly claimed connections to known terrorists, including the Boston Marathon bombers. He cheered the 9/11 attacks on the day they happened and once threatened to shoot partygoers at a barbecue when pork, which is forbidden to Muslims, touched his hamburger.

Bear in mind that Mateen passed not one, but eight background checks:

So let’s walk through this from the beginning:

  1. Mateen spends his entire life as a vocal terror sympathizer.  He also meets all the right people – has contact with other known terror figures, the whole nine yards.
  2. The feds investigate him at least twice.  Maybe they found nothing.  Maybe political pressure led then to foreshorten their inquiry; maybe to avert accusations of “profiling” they took their resources to investigate NASCAR drivers in Alabama.  We don’t know, and probably never will.
  3. Mateen passes eight of the background checks that are the “common sense regulation” that the orcs of Big Gun Control want to subject the law-abiding citizen to – which is further evidence that they don’t care about crime, but do want to register gun owners.
  4. Mateen – who was either in the midst of a struggle over sexuality, or was adopting a “gay” cover to case gay bars for his attacks – becomes enough of a regular figure in Orlando gay bars to not arouse notice.
  5. For their part, the State of Florida made all bars “gun free zones”; every victim at “Pulse” was, by law, disarmed.     While gun owners in many states – the states where “gun free zones” are treated as trespassing rather than misdemeanors or worse – routinely ignore “gun free zone” signs, nobody at “Pulse” apparently did.

Oh, yeah.  It just must be the fault of Christian NRA members.

Open Letter To Sen. Latz, Rep. Schoen, Rep. Norton, Rev. Nord Bence, Jane Kaye, Heather Martens, and Joan Peterson

To:  The Abovementioned
From: Mitch Berg, Mere Peasant
Re:  Your signage where your mouths are

All,

You are the leaders of Minnesota’s gun-grabber movement.  You and your wan little pack of Volvo-driving, alpaca-wearing, NPR-listening, St. Olaf-graduating, ELCA-coiffed followers want to take away Minnesotans’ right and means to defend themselves.

Now, crime in Minnesota is very, very low – and a higher percentage of Minnesotans have carry permits than Texans.  Crime is lowest of all in places where the number of legally-carried guns is the highest.

And vice versa.

So you all live in your hideaways in Kenwood, Saint Anthony Park, Crocus Hill, Rochester and Saint Louis Park, in part made safer by the deterrent effect of all of us shooters.

So why not make an integrity move, and eschew that deterrence?

Put one of these babies in your yard:

Show America’s gun culture that you  patently reject the collateral benefit of their – our – prudence!

Tell Minnesota – all Minnesotans – that you trust all 5.5 million of your neighbors to stay honest.  Tell them that you implicitly trust that if something goes hinky, that you trust the police will be there fast enough to make a difference.

You do trust the police to protect you, just as you want us to trust them – don’t you?

Please see to this immediately.

What?  You’re not afraid, are you?

Because I’d hate to think you all were a bunch of hypocrites.

That is all.