It’s all right here.

Well, a guy can dream…

A Christian-hating guy walks into a crowded megachurch with three guns and 1,000 rounds of ammo, after shooting several and killing two in the parking lot (and, it seems likely, more at the missionary training center earlier in the morning).

1,000 rounds.

Suuuure he really just intended to shoot himself, and the three hits to the chest that incapacitated him were superfluous.

You stick with that story.

Morons.

It was Saturday, December 12, 1987. It was a cold, sloppy Saturday night. I had gotten a call from the spiky-haired guy at the DJ service – be at the bar by 7:30 to learn how to get the equipment started up, and start playing. My training would be on the job. The bar was “City Limits” (a bar I’d never heard of) in Rosemount (a town in the southeast suburbs that, in fact, I’d also never heard of in two years in the Twin Cities).

I got into my car around 6PM and started driving. It was a good thing. One of the “quirks” I’d discovered in my first couple of years in the Twin Cities was that it always took me a minimum of two tries to find anything in the suburbs. Every single time.

And City Limits was no exception. I drove to Minneapolis, then down 35W and then Cedar all the way to County Road 42, and hung a left. And drove.

And drove.

And drove.

The townhouses of Burnsville faded away into the background. I drove through farm fields, fallow for the winter, and the occasional warehouse or small business, until I got to “South Robert Trail”, a wan little intersection with “downtown” Rosemount just off to the left. I hung a right, and drove past a farm equipment dealership with a natty-looking beige outbuilding, through more fields. And more. And more.

Finally, in Farmington (I think), I stopped and asked directions at a gas station. The guy knew City Limits (he said, with an “Oy, do I know City Limits!” kind of gusto), and pointed me back to the north.

Sure enough, the natty gray outbuilding was the bar.

I walked in. The bar smelled like burned cooking oil and dry popcorn; it rumbled with the sounds of the bowling alley through the door to the back of the restaurant. A guy – early-twentysomething, blond, tall, looking a bit like a Hitler Youth but with wry smile – sat on one of the stools by the little counterette wrapped around the DJ booth, which sat at the edge of a small, tiled dance floor.

“Scott?”

“Hey!”, he said, with a voice that sounded like it’d been on the air.

———-

He showed me how to “power up”;

1. Turn the volumes down on all the mixers.
2. Power on the amps
3. Turn on the mixers
4. Turn on the lighting switchers
5. Turn on the power to the lighting rig – the various lights, flashers, and the all-important fog machine over the dance floor.

“This bar is pretty dead, so it’ll be a great place to learn how to do this stuff”, Scott said, sipping a vodka kamikaze.

———-

And so I did. The basics were nothing I hadn’t learned at my first radio job, eight years and change earlier; cue the records on the two turntables, fade between them, make announcements during the ramps and fades. I did that vastly better than most club jocks – Scott commented on it.

The harder part was “beat-mixing” – mixing the fade from one song into the ramp for the next one so their rhythms merge, making the transition seamless and giving the impression that the music never really stops. To help out, all the music in the vinyl bins was organized by speed, in beats per minute – from George Michael’s “I Want Your Sex” (90BPM) through “Walking on Sunshine” (200 and change). In theory, you could start with a slower song, and – using the turntables’ variable speed controls, keep a continuous (if slowly speeding-up) beat going for the entire night.

But that was way in the future, as I fumbled at trying to get simple beats to match up in my headphones.

I needed some work, there.

———-

But at least I had the basics down pretty quickly. Scott and I talked for a couple of hours; briefly about work; mostly about radio. He remembered my character from the Vogel show. He’d worked at a bunch of small stations in Wisconsin. He was starting to think about making another try at it.

The bar had customers. Bowlers mingled with rednecks, sprinkled with a couple of Apple Valley party girls, who occasionally staggered about the floor, dancing with each other (since none of the guys felt like it). The place pretty much emptied out at 10.

Scott showed me how to shut everything off at the end of the night, and wished me luck, leaving around 11.

And so I finished out the night, taking the odd request, playing to maybe three barstool-polishing people by the end of the evening.

And I made the long drive back to Saint Paul.

I had a pleasant feeling, knowing I’d earned $50 for the evening.

Like most of the times one walks off life’s metaphorical cliffs, I had no sense that I was falling.

Yet.

I support mass transit options that can be teased into some kind of economic sense.

Which means I oppose almost all of them.  In almost all cases, mass transit is like big box schools; they serve their main purpose badly, but they are superb monuments to the governments that built them.
Now, the Metro’s two big “commuter rail” projects, the Northstar and the Red Rocks lines, could be exceptions.  They are very, very different from the Ventura Trolley and the proposed Central Corridor lines in that

1. they use existing tracks (to say nothing of right-of-way), the same ones that all the freight trains use today.  Other than stations, a few extra switches and sidings, they can be very cheap to build.
2. The rolling stock – the cars and engines – can be relatively cheap.  Indeed, it’s possible to buy used engines and cars from other commuter rail systems, refurbish them, and get them on the road for a fraction of the cost of buying new.

Via those factors – and given decent ridership – it’s actually possible, in theory, to make a commuter rail line self-supporting.

Now, the Taxpayers’ League once made a case against the Northstar; the lynchpin of which being that the line’s ridership was going to be much lower than estimated.  The study took place, of course, back when gas was still below $2 a gallon; suburbanization and exurbanization shows no signs of slowing.  I don’t know any updated numbers, but I’d suspect they’d be worth a second look.

But it’s the other part – the tendence to “monumantalism” – that will continue to cause problems.  And the Strib feeds the monkey without killing it:

Moments after Thomas Barrett, the U.S. deputy secretary of transportation, signed an agreement Tuesday committing $156.8 million in federal funding toward the $320 million Northstar line, Sen. Amy Klobuchar said what others have hoped for a decade:

“I want it to go to St. Cloud,” she said from Washington in a taped message that was played to an audience that included Gov. Tim Pawlenty, Congressman Keith Ellison, state legislators, and officials from the three counties involved, Anoka, Hennepin and Sherburne.

Getting a “Klobuchar Wing” tacked onto a monument is good “Free” campaign publicity.

Watch for more pols to find way$ to tack their name$ onto this project, jacking the co$t$ waaay higher than they need to be.

An Anoka County grand jury has handed down indictments in the Coon Rapids “Road Rage” case from last summer:

Two men involved in a road rage shooting incident at Foley Boulevard and 99th Avenue N.W., Coon Rapids, June 7 will make appearances in Anoka County District Court next week.

Martin Treptow, 35, Coon Rapids, is scheduled in court Wednesday, Dec. 19, 1:30 p.m., while Landon Beard, 27, Coon Rapids, is due in court Thursday, Dec. 20, also at 1:30 p.m., according to prosecutor Paul Young, assistant Anoka County attorney.

Young took the case to a Anoka County grand jury this week.

A couple of things to remember here:

1. It’s been six months since the incident in Coon Rapids.  Shooting cops is, shall we say, unpopular, especially in the ‘burbs.  Had Treptow done anything genuinely illegal, the County Attorney could have indicted him almost immediately.
2. But he didn’t.  As  a variety of Second Amendment bloggers reported last summer, Treptow was released from jail almost immediately (by the standards of these cases), and not charged with anything; the Anoka County Sheriff didn’t even bother to revoke Treptow’s carry permit, which is normally pro forma in these sorts of incidents.
3. The Anoka County Attorney is as politically safe as any elected official in Minnesota. Indicting a “cop shooter” would have caused not a shred of political fallout.  But tossing charges completely?  That would have caused problems, if only between him and the various police departments with which he has to work.  So he sent the case to the Grand Jury.
4. A couple of little birds tell me that the charges against Treptow are purely window-dressing, designed to further a cover-up of Landen Beard’s behavior that evening.
5. Finally – more little birds tell me this case involved at least one egregious ethical violation by another metro police department in dealing with a media outlet that would seem to have, let’s just say, an unseemly link to this story.

Stay tuned.  And Joel Rosenberg always has the latest and greatest on this case.

…and you’re in the greater Southeast Metro/Western Wisconson area, I’m just gonna tell you that this place really, really rocks.

That is all.

I noticed a lot of search engine referrals looking for info on former KSTP-AM nightsider Chris Krok.  That’s usually a sign something’s going on.

Sure enough – he’s been gassed at WSB in Atlanta.

Hang in there, CK.  It’s a crummy business.

Learned Foot apparently wants you to Photoshop photos of Chris Daughtry with some IBM employee.

No, I don’t totally get it either.

MLP gives us underserved “Yucky Salad” readers some good-ish news – her sister Katie (YSw/B’s auteur) has gotten her column at the Chicago Tribune renewed.

And MLP gives us an idea of how the meeting with the ChiTrib management might go:

Her plan for the meeting this afternoon is thus; show up in a pinstriped suit, hair secured in a bun with a pencil stuck through it and glasses perched seriously upon the tip of her nose.  During the course of the meeting, the glasses will come off.  Soon after, the pencil comes out of the bun and the hair comes down.  By the end of the meeting, she rips open her button down shirt to reveal a lacy camisole, exlaiming “Is it just me, or is it hot in here?”

We’ll look for an update on that.

One of the best hours in radio, anywhere, every week is Dennis Prager’s “Happiness Hour”, every Friday on Prager’s nationally-syndicated show.

The Hour has been a huge blessing for me in the past five years or so.  A key lesson for me has been the link between Prager’s lessons and the old Hungarian saying, “the best way to become wealthy is to appear as if you already are”.  You can change nouns almost at will, of course; it’s the best way to become healthy, in love with your partner or patient with your kids after a rough stretch, and of course happy as well.  Acting happy even if you aren’t is as good a path to becoming happy as there is. 

But that’s the easy lesson.

The harder one – and one Prager harps on heavily in The Hour – is “you have a duty to be happy”.  More directly, you have a duty not to inflict your unhappiness onto others.

So I had a really, really crappy morning, the kind that parents of teenagers should be able to recognize, if you catch my drift.  I was feeling pretty crummy when I made it to work.

I was standing in the elevator when one of my company’s mail-room girls – who happens to be “challenged” – spoke up with an ear to ear grin on my face.

“Great day, huh?”

“Sure”, I grunted, not really feeling it.

“Only two weeks until Christmas!”, she said with that glee that I remember my kids feeling years and years ago; the kind that’s contagious, that makes the holidays such a wonderful thing when you have little kids.

And I caught it.  I left the elevator feeling happy (happier, anyway), and – more importantly – realizing how much better things look now that I’m focused on not focusing on what a crappy start the day had.

Yeah.  It is two weeks until the holidays.  And the crappy stuff?  This too shall pass.

The woman that killed the Colorado spree-killer was a “security guard” in the same sense that I’m a “news reporter”.

She – former Minneapolis cop Jeanne Assam – is a citizen with a standard Colorado carry permit. She and other parishioners volunteered to watch over the church in the wake of news of an earlier shooting.  She was not employed as a guard; she was, literally, a civilian from the congregation who’d volunteered to keep an eye on comings and goings at the sprawling megachurch in the wake of the earlier shootings at the missionary school.

David Hardy notes:

Many people are expressing relief that a volunteer security guard used her own gun to stop a man on a shooting spree Sunday. “She probably saved over 100 lives,” the Brady Boyd, the pastor of the New Life Church in Colorado Springs, said on Monday… Ahab has confirmed the lady who brought down the killer was not a church employee, and was carrying her personal gun.

The media – nationwide and locally – seems to be making an effort to make Assam look like an “official” security guard rather than an armed citizen:

But the AP coverage describes her as “a member of the church’s armed security staff” and “the security guard.” Since it quotes the pastor much the same way as the CNS story does, it sounds like a report on the same interview or conference. And the Rocky Mtn News describes her as “a church security officer.”

They want to see a big herd out there.

This is a huge setback to the anti-carry movement.

UPDATE: Ms. Assam would seem to be a hero…:

Boyd said Assam was the one who suggested the church beef up its security Sunday following the Arvada shooting, which it did. The pastor credited the security plan and the extra security for preventing further bloodshed.

…but I’m just waiting to see how the Sorosphere and John Stewart titter over this bit…:

There was applause as Assam spoke to reporters and TV cameras saying, “God guided me and protected me.”…”I was praying to God that he direct me” in what to do in life, Assam said. “God made me strong.”

Any bets?

Me? No action on that bet. Too sure a thing. The only real question is “how scatological and insulting will they get?”

UPDATE 2: Greetings, CQ Readers. Ed was right – we talked about “Gun free zones” over the weekend on the NARN show, before the Colorado attacks. Ed notes:

And this is the folly of “gun-free zones”. Lunatics looking to kill people either will attack at places for which they have some animus (as in the case of the church) or where they can find a lot of unarmed people (as in Omaha). They don’t stop because someone puts up a sign designating a site as gun-free, any more than people stop taking drugs because a city puts up a sign that designates a neighborhood as a “drug-free zone”, as in my own neighborhood.

All that sign does is prevent the Jeanne Assams from being able to defend the defenseless. That’s all it does. It doesn’t make anyone more secure or safe, and it has the potential to make a lot of people into victims.

After the Virginia Tech shooting, people asked whether a CCL holder could have made a difference once the shooting started. Jeanne Assam answered that question on Sunday.

And I want to make sure that answer gets to David Lillehaug, former US Attorney for Minnesota, occasional DFL Senate candidate, and lawyer who – on behalf of a well-heeled left-leaning congregation in Edina, tried to get churches declared a de facto gun free zone without needing to bother to post any notices, and to exempt church parking lots from the state regulation that carry permittees are allowed to keep their guns in the trunks of their cars. He was behind the court case that led to the Minnesota Personal Protection Act’s temporary blockage at the hands of a DFL-pet judge for about nine months starting in June 2004.

Lillehaug leads the group that is, for me, the most insufferable pack of anti-gun zealots – the ones that wrap themselves in a suffocating mantle of misplaced piety, ignoring the words of St. Thomas Aquinas: “In order for (violence) to be justified, three things are necessary: First, the authority of the soverign [an archaic reference to Americans – we are all soveriegn, and at any rate the permit is a sign the government, acting on behalf of all of us sovereigns, thinks you’re capable of defending yourself]. Secondly, a just cause. Thirdly, a rightful intention”.

Does protecting the innocent – especially our children – from mass murderers fit these criteria?

If you say “no”, be prepared to withstand a rhetorical wolverine ripping at your logical butt.

A correspondent and Shot In The Dark reader writes from Kabul, Afghanistan with comments on my post on the pork-averse WalMart checkout girl (link fixed – thanks, Flash):

I’m an aid worker in Kabul, where I’ve been based for the past [nunber of] years. I’m writing to comment on your post about the Muslim woman who didn’t want to touch the pork at the supermarket. I thought that you might be interested to know that here in Afghanistan, one of the most fundamentalist of all Islamic countries, you can quite easily buy pork products in what is affectionately known by the locals as the “Bush Bazaar”, where all sorts of imported goods (often obtained through mysterious means from the US base at Bagram) are available. The Afghan shopkeepers have no qualms about keeping it in their shops or handing it to you if you wish to purchase it. If you’re happy to buy it they’re happy to sell it. I’ve seen both pork and alchohol openly for sale in a number of countries in the part of the world. Based on my fairly extensive experience in the Muslim world the controversy in MN seems to be to be entirely contrived.

That, of course, is the part that puzzles me, and bumfuzzles some friends of mine who either are, or are familiar with, moderate Islam; the puritanism about pork, alcohol and seeing-eye dogs is the result of decrees from a small number of fundie Somali imams in the Twin Cities.

Thanks for running Shot in the Dark; I enjoy it very much. I’m from [someplace in the upper midwest] so it is a pleasure to be able to read about life at home, even if the [liberals] irritate me even all the way out here.

Brendan Miniter at the WSJ notes that while Hollywood’s much-ballyhooed slate of anti-war movies has stiffed terribly, lower-budget productions are doing quite well in the alternative media:

Some of the are amateur productions and others are professionally produced, such as two films that have drawn about 700,000 viewers each: “Insurgent Snipers vs. U.S. Marines,” put together by the History Channel, and “Iraq Marine Battle Fallujah.” In the latter, U.S. Marines are seen assaulting Fallujah. The film, just 4 1/2 minutes, plays to the tune of Dire Straits’ 1985 hit “Brothers in Arms,” and is a better tribute to the men who fight the nation’s wars that anything Hollywood has put out since John Wayne’s 1968 film “The Green Berets.”

Much more to read, naturally.

Miss O’Hara touches on a bunch of things that matter – to me, anyway, and that really is the only litmus test on this blog – in this long, excellent post on religion and the Republican slate.

First, some housekeeping:

Now, I don’t consider myself an “evangelical”. It’s…there’s something screwy about it, namely that the Bible is buried underneath a bunch of self-help books and programs, not to mention lamentably rotten music.

Good Lord, yes.  That the religion of Bach and Handel is saddled with the musical narcotics the evangelical movement has foisted on us is a travesty that someone oughtta answer for, at least to temporal authority.

But I/we digress:

Mike Huckabee, though, is hurriedly being badged as the “Evangelical candidate”, getting what may be an endorsement from Dr. Dobson, and putting the lie to the conventional wisdom from, hmmm, two weeks ago that the evangelical vote had “matured” and was “finally” putting national defense over social issues.

Huckabee reminds me of Arne Carlson, in the sense that he’s “a Republican that the media and the left likes” – presumably because he’s unelectable or because his actual on-the-ground policies are pretty amenable to a big-government nannystater.

Any time the leftymedia starts beating the drum for a “conservative” – who, as better minds than I have reminded you, is a potemkin conservative anyway – it’s time to notice the hairs on the back of your head standing up.

Foot brings the word; CompUSA is circling the drain:

Consumer electronics retailer CompUSA said Friday it will close its store operations after the holidays following sale of the company to Gordon Brothers Group, a restructuring firm. Financial terms weren’t disclosed.

The reason?

Dallas-based CompUSA has struggled for nearly a decade with falling prices on personal computers, its most important product, and competition from big-box retailers such as Best Buy.

Also surly, hostile service, unimaginative and stodgy marketing, a terrible website, stores with downright off-putting phone autoattendants that rarely found a human destination, and being a rotten, cold, irritating place to shop.  Sort of like the K-Mart of electronics.

The silver lining – besides the chain’s forthcoming extinction itself?

CompUSA operates 103 stores, which plan to run store-closing sales during the holidays.

I think I could salvage just a tad of goodwill…

 It would be up to the buyers whether to continue the CompUSA name.

Note to buyers:  no. 

K-Eck from Eckernet notes that Hillary’s planted answers might be actually better than her supporters’ sincere support:

Andrew Young, civil rights activists, apparently was making the argument for the Clintons being “more black” than Obama. And as justification for that he had this to say…

“He’s probably gone with more black women than Barack,” Young said of former President Clinton, drawing laughter from a live television audience.

Erhm – by that rationale, I’m more hispanic than Clinton…

I have no doubt that is true….and that’s just since he married Hillary. Although I’m not sure the sexual prowness is really a critical skill needed to be president.

Although it apparently doesn’t hurt with the “feminist” vote, if the former President’s record is any indication.

On a more serious note:

Probably more troubling is this…

Young went on to say that Obama needs a protective network that he currently lacks – a quality that could hurt him if he were to be elected. He said Hillary Clinton already has that kind of network, including her husband to back her up.

Heh, if everything you plan on doing is legal and ethical, how critical is that??

Without that extended Clinton network of hacks, lawyers and media sycophants, how will Obama survive?

I suppose White House travel office employees can breathe easier if Obie wins…

The all-important Penn endorsement is in the bag, and Kucinich is the big winner:

Academy Award-winning actor Sean Penn endorsed Dennis Kucinich for president in San Francisco Friday.

Penn made what had been billed as a “major political statement” at San Francisco State University.

The event was organized by the S.F. State College Democrats and was paid for by Kucinich for President 2008.

NBC’s Domenico Montanaro said a source close to the Hollywood star confirmed Penn would endorse Kucinich.

Call in the dogs and pee on the fire. It’s all over.

Or is it “pee on the dogs and call in the fire?” I can never remember.

NBC Rejects Ad From Conservative Group

NBC has rejected a TV ad by Freedom’s Watch, a conservative group that supports administration policy in Iraq, that asks viewers to remember and thank U.S. troops during the holiday season.

NBC said it declined to air the ad because it refers to the group’s Web site, which the network said was too political, not because of the ad’s message.

“Anybody in the world who would look at this ad would come away with nothing other than we should thankful for their service,” Freedom’s Watch president Brad Blakeman said.

… 

The Freedom’s Watch Web home page contains links for visitors to demonstrate their support for the troops. It also contains a welcoming message that states: “For too long, conservatives have lacked a permanent political presence to do battle with the radical special interests groups and their left-wing allies in government.”

“We have a policy that prohibits acceptance of advertising that deals with issues of public controversy,” Wurtzel said. “This particular ad, in and of itself, is fine. It thanks the troops for their action overseas. We asked them to eliminate a URL address where a person is asked to contact elected officials and told not to cut and run on the war on terror.”

NBC rejected a previous Freedom’s Watch ad that addressed funding for the troops.

Good thing McCain/Feingold makes sure political advertising is fair and balanced, huh?

After two years of squibs, America’s Hurricane Forecaster is predicting another busy year for hurricanes:

Hurricane forecaster William Gray called Friday for seven Atlantic hurricanes, three of them major, during the 2008 season.

Gray’s team at Colorado State University issued the prediction six months before the June-November season begins.

The preliminary forecast calls for a total of 13 named storms in the Atlantic. It also says it is probable that at least one major hurricane will hit the U.S. coastline.

“Despite fairly inactive 2006 and 2007 hurricane seasons, we believe that the Atlantic basin is still in an active hurricane cycle,” Gray said. “This active cycle is expected to continue at least for another decade or two.”

Gray has been forecasting hurricanes for more than two decades, and his predictions are watched closely by emergency responders and others in coastal areas.

The predictions are not always on the mark. Gray initially forecast nine hurricanes for the 2007 Atlantic hurricane season, and later lowered that prediction to eight. Only six hurricanes formed.

I’m going to go with the coin toss, myself.

Doug Tice – who’s taken and run with “The Big Question” after Eric Black’s departure – noted something from Saturday’s NARN broadcast:

Yesterday, on one of the Saturday afternoon “Northern Alliance Radio Network” talk shows on AM 1280 The Patriot, I heard two of the the allies — I believe, Mitch Berg (from shotinthedark.info) and Captain Ed (from captainsquartersblog.com) — discussing last week’s awful Nebraska mall shooting. Their take on it was intriguing.

Doug noted that, first, I…

…insisted that nearly all mass shootings in recent years have occured in “gun-free” zones.

Not surprisingly, evidence for these assertions has been compiled and disseminated by scholar John Lott, the famed advocate of the “more guns-less crime” theory.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist – or an economist – to note that the vast preponderance of spree killings – certainly all of the ones the media brings up – take place in “gun free zones”, in academic sources like Lott, as well as, er less-academic ones:

Schools. College campuses. Government buildings. The list goes on, and on, and on. And if there are exceptions to the rule, they are often as not found in “gun-free” states.

We can certainly argue the premise. The numbers are on my side, but there is most certainly an argument to be had.

But Tice goes on to the more interesting question:

But anyhow, the allies didn’t stop there. Apparently following the lead of Instapundit’s Glenn Reynolds, they argued that victims or victims’ families in this situation may have grounds for a lawsuit against the mall based on the gun ban.

No doubt there will, as usual, be lawsuits, alleging various reasons for holding the mall liable for the tragedy. But the new theory (new to me, anyhow) is this: By deliberately banning otherwise permitted guns from their property, the mall managers exposed their customers to greater danger from criminal violence, since the ban ensured that no one would have the means to return fire.

Not “legally”, anyway. Fact is, if Nebraska’s law is anything like Minnesota’s, then carrying illegally in the store would have been a legal infraction, punishable by a fairly trivial fine. I’m not sure if there’d be any additional penalty to a carry permit holder actually using a permitted gun in a posted space in legal self-defense, or if a jury would ever convict them of it if they had done so. I don’t know that there’s ever been a case on the subject.

But I digress. The fact remains that the Westroads Mall had declared itself a no-gun zone – for those who follow the niceties of the law, anyway. And I, like most carry-permit holders, would have honored that request – by keeping my gun, out of there. Also myself; I don’t go where I’m not wanted, as a rule, and I don’t spend my money there, either.

Tice cuts to the, er, Big Question:

Interesting, but also puzzling.

Granting, for the sake of argument, the Lottian view that gun-free status makes a place of business more dangerous for its patrons, this lawsuit theory seems a surprising position for conservatives to take, since they presumably are defenders of private property rights.

True. (And to be perfectly accurate, I’m not entirely sure Ed shares my views on this issue; guns are pretty much my turf, among the NARN crew).

Doesn’t a property owner have a right to ban guns from his property, even if it is unwise to do so? And aren’t those who believe such a ban puts them at risk free not to enter his property?

Yes, and yes. It’s a freedom I generally exercise, too. As noted above, I rarely if ever patronize posted businesses, if there is a reasonable alternative.

Aren’t customers assuming any risk, and waiving any right to recompense, when they knowingly and voluntarily enter a gun-free zone?

I’m not aware that there is any law or precedent about this. Has there ever been a case with a:

1. legal activity, whose practicioners are…
2. …permitted by the state to carry out the activity with…
3. …an object that is legal – a firearm – for the express purpose of…
4. …defending themselves and bystanders from…
5. …an illegal activity that also happens to be a lethal threat?

…being enjoined for matters of a shopkeeper’s pure personal preference (as opposed to an empirical hazard – which, let us not forget, doesn’t exist with concealed carry permit holders)?

I’m trying to think of any situation that’d be even analogous. Barring defibrilators from your store (they can be misused!)? Banning asthma inhalers (they can be abused)?

Here’s the, er, Big Counterquestion: Does your property right trump my right to self-preservation?

The situation seems roughly comparable to the debate over bar and restaurant smoking bans. Conservatives as a rule argue that smoking bans are improper because a property owner should be able to decide whether to allow smoking or not. People who fear secondhand smoke need not work there or take their leisure there — or so the conservative line usually goes.

By and large conservatives can be expected to respond with disdain to the idea of lawsuits based on harm from voluntary exposure to secondhand smoke.

True. But the two ideas aren’t really similar. If I’m in a bar, smell smoke, and decide I don’t like it, I (and my friends and family) can make an orderly exit with a reasonable chance of getting out alive.

If I’m in that same bar, and a spree killer stands in the doorway and starts blazing away, the decision loop is a lot tighter; neither I nor the bar owner can be reasonably assumed to have chosen this activity; it’s being inflicted on all of us against our will. The threat to my life, liberty and happiness isn’t at some hypothetical intersection of property rights and science. It is in the hands of a madman with a gun. A madman that the store owner has forbidden me to defend myself against, without (obviously, and indeed impossibly) safeguarding me and mine from him.
He’s put my right to live snugly behind his property rights.  Just as the owners of the Westroads Mall did.

And let’s not forget that while the science of secondhand smoke is very much up in the air, the science of hot lead is not.

Here are three questions — assuming, for this purpose, that both secondhand smoke and gun bans are hazardous to people voluntarily exposed to them.

Question 1: Is it possible, coherantly, to believe secondhand smoke lawsuits are ridiculous but gun-ban lawsuits make sense?

Question 2: Is coherance possible the other way around — secondhand smoke lawsuits are sensible but not gun-ban lawsuits?

Going to a bar and smoking are both voluntary activities. One may leave a bar and find a smoke-free place at ones’ leisure. One may not leave this life, metaphysics aside, to go to a different one if someone gives you secondhand lead. Being enjoined by a property owner from taking legal steps with a legal gun that one is legally permitted to carry to safeguard the life that you and yours have is a whole different level of importance.

And when you’re talking about government offices and public buildings, I think it’s even more clear-cut. The right to protect ones’ life, and ones family’s lives, exists on at least as high a moral plane as private property (and at least a plane higher than smoking).

Question 3: Again assuming the Lottian view correct, are gun bans by private businesses a market failure caused, as market failures often are, by inadequate information — in this case people’s failure to understand what really makes them unsafe? Is the mall owner’s self interest in attracting shoppers better served by what Lottians would consider the illusory safety of the advertised gun ban than by the actual safety of allowing guns?

When statistically tiny numbers of Americans were poisoned by tampered Tylenol, or sickened by tainted spinach, sales of both dropped through the floor, creating marketing nightmares for both industries.

Against that – in just two incidents in “gun-free zones” in the past year, over forty people have died. In Minnesota, ten people have died in two school shooting incidents in the past few years – all of them on “gun-free” property. I’m not sure where that places the relative odds of dying of tainted beef to being shot by a madman at a posted business or federally “gun-free” school, but I’m guessing it’s pretty daunting.

I think the market has at least partially answered Doug’s question; the vast majority of the stores that “posted” themselves in the wake of the Minnesota Personal Protection Act have quietly dropped the signs in recent years; perhaps some were swayed by the protests of people like me, who made our displeasure at the unwarranted bigotry known. The vast majority, I suspect, simply realized that the law-abiding gun owner was less a threat than the average customer, and that Wes Skoglund was a lying moron.

If it takes a lawsuit to convince the rest that my right to protect my life is on a par with their property right – or at least that trying to trump my right to survive with their property rights is an act with consequences – I think I’m willing to go with that.

Am I missing something?

UPDATE:  Of course I’m missing something!  Or at least in Minnesota, according to the panoply of lawyers in the comment section below. 

So the legal route is, at least under Minnesota law, a non-starter (I don’t know about Nebraska law), and as commenter Jay Reding points out, the market does seem to be taking care of things in Minnesota. 

And commenter JoelR notes that, since carrying ones’ legally-permitted handgun in a posted store is an infraction that might be punishable by a $25 fine in Minnesota, it’s pretty much worth committing “civil disobedience” anyway, as long as one acts legally (to say nothing of tactfully and respectfully – keeping the gun carefully concealed and not making an ass of oneself.  Which is always a good idea).

But let me emphasize; while the law would seem to hold that the stores are legally blameless for anyone getting murdered because nobody can legally carry a firearm to defend themselves, it still doesn’t make it right.  Hence, I’ll continue to avoid posted stores; less out of fear of mass-murder than out of protest against bigotry against the demonstrably law-abiding.

Like me.

I’m not sure if it’s the language geek in me that gets the bigger kick over this story about Hugo Chavez’ meeting with Spain’s king Juan Carlos… 

“¿Por qué no te callas?”—or “why don’t you shut up?” Adding insult to injury, King Juan Carlos used the informal form of address, which is the sort of language one would use for a child. The line has become famous throughout the Spanish-speaking world, being used in everything from mobile phone ringtones to numerous YouTube videos. By publicly scolding Chávez, King Juan Carlos essentially put him in his place, turning him from the Bolivarian Revolutionary to just another gasbag.

 …or the guy who loves freedom.

Either way, kudos to King Juan Carlos.

(Via Jay Reding)

(And after 27 years, I make no promises whatsoever about my Spanish grammar…)

It was Monday, December 7, 1987.

I got a call from the spiky-haired guy I’d interviewed with the previous week.  They’d decided to hire me to work for their DJ service. 

“Could you start Friday?” he asked.

“How about Saturday”, I countered, remembering Friday was my birthday.

“Saturday it is”. 

He gave me the address to a bar.  In Rosemount.  I’d be meeting with one of his “assistants”, Scott, who’d “train me in” on being a nightclub DJ.

———-

I’ve reflected on that phone call and its aftermath many, many times in the past 20 years. 

It was an expedient decision – the bills needed to get paid, and the voiceover and newspaper work was slumping bad.    

But the effects on my life would be sweeping and all-consuming.  I wouldn’t know that for over half a decade, of course, but it was the first step down a path with consequences I’m still dealing with today.  Not all of them bad, of course – indeed, some of the most important, wonderful, precious things in my life  started with that phone call on that cold, snowy December afternoon, twenty years ago today. 

But on the way there, the tale wended past drugs, sex, rock and roll; it’d involve lawyers, guns and money (more the first two than the last); from clinical depression, love and self-rediscovery through fraud, gunplay and beating people with pool cues…

…but not so fast.  We have a few years to go.

The number of survivors is inexorably dwindling, but some Pearl Harbor survivors are still busy telling their story:

Ten years ago, about 15 Pearl Harbor survivors were part of the pool of veterans who mingled with visitors, according to Skip Wheeler, a National Park Service ranger at the Arizona memorial who coordinates the volunteer effort. Now there are just these five.

One of the regulars, Air Force veteran Bill Cope, died on Nov. 25 at age 94.

“The attrition level is here, and we know that every day that they show up, it’s sort of like a gift,” Arizona Memorial historian Daniel Martinez said.

The numbers are reflective of the nationwide loss of the “Greatest Generation,” and the ever-shrinking survivor turnout for the anniversary of the attack that launched the United States into World War II. There are only about 5,000 remaining survivors of the attack, according to Mal Middlesworth, national president of the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association.

As we noted last summer at the dedication of Minnesota’s WWII Memorial, Minnesotans fired the first shots at Pearl Harbor, and fought in the hundreds of thousands in the war that ensued. 

Know a WWII veteran?  Thank ’em again.

Another Democrat joins John Murtha in abandoning the…er, John Murtha anti-war slag.  It’s North Dakota’s Earl Pomeroy, and he agrees:

Pomeroy says the incidence of roadside bombings and other violence is down because Iraqis are taking a more vigorous part in attacking factions that are causing violence in the nation.

The congressman says his visit proved to him that General David Patraeus, who is in charge of American forces in Iraq, has done an extraordinary job…

(Rep. Earl Pomeroy, -D- ND) “I think he i incorporating four years of lessons learned from mistakes made in a dramatically improved US performance. We have had outstanding performance by our soldiers all along, but the plan has not always been one that has been very well equipped to meet the unfolding circumstance in Iraq. I think now we’re on the right track in Iraq thanks to the leadership of General Patraeus.”

Which is something conservatives – myself included – can agaree on wholeheartedly.

Further proof that North Dakota natives are smarter.

Glen Reynolds on the Omaha massacre:

it’s worth noting — since apparently most of the media reports haven’t — that this was another mass shooting in a “gun-free” zone. It seems to me that we’ve reached the point at which a facility that bans firearms, making its patrons unable to defend themselves, should be subject to lawsuit for its failure to protect them. The pattern of mass shootings in “gun free” zones is well-established at this point, and I don’t see why places that take the affirmative step of forcing their law-abiding patrons to go unarmed should get off scot-free.

If any lawyer wants to file that case, I’ll send money.  Promise. 

There’s even an academic literature on mass shootings and concealed-gun carriage.

Worth, as always, a read.

Assuming it’s “facts” that you’re after.