Bad:  The Obama Administration and the Senate’s Diane Feinswine (Hypocrite, CA) think they have the momentum to push more victim disarmament [1]

Worse:  The GOP may prove them right.

Republicans control the House and, thus, could be expected as the party of Second Amendment rights to be ready to stop whatever the president and the Democrats come up with in the Senate. But the Doc Thompson radio show has posted what it is says is correspondence with a source in one of the Republican congressional leaders’ offices. The emails were apparently exchanged between December 27 and 30.

Click below to view the entire scan:

The crucial email is the one sent at 3:06 pm on the 27th. The source notes that Newtown would not have been prevented if Feinstein’s bill had been law, but allows that the Republicans may assist in banning “high-capacity magazines” and move on background checks, along with mental health and enforcement of existing law.

I use the term “victim disarmament”, since none of Feinswine’s proposals would have the faintest effect on criminal use of firearms; they’d place the entire burden on the law-abiding.  As always.

The Newtown killer may have been stalled by the NICS — some reports say that he attempted to buy a gun at a sporting goods store but failed — but he clearly was not stopped. He apparently stole his guns from his mother, killed her, and then went on his rampage. His mother had no criminal background and owned the guns legally. The Webster, NY shooter was a known career felon and could not have bought his guns legally. So, as criminals do, he found a way around the system. He either stole the guns he used from his neighbor, or he used her as a straw purchaser to get the guns for him. His neighbor, Dawn Nguyen, has been arrested and charged with being his straw buyer two years ago. She reportedly says that Spangler stole the guns, but he was with her when she bought them, and she never reported them stolen.

OK, let’s get down to brass tacks.  Any Republican that betrays the Second Amendment can count having their electoral head held underwater until the political convulsions stop.  I’m speaking purely rhetorically, here.

Any Republicans entertaining ideas of going along with any Democrat ban should realize that they’re being played by the Democrats and the media, again.

If you are a Real American – ergo, a supporter of the Second Amendment, as defined in the Constitution, reiterated in Heller, and incorporated on your masters the states by McDonald, you need to call your representatives.

Here in Minnesota, they are:

Timothy Walz
1529 Longworth House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
(202) 225-2472
Contact:
http://walz.house.gov/

John Kline
2439 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
(202) 225-2271
Contact form:
John Kline contact form

Erik Paulsen
126 Cannon House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515-2303
(202) 225-2871
Fax: (202) 225-6351

Betty McCollum
1029 Longworth House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
(202) 225-6631
Contact form: email form

Keith Ellison 
1027 Longworth House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
(202) 225-4755
(202) 225-4886 fax
Contact form:
Keith Ellison contact page

Michele Bachmann 
412 Cannon House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
(202) 225-2331
Contact form:
http://bachmann.house.gov/Email_zip.htm

Collin C. Peterson
2159 Rayburn House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515
(202) 225-2165
Contact form:
http://collinpeterson.house.gov/email.htm

Chip Cravaack  (for another couple of weeks, anyway)
508 Cannon House Office Building

(202) 225-6211
Contact form:https://cravaack.house.gov/contact-me/email-me

Please contact Walz and Peterson because they’ve always run as 2nd-Amendment-friendly Democrats; they need to be kept honest.

Contact Kline and Paulsen because I’m not aware that either has really had a 2nd-Amendment hot potato on their legislative plate.  While I have every confidence that neither of them are idiots, they need to know how their Real American constituents feel. Over and over again.

As to Rep. Bachmann?  Contact her to thank her for being a stalwart on the issue, and for spitting tacks at those who’d say nay.

And Ellison and McCollum?  They might as well know that we Real Americans outnumbers the pants-wetting class and their ilk.

  (more…)

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails with a plan:

I’m going to stand in line for the park permit lottery and bid on Como Park, every Saturday in June and July.  Then I’m going to SCALP THEM.

Joe Doakes

Como Park

Beware, all you engaged people.

But watch out, Joe.  It’s a brave new world out there.  Ask any GM bond-holder.

I long for an end to this latest spasm of gun-control debate.

Oh, it’s not going to come any time soon, since the President has hitched his and his party’s wagon to the cause – which makes me deliriously happy, since it’s going to be a brick around the Democrats’ neck in 2014 (and I’ll be doing my best to tie it onto them).

And I don’t long for it because I’m in any way tired.  The fight for liberty, like the fight against the baser sides of human nature that bring us everything from petty theft to the Holocaust, never ends, and never will as long as humans are human.  Fatigue is human, but quitting is the luxury of the dilettante.

But since my first broadcast on the subject of gun control, way back in August of 1986 at KSTP, to this very day, I have to say that the fact gun-grabbers’ arguments never, ever change.  I respond to the same crap today that I did in 1987.  How many times can a guy answer, refute, debunk and stomp flat the same tropes, over and over and over again?  No, violent crime does not drop when you ban guns.  No, concealed carry doesn’t lead to shootings over fender-benders.  No, the UK’s violent crime rate didn’t drop after they banned guns.  No, the only thing I’m compensating for is the fact that our society is so full of the depraved and the stupid.

But every so often, something comes along that banishes the rhetorical lactic acid from my mental muscles.  Something that focuses me on the real goal here – keeps my eyes on the lies, if not the prize.  Something that is the rhetorical and intellectual equivalent of watching a group of brownshirts shuffling down the street smashing windows and painting “Judenrein” on burned-out storefronts, something that focuses the mind not only on the stakes of the battle, but on the depravity of one’s opponents.  And suddenly, all the fatigue melts away, and all I want is to dig into the battle and not come up for air until I’ve got a mouthful of my opponent’s neck veins raw and dripping from my teeth.

Rhetorically speaking.

———-

Here is one such, by a Des Moines Register columnist named Donald Kaul, about whom I can say I’m sorry, Nick Coleman.  I never knew how good we had it, in comparison, when you were writing – because in Des Moines and reading Mr. Kaul, but for the grace of the Father Almighty, might we all have gone.

Mr. Kaul is apparently a superannuated scold, sort of the Sid Hartmann of Des Moines punditry.  And he’s got some curious takes on events:

The thing missing from the debate so far is anger — anger that we live in a society where something like the Sandy Hook Elementary massacre can happen and our main concern is not offending the NRA’s sensibilities.

Right, because our society’s self-proclaimed “elites” tread so carefully around the NRA.

That’s obscene. Here, then, is my “madder-than-hell-and-I’m-not-going-to-take-it-anymore” program for ending gun violence in America:

Let me just take a brief moment for a tangent.  Can we please, please have mainstream media figures refrain from ever, ever invoking “Network” again?  Or at least until such time as they have given up on their affectation as self-referential, self-reverential putative “high priests of knowledge?”  Until they stop comforting the comfortable and afflicting those who attack the narrative?  Because the mainstream media does not, ever, ever upset the establishment.  They are the establishment.  And that anyone who works in the MSM still believes Paddy Chayefsky’s fantasy has applied to a single reporter at a single traditional institutional media outlet since before the Kennedy Administration is evidence not of purpose, but of delusion.

• Repeal the Second Amendment, the part about guns anyway. It’s badly written, confusing and more trouble than it’s worth. It offers an absolute right to gun ownership, but it puts it in the context of the need for a “well-regulated militia.” We don’t make our militia bring their own guns to battles. And surely the Founders couldn’t have envisioned weapons like those used in the Newtown shooting when they guaranteed gun rights. Owning a gun should be a privilege, not a right.

Mr. Kaul has reportedly suffered a heart attack in recent years.  Regrettably, brain damage seems to have been involved.  There are no “absolute rights”; everyone agrees on keeping guns out of the hands of the insane, the criminal, and the addled (no offense, Mr. Kaul).  And it’s signally important that behind most of the legislation that’s actually accomplished that goal has been…

…the NRA.

And when Jefferson and Madison wrote the First Amendment, surely they can’t have imagined that the modern printing press (which they could also not imagine) would be used to inject Mr. Kaul’s twaddle into the public discussion.

Sorry, Mr. Kaul.  We are all the militia.  Even – heaven forefend – you.

Well, until you get convicted of a crime.  And we may have to work on that, after reading what’s coming up:

• Declare the NRA a terrorist organization and make membership illegal. Hey! We did it to the Communist Party, and the NRA has led to the deaths of more of us than American Commies ever did. (I would also raze the organization’s headquarters, clear the rubble and salt the earth, but that’s optional.) Make ownership of unlicensed assault rifles a felony. If some people refused to give up their guns, that “prying the guns from their cold, dead hands” thing works for me.

Mr. Kaul; you are welcome to try.  Start with me.  Bring friends.  You’ll need ’em.  Maybe 14 or 15 of ’em.

• Then I would tie Mitch McConnell and John Boehner, our esteemed Republican leaders, to the back of a Chevy pickup truck and drag them around a parking lot until they saw the light on gun control.

Has anyone contacted the Des Moines police?  Seriously – since Columbine, Red Lake and Sandy Hook, we’ve been told to watch out for people who…:

• froth with anger over their perceived enemies
• sputter about the violent remedies they fantasize about
• believe their ends justify their means
• are white males stuck in dead-end lives.

Because I’m sure the founding fathers never envisioned hate speech that may or may not stop short of being a terroristic threat  when they were writing the First Amendment.

Let everyone who has ever called gun owners “angry white men compensating for their own shortcomings” read Mr. Kaul’s entire piece, and then forever hold your peace.  You are forever trumped.

And if that didn’t work, I’d adopt radical measures. None of that is going to happen, of course. But I’ll bet gun sales will rise.

Knowing that people like Donald Kaul are among our opposition, I’m going to buy a few extra boxes (for the gun/s I will neither confirm nor deny that I own) in his honor.

A photo from the NYTimes.

Check the caption (may only make sense to shooters in the audience):

(For non-shooters in the audience – the caption says the pistol is a “.40 caliber Glock”. It’s not. It’s a Colt M1911A1 (or a third-party copy thereof). Which is not just a different gun, but just about the un-Glock-iest pistol in the world that doesn’t have a rotating cylinder full of bullets, or a ramrod and a flintlock for that matter).

Layers and layers of gatekeepers!

In St. Paul, the only reason the office vacancy rate is holding steady between a quarter and a third is because the state of Minnesota rents as much as they do.  Crime is rising, the tax base is shrinking, middle and working-class parents are fleeing the school system, the Midway and Frogtown are about to get a few islands of gentrification plopped (for a while, anyway) amid long stretches of government-imposed blight, taxes are up and “services” are down, the foreclosure crisis has gutted Frogtown, the North End and the lower East Side, property values are in the toilet and will stay there because of the City Council’s vacant building policies.

But we’re free of candy cigarettes, dammit!

A back-in-the-day soda shop in St. Paul has been busted for selling cigarettes — made of candy.

Lynden’s, on Hamline Avenue near Cretin-Derham Hall High School, said a city inspections official came in last week and gave the shop a warning and added that a misdemeanor citation — with a $500 fine — would be next if the non-carcinogenic confections continue to be sold.

And how was it that the City of Saint Paul was caused to spring into such decisive action?

“Somebody from Bloomington called and reported us,” Lynden said. “The whole thing is pretty weird.”

The folks at Lynden’s should have donated more to the DFL, apparently.

UPDATE: Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

The City of St. Paul is looking out For The Children, as usual.

Best comment on-line: “It’s true, candy cigarettes are a gateway drug to real cigarettes. I used to eat Gummi Worms and now I crave night-crawlers!”

Joe Doakes

Como Park

Strooth.  I started eating Lemonheads.  I became a huge Evan Dando fan.

(#forgottennineties)

Today, the Northern Alliance Radio Network – America’s first grass-roots talkradio show – brings you the best in Minnesota conservatism, as the Twin Cities media’s sole source of honesty!

• I’m in from 1-3.  We’ll be talking about the year in review. .
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So tune in to all four hours of the Northern Alliance Radio Network, the Twin Cities’ media’s sole guardians of honest news. You have so many options:

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Join us!

…is on full display, as it always is when any conservative/GOP figure has serious health problems.

Prayers, btw, for George41.

Chicago – where gun ownership by the law-abiding civilian is, in defiance of two SCOTUS rulings, still effectively banned – just saw its’ 500th homicide for the year.

That’s two Sandy Hook classrooms a month.  Every month.

And of those deaths, about seven or eight classrooms-full were children below age 15.  That’s on top of similar numbers the year before, and the several years before that.  And next year.

But they were largely black, and brown, and urban; not white and from fashionable zip codes and a lot like the children, nieces and nephews and grandchildren of the people who run our opinion-driving industry.  And they lived in a city that spawned our current President, who endorsed every single policy currently in force in a city that is nothing if not a laboratory for modern “progressivism”.  So they don’t count.

In the wake of the Newtown shooting, the Lower Hudson (NY/CT) Journal News published an interactive map of every single legal carry permit holder in southern Connecticut.

Regardless of whether they’d ever committed any sort of crime (which, indeed, none of them had – because Connecticut has a pretty restrictive permit law).

This is pure harassment.

And that’s why it’s such great fun to see regional bloggers hitting back in kind, finding and publishing the addresses of the newspaper’s “journalists”.

(Which is, by the way, exactly why the writers of Minnesota’s carry permit law fought so hard to make permits a non-public record; you just know the media in the Twin Cities would do exactly the same thing).

Wonder if this’ll pop up on NPR’s leftymedia-friendly “On The Media” this weekend?  Bonus question:  how badly will Bob Garfield and Brooke Gladstone’s case of vapors over the affront to the sanctity of journalistic secrecy be?

UPDATE:  The media are not amused.  The editor is playing martyr.

To which Joe Doakes responds via email:

My response to the journalists’ complaint would be:

“Frequently, the work of bloggers is not popular. One of our roles is to quickly report publicly available information on timely issues, even when unpopular. I knew publishing the names and addresses of all journalists connected with reporting the names and addresses of applicants for gun permits would be controversial, but I felt sharing information about journalists living in our community was important to start a conversation about the media’s culpability in educating and inspiring copycat killers in the aftermath of the Newtown shootings.”

Hey, if it’s good enough for her, it’s good enough for me.

Fortunately, in Minnesota the lists of CCW permittees are not public records (thanks, Joe Olson!).

But I think finding a list of anti-gun media figures who have carry permits would be useful.  I can think of two so far…

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

The State Department’s internal report is out and as a result, Congress is rushing to fortify the barn door.

What I still want to know is: whose idea was it to tone down American consulate security to present a more welcoming, more open appearance to Mid-East locals to enhance America’s image in the world? Who decided Benghazi should be a temporary facility, and an unguarded one at that?

The “welcoming appearance” theory of diplomacy always held the danger our diplomats could be attacked because we intentionally did not cower behind machine-gun toting Marines. But if it was the correct theory, then Benghazi was an unfortunate incident but not cause to fortify and arm up. The fact we’re abandoning the theory makes it look as if we’re rebuking the proponent of the theory and wasn’t that . . . President Obama himself?

So, the President’s idea was wrong: dangerously, stupidly and perhaps even criminally so? Is that what we’re saying? Cuz that’s certainly what it sounds like we’re saying, just not in so many words. Spell it out for me. Was Barak Obama’s signature diplomatic initiative flat wrong?

Joe Doakes

Como Park.

That’d be a great question for our Secretary of State.

If we can ever find her.

Governor Dayton is apparently out of surgery for his back.  It apparently went well.

But the Strib gave us a late Christmas present yesterday, in announcing the appointment:

Minnesota Gov. Dayton heading to Mayo to undergo spinal surgery that will briefly sideline him

He was sidelined from his grueling schedule of reading instructions from Alida and periodically emerging from his office to gargle demands at the Legislature?

I remember my first day of college biology class.  My professor, Doctor Claflin, said something about the scientific method that I shall never forget.  When publishing results from your experiments and your research, he said to always be respectful of the inquisitive nature of the scientific method.

He used to say of this process…:

Please use the comments to demonstrate your own ignorance, unfamiliarity with empirical data, ability to repeat discredited memes, and lack of respect for scientific knowledge. Also, be sure to create straw men and argue against things I have neither said nor even implied. Any irrelevancies you can mention will also be appreciated. Lastly, kindly forgo all civility in your discourse . . . you are, after all, anonymous.

And it was from that that I learned my respect for the rigorous inquiry of the Scentific Method.

(more…)

This next bit worries me almost as much as last week’s story (about Minnesota’s “social studies standards” being turned into nothing more than lefty indoctrination).

The English language, as taught in our schools, is dying:

I was a teacher in the inner city between 1992 and 1996 and immediately realized that those unfortunate kids could not read anything, because nearly every sentence had at least one word they had never seen before. This went for magazine and newspaper articles as well as traditional English stuff. I was not shoving college chemistry texts or The Fall of the House of Usher at them. (Read Poe to a 16 year old today and you will get the glassiest stare imaginable; in Usher, there are 20-25 words in the first paragraph, as well as a round-about way of expression, that would totally defeat all but the brightest teen.)

Now, I”m not sure how many teenagers could follow Usher even 30 years ago.  Still, there’s no question; literacy is receding in our country:

They said they don’t like black and white films, and they didn’t, but I truly believe they didn’t like how much people talked. Watch a Bogart film and see how much of the action is moved by dialogue, sophisticated and adult dialogue, and compare the number and length of words to a contemporary film.

And it’s not just schools or pop culture:

Or, my personal favorite annoyance, my church sings all Contemporary Christian Music, what I call Sesame Street music. There are few words of more than one syllable. I

It’s one of the reasons I seek out churches whose hymnals include no music written after 1880.

 How does one reverse this? I spent a long time encouraging them to see the value of having more tools in their linguistic tool box, but when f*** is their primary adjective and adverb, when using “big” words is excoriated, and every “art” form they enjoy diminishes rather than exalts language, what could I do? Read to them, put lists of words they would never see again on the board, encourage expression with some complexity. Not generally fruitful options.

On the one hand, while it was an awful movie, I did like the Leonardo DiCaprio/Claire Danes MTV-friendliy version of Romeo and Juliet if only because it demanded its audience keep up with Shakespearean vocabulary and pacing (which may be why it flopped, but work with me here).

On the other?  I despair of anything getting any better.  Our nation’s media, academia and too much of our ruling class benefit from dumb subjects.

There are Two Americas.  One with real, uncompromising laws for commoners, and one with special laws for the media:

Alternate caption: “If I were James O’Keefe, lefties would already be calling for jail time”.

I had a conversation with AVERY LIBRELLE.  Avery is an associate professor of Victimization Studies at Saint Thomas, and still votes for Paul Wellstone every election.

LIBRELLE: So are you gun nuts really demanding that we arm all teachers?

ME: Well, no.  Some conservatives merely want to allow teachers that qualify for carry permits – pass the background checks, take the training and so on – that wish to, to bring their legally-purchased firearms to school.  Concealed, anonymous, no publicity.

LIBRELLE: That’s just madness.  That just adds more guns to the situation.

ME: Well, yeah.  Guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens.  Which, the past 25 years of experience have shown, is at worst neutral and very likely a good thing, and which current police doctrine shows is the best way to deal with mass shooting situations.

LIBRELLE: What?  That’s insane!  Teachers are trained to teach!  It’ll take years to train them to be soldiers!

ME: Soldiers?  Huh?  You don’t have to be a “soldier” to defend yourself.  When a regular citizen is faced with a life-or-death situation, it’s usually pretty cut and dried; there is someone right in front of you providing an immediate threat of death or great bodily harm to you or the people around you.  You pull a gun, you point, you shoot.

LIBRELLE:  That’s so not how it works.

ME: Well, yeah.  It is.  The record is full of 14 year old kids and septuagenarians and elderly women and pregnant women, teenage single moms and just plain folks successfully defending themselves against violent – indeed, by definition, lethal – crime.

LIBRELLE:  Well, mass shooters are different.  They are white, young, male, and very, very smart.  They plan their shootings out to a “T”.  There is no way the regular citizen can stand up to them!  Only the police can deal with freaks like this.

ME:  Again, Avery, no.  For starters, cops have their own problems; the policeman at Columbine wasn’t able to stop Klebold and Harris, although someone should tell David Gregory that the cop likely saved quite a few lives – and the SWAT team didn’t go into the building at all until hours after everyone including Klebold and Harris were dead.  After that, cops changed their tactics, and we’ll come back to that.

In the meantime, we have several instances of armed citizens stopping mass-shooters in mid-shooting, including the guy in Portland Oregon two weeks ago, and Jeanne Assam in Colorado Springs a few years back.

LIBRELLE:  Hah!  Now I know you’re parroting NRA talking points!  Both of those shooters killed themselves!   The armed civilian Rambo-wannabees didn’t kill them!

ME:  Now, hang on, Avery.  No need to be so bloodthirsty.  The goal isn’t necessarily to get a notch on one’s handgrip.  It’s to end the shooting.

And that brings us to police tactics.  Guess what they train police to do about mass shooters these days?  Not wait for the SWAT team. but go in and get after the shooter as fast as they can – because since mass shooters do tend to be intelligent, but narcissistic and disturbed and and to live in fantasy worlds, once you disrupt the fantasy and derail the plan, they do tend to stop, re-assess, panic and kill themselves.  The goal is to cause that derailing when the massacre has just started, rather than when they’re standing up to their waists in dead bodies and hearing the sirens coming, like Harris and Klebold and Seung-Hui Cho and Jeffrey Weise.  And depending on the killer, that disruption can be pretty minor; in Portland last December 11, Nick Meli didn’t have to fire so much as a shot to get the Clackamas Mall shooter to slink away into a store and polish himself off.   These people are narcissists and cowards; once their master plan gets off the rails, they almost always either kill themselves or, like the Aurora shooter, give up.

LIBRELLE:  But the Brady Organization says arming teachers would only make things worse.

ME:  Oh, you mean that if a teacher had shot back at Lanza, things might have gotten bad?

LIBRELLE:  Well, yeah…that’s what Brady says!  Anyway – Teachers are not soldiers.  They spend their careers mastering pedagogy and nurturing, not soldiers!

ME:  Wait – do you think the guy in Portland trained his whole life to get ready for that moment in that mall?  Don’t be absurd! You’ll labor in vain to find a single civilian who shoots, successfully, in self-defense, that spent an entire working career preparing for the moment.  But go ahead and try!

But let’s just say for argument’s sake that you’re right; that by the nature of a teacher’s job, they should never, ever be armed, even if their states of residence have duly issued them carry permits for which they’re qualified.  That’s what we’re saying, right?

LIBRELLE:  Yes.

ME:  Even if they have a carry permit, which according to nationwide statistics means they’re a couple of orders of magnitude more trustworthy with firearms than the general public?

LIBRELLE:  Of course.  No armed teachers.  It’s just not right!

ME:  Because being gentle-bred, lotus-eating teachers, the whole subject of killing in self-defense is beyond them?

LIBRELLE:  No need to be so snide – but yes.  Basically.

ME: So the schools then opt to follow current law-enforcement procedure, and follow President LaPierre’s idea of hiring guards to try to carry that out in our schools?  To try to disrupt the shooters’ plans, just like law enforcement advises.  Just as Israel has done for some time now against a real, constant threat.

LIBRELLE: Oh, no.  The NEA has said that that’s insane!

ME:  So let me get this straight:  a union comprised of people that you just said were incompetent to see to their own and their childrens’ defense (notwithstanding potentially having carry permits that show they are competent) is nonetheless expert enough in self-defense tactics to reject current law-enforcement practice out of hand?

LIBRELLE:  …

ME:  Well?

LIBRELLE:  Why do you hate the children?  And women?

(And SCENE)

In the infamous, preachy, unctuous “Celebrities against Guns” ad last week…

…the “stars” involved participated in 53 consequence-free shootings in three minutes.

The likes of Chris Rock, Will Farrell and Cameron Diaz lecture the rest of us as the the body counts in their movies pile graphically up.

Not really safe for work.

Most “gun control” laws have nothing to do with controlling crime; they are about making gun ownership not merely onerous, but legally perilous.

And they work – where “work” means “scare law-abiding people out of their sacred duty and privilege to defend themselves, their families and their society from the scum around us“:

Prior to yesterday, I never would have thought that possession of an empty magazine, kept separate from ammunition or a weapon, would violate the law, so I sympathize with Gregory on that point.

But I’m less sympathetic than you might expect because fear of unintentionally violating gun laws is one of the things that has kept me from purchasing a handgun. As you know, I took the NRA safety course over a year ago. But I’m a legal resident of Rhode Island who lives much of the year in New York, so there’s an issue of whether I could obtain a NY permit, which is needed even to keep a gun in the home. And then there’s the issue of transportation back and forth, and complying with the requirements to avoid prosecution as I pass through Massachusetts.

It all became such a bureaucratic jungle that I just deferred for the time being.

That’s attorney William Jacobson at Legal Insurrection in a piece on the importance of prosecuting NBC News’ David Gregory – who is a rabid anti-gunner and makes no “journalistic” bones about it, and whose kids attend a school protected by the same armed guards that he and his industry decry for the proles – produced a 30-round NATO STANAG magazine (which fits the AR15 and most other NATO rifles of the same caliber) during a segment haranguing for gun control on one of the Sunday Morning shows last week.

Jacobson, by the way, cuts Gregory some slack in assuming the “infraction” was inadvertent.  NBC apparently asked DC police for permission to possess the magazine for use in the “story” (heh), and were denied.   Gregory – or at least several people in his editorial chain of command – knew that they were breaking a law…

…that was designed, like all of DC’s gun laws, to ensnare and make criminals out of as many law-abiding gun owners as possible.

Against that?  Howard Kurtz – a center-left journalist – responds (with emphasis added by me):

Was it a stunt? Yep, and an eye-catching one. Was Gregory being aggressive with the NRA chief, or seeming to push gun control in a confrontational interview? All that is up for debate.

But a police probe over what I assume was an empty ammo clip is a total waste of time. What it demonstrates above all is that journalists are getting ensnared in the political war over gun control.

No, Howard.  “Journalists” who are actively working to destroy a constitutional liberty they don’t believe to be in fashion broke a law.  If it had been any other citizen – Wayne LaPierre, or (occasional NRA spokesbabe) Sarah Michelle Gellar, or you or I – the DC police would be going over them right now with all the grace the NYPD used in going over Abner Louima.  Rhetorically speaking.  Probably.

If it’s a “waste of time” for Gregory, then what is it for every other otherwise honest citizen in DC and the area that’s gotten snagged up in DC gun laws’ byzantine picayunities over the past 40 years?

Like these guys, Mickey Kaus:  the DC Police didn’t consider it a “waste of time” with two of the people who were wounded defending our worthless federal government overseas:

After being injured on foreign soil while defending his nation’s freedom, Lt. Kim returned home to find that, in DC at least, there is very little of it left to defend. Lt. Kim was transporting his legally owned firearms from his parent’s home in New Jersey to South Carolina when he stopped at Walter Reed Army Hospital in DC for an appointment. Bad move!

After getting lost and pulled over by police, he was arrested, thrown in jail, and had over $10,000 in guns seized by the District. Despite the fact that he had no evil intent, Lt. Kim didn’t get a pass … but I bet Gregory will.

Or how about the case of Army Specialist Adam Meckler? Meckler, who had recently ended his active duty tour, was dropping off records at the VFW in DC when they discovered a few rounds of ammunition in his bag left over from recreational shooting. Let me repeat that … a few rounds of ammo … not a gun … not a knife … not an RPG … a few rounds of 9mm ammo.

For that ‘crime’ Specialist Meckler was handcuffed, treated like a terrorist, arrested, and forced to accept a plea deal that will mark the honored veteran for the rest of his life. But will the same happen to Gregory? I don’t think so.

So let’s recap. Two soldiers, absent any evil intent, violate the strict letter of DC’s draconian gun control laws and end up getting no leniency from a justice system that serves anything but true justice.

Apparently, to regular plebeians, the letter of DC’s stupid law isn’t a “waste of time”.

Just move him out of his secured apartment building and make him live in a regular working-class house in Newark or Detroit or Chicago for a while.

Ditto David Gregory.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

I’m impressed: 4 for 4, actually doing his job. Give credit where due.

Shooting victims: he offers prayers, which is about all anybody can realistically do without making things worse with ill-considered bans.

Deficit: working on it. I disagree with his proposal, but at least he’s working on it. Good for him.

Farm Bill: stupid policy but it does affect interstate commerce so yes, it is his job. Good for him.

Asian carp: they migrate on federally regulated waters (Mississippi) so yes, it is his job. Good for him.

Congratulations to Senator Franken. He’s doing his job. I disagree with HOW he’s doing it, but he is doing it.

Under the terms of his hiring agreement, he’s doing what he was sent to DC to do.

But I’m still thinking his performance review in 2014 needs to point toward a career change.

If you haven’t read this yet – and it’s been circulating for the past week or so – then get on it.

Then we’ll have a conversation about why things like school massacres happen, and what we can do about it.

The other day, I was talking with Sheila Rae Thorvaldssen, a woman from Dilworth Minnesota who writes the liberal-leaning blog Oh Noes, Wingnutz Are Blooming Like Loosestrife On My Lawn.  It is one of the leading blogs, left or right, from outstate Minnesota.

The conversation went something like this:

THORVALDSSEN:  Har har, Merg!  You gunny wingnuts have been pwn3ed again!  Tony Cornish said stuff that wasn’t true!

ME: Yeah, that’s the problem with being a pro-Second Amendment activist.  If you’re a gun controller, all you have to do is keep repeating the same lines over and over again.  On our side, you have to keep up with current events.  Israel “toughened” up their gun laws in the last decade or so!

THORVALDSSEN:  It must be awkward to realize you were wrong on all the facts!

ME: Well, it sucks bobbling facts, and we all try not to.  But here’s the rub;  you’ve heard that old saying, “the British lose all the battles but win the wars?”

THORVALDSSEN:  No.  Did Conan O’Brien say it?

ME: Nope.  Anyway – it’s a little like that when you’re a 2nd Amendment activist.  Every once in a while you may bobble a fact, or factoid, that’s part of the larger discussion – but we’re still right on the actual conclusions.

THORVALDSSEN:  Oh, riiiiiight.

ME: Well, wrapped around that factoid about the Israelis “toughening” their gun laws are two facts that everyone, like you, that jumps up and down about Rep. Cornish – and me! – bobbling the fact is the inconvenient truth that that factoid reinforces two conclusions that we’ve always made.

THORVALDSSEN:  That’s just crazy talk.

ME: Well, yeah, but not in the way you think.  For starters, the “tightening” of gun laws – on the law-abiding – in Israel cut the number of legal firearms in half – but more than doubled the number of illegal ones, and reinforced the black market.  Which is exactly what happens whenever gun control is tried, whether in Tel Aviv or Chicago.

THORVALDSSEN:  Hah hah!  You said there were two conclusions, but you only gave one!  You are a liar!

ME: Well, the other one is this;  whatever happened in Israel in the past decade or so, and whatever they do now, it is a historical fact that in the seventies, there were several attacks on Israeli schools and school children –  the 1970 Avivim Massacre which killed 12 kids, the Kiryat Shmona massacre (which began as an attempt to kill the children at a kibbutz school and evolved from there, ending in 18 dead, eight of them children), and the Ma’alot Massacre (terrorists killed 22 children and five adults).  That’s 42 dead children among three incidents, in a population about the size of Minnesota’s.  Can you imagine almost five Red Lake massacres in four years, the affect that’d have here?  Anyway – at the time, one of Israel’s responses – one of many – was to allow teachers in high risk areas along the borders to carry legally-permitted guns.

THORVALDSSEN:  So?

ME: So the attacks on children stopped.  They found softer targets – actually, they largely switched to bombs and rockets.

THORVALDSSEN:  But Cornish got current Israeli law wrong.  So your entire point is invalid!  Hah!  Bow down before my superior reasoning, bitchez!

ME:  Not if your point is “there are some ideas out there to stop school violence”.  The point being, once schools became harder targets – in this case, harder because teachers in vulnerable areas were armed – school shooting stopped.

People like Cornish – and me, by the way – say that that just might be a better than the “gun-free school zones” that we’ve been trying for the past 25 years or so.

THORVALDSSEN:  But you forgot the ultimate argument against arming teachers.

ME: What’s that.

THORVALDSSEN: It won’t work.  Period.

ME: What makes that the ultimate argument?

THORVALDSSEN:  I said “Period” at the end.

ME: Hm.

THORVALDSSEN:  That means you’ve been pwn3d.

ME: Huh.

THORVALDSSEN:  Do you feel awkward yet?

ME: Sure, why not?

And SCENE.

In “The Promised Land” – a song that constantly flits about the top of most hard-core Springsteen fans’ lists of favorite songs – paints a bleak picture for the everyday schlub:

I done my best to live the right way
I get up every morning and go to work each day.
But your eyes go blind, and your blood runs cold,
sometimes I feel so weak I just wanna explode

Explode and tear this old town apart,
take a knife and cut this pain from my heart,
find somebody itchin’ for something to start…

And then the last verse tees up:

Well, there’s a dark cloud rising, ‘cross the desert floor
I’ve packed my bags, and I’m headed straight into the storm
Gonna be a twister to blow everything down
that ain’t got the faith to stand its ground.

Blow away the dreams that break your heart.

Blow away the dreams that tear you apart
Blow away the lies that leave you nothing but lost and brokenhearted…

The song – which is on the surface about a young buck butting his head against a status quo leaving him, in the immortal words of Howard the Duck, “trapped in a world that he never made”.  And beneath the surface?  It’s about everyone trying to stake their claim in the world while they can, and railing against the petty and not-so-petty things that badger and hector you on the way there…

…and noting, obliquely, another of the key facets of what being a conservative really means: the idea that the only true forms of equality are equality at the Last Judgment and equality before a just court of law.

Humans and the societies they build are intensely imperfect, and that the only justice you’re ever going to see is from something – a higher power, in this case, in the metaphorical form of a tornado – that cares not for your specifics, or of that against which you’re banging your head.

The notion that there is an existing, higher moral order is easy; every political and cultural liberal believes it (although cultural liberals and conservative see the source of that order differently).  The idea that we, petty humans that we are, stand on the shoulders of giants and can only rarely improve on them and their ideas is harder; the idea that we can change the world “for the better” is so wound up in the ideals of liberals that they call themselves “progressives”.

But the idea that absolute equality only exists (outside of the purely legalistic, and then only when everyone involves has a lot of integrity) above and beyond this world is the province of the cultural conservative.

Larry Correia has written the best single synopsis of gun myths and misunderstandings, and the actual opposing facts, that I have ever seen.  Anywhere.

It covers the whole waterfront of lefty strawmen about guns – “why do you need an assault rifle?”, “why you need at 30 round magazine?”, the whole works.

But since so many in the Twin Cities media and alt-leftysphere have been tittering about Rep. Cornish’s proposal to allow teachers (who are over 21 and have qualified for Minnesota carry permits to carry guns, this seemed to be the most important passage in the piece:

You can’t mandate teachers be armed! Guns in every classroom! Emotional response! Blood in the streets!

No. Hear me out. The single best way to respond to a mass shooter is with an immediate, violent response. The vast majority of the time, as soon as a mass shooter meets serious resistance, it bursts their fantasy world bubble. Then they kill themselves or surrender. This has happened over and over again.

(Brief tangent:  when I wrote about that exact same thing happening, two weeks ago in the Portland Oregon shooting, lefties said “aww, he shot himself! You can’t credit that to the gun owner!”.  Yes, you can.  In fact, you have to.  Without the armed citizen and the resistance, the death toll would have risen).

Police are awesome. I love working with cops. However any honest cop will tell you that when seconds count they are only minutes away. After Colombine law enforcement changed their methods in dealing with active shooters. It used to be that you took up a perimeter and waited for overwhelming force before going in. Now usually as soon as you have two officers on scene you go in to confront the shooter …The reason they go fast is because they know that every second counts. The longer the shooter has to operate, the more innocents die.

However, cops can’t be everywhere…Excellent response time is in the three-five minute range. We’ve seen what bad guys can do in three minutes, but sometimes it is far worse. They simply can’t teleport. So in some cases that means the bad guys can have ten, fifteen, even twenty minutes to do horrible things with nobody effectively fighting back

The average number of people shot in a mass shooting event when the shooter is stopped by law enforcement: 14. The average number of people shot in a mass shooting event when the shooter is stopped by civilians: 2.5. The reason is simple. The armed civilians are there when it started.

It’s a long read – 10,000 words – and the best single digest of actual fact vs. BS that I’ve read in one place anywhere on fact vs. liberal fiction on this issue.

Mary Franson’s Family Freedom Act website. Check it out before MPR sics the Campaign Finance Board on it again.

Today, the Northern Alliance Radio Network – America’s first grass-roots talkradio show – brings you the best in Minnesota conservatism, as the Twin Cities media’s sole source of honesty!

• I’m in from 1-3.  I’ll be talking about Minnesota’s loathsome new “proposed” social studies standards.  Finally, we’ll also be talking with Rep. Mary Franson, who launched her campaign against Governor Dayton’s proposal to unionize child-care providers this past week.
• Brad Carlson’s show – “The Closer” – is on from 1-3 on Sunday.

(All times Central)

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