To: Minnesota DFL Pundits, Politicians, Academics And “Journalists”
From: Mitch Berg, Mere Peasant
Re: Put Up Or…

All,

I’m going to take a moment to publicly reiterate a challenge I’ve posted in the past.

I challenge you – any of you – to debate the Paymar and/or Feinstein gun-grab bills.  In public.

Only ground rules:  We’ll do it in public, at a neutral location.  We’ll have actual debate rules – we can gnosh those out when we set things up.   Bring your “A” game.  You’ll need it.

Have your people call my people.

I am my people.

That is all.

I was standing at a Superamerica last night pumping gas in -5  with something like -25 wind chill (note to Speedway/SuperAmerica management; here’s a great idea for you – put the building north of the gas pumps in Minnesota and the Dakotas) and was struck by the incongruity of hearing “Thunder Island”, the 1977 hit by Jay Ferguson, playing on the overhead speaker.

Just about the summer-iest song ever written. A song that oozes “tropical”.

I mentioned that on Facebook, where Mr. D noted that the song came out in the deep winter of 1977, and it was probably just about as cold when we of a certain age heard this song for the first time as it is now.  Or, since I was in North Dakota, 10 degrees colder.

And it’s true; I remember it now.  I’d sit in the little nook in the corner of the room I shared with my little brother, doing my homework with the radio tuned to KFYR in Bismark for the “Tuesday Torrid Twenty”, my guitar in its case down at my feet.  If I heard a song I liked, I’d grab it and try to figure it out.  Which may be why I’m so very, very difficult to beat at “Stump The Band, Late Seventies/Early Eighties edition”.

And yet I always associate the song with heat and humidity. Maybe it had something to do with being a fourteen year old guy.

One song I always do associate with terrible weather? “Glycerine” by Bush:

I was a solid seventeen years older, married, had a kid or three, was scrambling to make ends meet, and heard it for the first time as I was driving home from Eagan to Saint Paul through a howling snowstorm. I always associate it with being cold, on edge – I was on 35E, for crying out loud – and worn out.

But it, also, came out in January. So at least I got the time right…

The DFL’s latest gun grab bill – the first after a couple of fairly sensible decades, gun-wise – includes some surprises.

The bill demands that all magazines of greater than seven rounds be surrendered to law enforcement or sent out of state by August 13, 2013.  Here’s the language:

Subd. 12. Large-capacity magazine. “Large-capacity magazine” means any ammunition feeding device with the capacity to accept more than seven rounds, or any conversion kit, part, or combination of parts, from which this type of device can be assembled if those parts are in the possession or under the control of the same person. The term does not include any of the following: (1) a feeding device that has been permanently altered so that it cannot accommodate more than seven rounds; (2) a .22 caliber tube ammunition feeding device; or a tubular magazine that is contained in a lever-action firearm.

What does that very, very broad definition cover?

Oh, it’s aimed at your semi-automatic handguns and rifles – the left’s current boogeyman du jour.

But there’s no exception in the language for, say, the Garand that Grampa brought home from World War 2:

It’s got an eight round magazine; the magazine is built into the rifle – the language doesn’t exempt integral box magazines – so there’s no way to modify it.  Cough it up, “gun nut”.

Or if Grampa was a REMF?  Yep – his M1 Carbine with its fifteen round box as well:

Work out on a farm?  Not only your Ruger Mini-14 that you keep for varmints…:

…but the Ruger 10/22 that you teach your kids to plink with (ten rounds, and no, there’s no practical way to modify it.

Are you a self-defense shooter?  Not only is your SIG 239 – eight rounds, not seven – on the block, but some revolvers hold eight or nine or 12 rounds, from .22 plinkers up to the Smith and Wesson 627:

There’s no language exempting revolvers!

Or shotguns.  Your Mossberg Model 500 duck gun – which holds eight rounds in a tube under the barrel – is trayf.  “Paymar’s” bill only exempts tube mags if they’re .22 caliber, or on a lever-action piece.

So the duck gun is out, but this…

…a Henry Comanchero holding fifteen rounds, is legal.

Why, it’s almost as if this bill was a piece of “model” legislation from some gun-grabber group or another.

There was a story yesterday.

The Sorosphere started feverishly blogging and tweeting about it…

…and then it stopped.   And the mainstream media barely touched the story, as important and utterly newsworthy as it was.

Why?

Because the story’s main takeaway was that the NRA was absolutely right.

I spoke too soon yesterday in writing about the DFL Metrocrats’ hearings regarding guns.  They – Hausman, Paymar, Sheldon Johnson and Simonson, to be exact – introduced a bill today aimed at “High Capacity Magazines”.

Their definition of “high-capacity”:  seven rounds.

Money shot:

Sec. 3. PERSONS POSSESSING LARGE-CAPACITY MAGAZINES ON EFFECTIVE DATE OF ACT; REQUIRED ACTIONS.

2.29Any person who, on August 1, 2013, is in possession of a large-capacity magazine has 120 days to do either of the following without being subject to prosecution under

Minnesota Statutes, section 624.7133:

 

2.32(1) remove the large-capacity magazine from the state; or

(2) surrender the large-capacity magazine to a law enforcement agency for  destruction.

OK, gun owners – all of you, hunters and skeeters and defensive shooters alike; if you’ve never come out and gotten active in politics before, now is the time.  This piece of Stalin-era twaddle isn’t going away on its own, or because the orcs who introduced it will be overcome with long-hidden feelings of libertarian conscience.

It’ll be because law-abiding Real Americans like you and me take it down and kick it to death.

It’s going to the “Public Safety Committee”, which we talked about yesterday.  Call them, especially Ward, Savick and Rosenthal (UPDATE: And Simonson).

We need to crush the switchboards.

BONUS QUESTION FOR CONSTITUTIONAL SCHOLARS: Isn’t “give us your legally-purchased and not-by-any-means-inexpensive property or risk going to jail” the very definition of an “Illegal Taking?”

Because 13 round magazines for a SIG P250 were $45 a pop even before the current hysteria set in.  Or so I’m told.

As our liberal plutocrat elites surround themselves with armed guards, and as Janet Napolitano arms her federal apparatchiks to the teeth to send them after your guns (assuming Senator Feinswine and Barack Rex get their way), she tells you – mere peasants that you are – that if you, heaven forfend, are involved in a mass shooting, you can defend your life…

…with scissors.

This is what you, mere peasant, are worth to The Regime.

Make no mistake; some resistance is better than none.  Anything that breaks a mass shooter out of their fantasy helps.  Flight 93 showed us that resistance to madness is better than meek submission.

Unfortunately, the old saw “never bring scissors to a gun fight” exists for a reason.  The passengers of Flight 93 are dead heroes.

Far better to resist a mass shooter with a gun.  Every time.  I’ll take being a live schlub playing with his granddaughter over being a dead hero any day.