Last week, we noted that Heather Martens – leader of “Gun Safety” group “Protect” MN, and serial liar – demanded $1,500 to discuss “gun safety” on my show, with me, someone with at least some track record of knowing the issue in some detail.

We also noted that she did appear on KARE11 to debate “gun safety” with Andy Parrish, a GOP strategist, who is not noted as a Second Amendment activist or someone with an especial command of the facts of the issue (which is not to disparage him; I don’t know any of his areas of expertise, either).

Today comes confirmation that Martens did not ask, or recieve, $1,500 from KARE11.

Why, it’s almost as if Martens knows that certain Twin Cities media outlets will paint her toenails on the air, and she’s avoiding having to deal with anyone who can point out her chronic, vocational mendacity.

I said “almost”.

I have no idea why.

“Why do you allow commenters like “Dog Gone” to do their “Poop and run” commenting, leaving big, easily-debunked comments and never sticking around to defend their mendacity?”  I’ve been blogging almost 14 years, and had a comment section most of that time.  The goal of that comment section has always been to give readers a place to discuss what they think about what I’ve written.  In that time, my policy has always been to never ban anyone, unless

1. They write something that’ll get me in legal trouble
2. Their entire reason for being on the blog is to personally bash me.  Not an article, or my reasoning, but me, personally, over and over and over.

Between the two, I’ve probably actually banned half a dozen people in 14 years.  Many of you can probably name them.

I’ve always figured it was more important to have a discussion than an echo chamber – a sentiment the left doesn’t largely subscribe to, by the way – so I let most of it go.  On my show, in fact, liberal callers get on first.  It’s policy.

I do this because I still cling to the notion that discussion is a dying art in this country.

Am I getting tired of the “poop and run” style of commenting?  Sure.  It’s intellectually dishonest; using someone else’s discussion space to dump an argument that one never intends to (and, usually, can’t) defend is basically spam.

“Why do you oppose switching to the metric system?”  I don’t.  I oppose another extended, expensive government program to try to force the general public to use metric in their daily lives.

You ever notice how almost everyone in the Netherlands can communicate in German and English?  How most everyone in Belgium can do a sort of French and Dutch, and usually English to boot?   How Germans very often speak excellent English and decent French, and how Swiss are functionally trilingual?   And how often liberals sniff down their noses and say this is evidence of American provincialism?

It’s not; it’s because European “nations” are the size of US states – and these days, they have about the same barriers between them.   Can you imagine if Wisconsin, the Dakotas and Iowa all spoke different languages than Minnesota?  You’d have a lot of quadrilingual Minnesotans!  Fact is, Europeans need to get around in several languages – so they do.

It works the same with measurement systems.  Just as Belgium and Canada have two languages, America operates, unofficially, with two systems of measurement; one for scientists, engineers, a few people in foreign trade and the military, and one for the rest of us.  Any American who needs to be fluent in metric, is – and translates between the two, if not fluently, then functionally; three kilometers is two miles, a kilogram is 2.2 pounds, a liter is 1.1 quarts, 2.5 acres to a Hectare, an inch is 2.5 centimeters, a meter is 1.1 yards, a foot is 304 mm – it’s just not that hard, and for those translations that are too hard, Siri and Google can calculate even if doing it on a calculator or spreadsheet is too complicated.

There.  I just saved the taxpayer millions of dollars.

“A Good Guy with a Gun is teh falesy!”:   Well, no – it‘s not.

“You are teh Christeean.  You hate teh SCIENCE cuz you believe teh Earth is 4,000 years old!”:  Well, no.  The notion that the Genesis story is literal fact on par with empirical observation is very, very new; its’ only been accepted by parts of Christendom for less than 200 years.  The idea that the earth literally formed in seven days and that the listing of generations in Leviticus and Deuteronomy is, literally, a family tree that more or less precisely dates the universe would have seemed bizarre to Augustine and Aquinas.

There is, literally, nothing about an allegorical reading of the Genesis creation story that is at odds in any significant way with science.

Which is why critics like the ones I “quote” above – who are largely from the “lapsed Catholic with daddy issues” school of militant atheism – spend so much time bashing the “literalist” straw man.  It invalidates the one little thread they connecting them to that feeling of superiority they crave.

“Often, you seem to come across as arrogant and condescending”:  Toots, if I did bother wasting my precious time being arrogant to you, you’d be the last to figure it out.

“You say you’re a libertarian conservative – but there is no such thing!  You must pick one or the other!”:  No, I mustn’t.

American conservatism is built around several important ideas – including the idea that “new ideas have to pass a fairly stern burden of proof”.

Two of the ideas that American conservatives believe have passed that burden:

1. Individual liberty is an intrinsically good thing.
2. Without order, freedom is impossible

It’s one of those things that makes true intellectual conservatism so difficult; those are contradictory.  True conservatives recognize the conundrum that exists between the two, and fight constantly to navigate it as unobtrusively as possible.

Without liberty, order is just tyranny.  Without order, liberty is impossible – because to paraphrase Martin Luther King, the moral arc of history bends is long, but it bends toward barbarism.

That truism – and the conundrum – are the theme of a certain book that is on the market even as we speak!

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Wretchard, writing at The Belmont Club:
Just read it.
Joe Doakes

I won’t quote from it; you really just need to read every single word of it.  It really is the most complete indictment of the Obama Administration’s failures I’ve seen in one place – and, more importantly, their most likely consequences from this point on – that I’ve ever seen, from someone who knows foreign policy better than just about anyone in the American media.

After three years of trying to attack the NRA, what’s happened?

The NRA is more popular than Hillary Clinton or President Obama.

This is really pretty much me:

Summing up Heather Martens’ (and KARE11’s) disingenuity.

Fight Cuban trash collection in Bloomington.

Today’s music playlist. ♫

Today, the Northern Alliance Radio Network – America’s first grass-roots talk radio show – is on the air! I will be on live from 1-3PM today!

Today on the show, we’ll be taking about KARE11’s new job as the PR flaks for gun control, Saint Paul’s superintendent problem, plus much more.  Also:

• Devin Foley of Better Ed joins us us.

Don’t forget – King Banaian is on from 9-11AM on AM1570, and Brad Carlson has “The Closer” edition of the NARN Sundays from 1-3PM.

So tune in the Northern Alliance! You have so many options:

• AM1280 in the Metro
• Streaming at AM1280’s Website
• Streaming on IHeartRadio
• On Twitter (the Volume 2 show will use hashtag #narn2)
• Via my UStream video and chat channel.
• Send us an SMS text message – 651-243-0390
• Good ol’ telephone – 651-289-4488
• Podcasts are now available; for my show and for Brad’s
• And make sure you fan us on our new Facebook page!

Join us!

In the wake of the “debate” between Heather Martens – liar for hire and leader of a gun grabber “group,” sort of – and…

Andy Parrish?  The former Michele Bachmann staffer and campaign manager of the abortive Marriage Amendment, who is famous for many things, not including having an extensive portfolio as a Second Amendment activist?

Nothing against Andy, with whom I’m a nodding acquaintance – but why in the name of all that is holy would anyone select him to be the face of Second Amendment Human Rights issues?

My hunch:   because he’s the only Republican that anyone at KARE11 has talked to, lately, and, perhaps, someone at KARE11 figured it’d be a fair fight.  Martens going up against Andrew Rothman or Joe Olson or David Gross of GOCRA, or Bryan Strawser or Rob Doar of MNGOPAC, or even lil’ ol’ me would be a massacre.  A turkey shoot.  Like shooting fish in a barrel on a plate.

Anyway, KARE11,  I’m all about the help.  So I’m here to suggest some equally-appropriate matchups of “expert spokesperson” and issue:

There you go, KARE. Don’t say I’ve never done anything for you.

UPDATE: Bryan Strawser of MNGOPAC is responding to KARE11:

Letter to KARE-11 TV – October 2015 Gun Control Debate by Bryan Strawser

So, I think, will I. More later.

Kevin Williamson:

There’s a great deal of talk about elitism in American politics lately, most of which misses the point: The problem isn’t that our media and our policy debates are dominated by elites—of course they are; that’s what elites do—it’s that our elites aren’t very good. Our elites do not effectively perform the social function of elites. On some very important issues, such as crime and the economic struggles of the lower-earning half of American households, the discussion is dominated by elites whose members don’t have much useful knowledge to contribute to the conversation.

On quite a few major issues, our “elites” are dumber than the mid-range general population.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Ads for used exercise equipment generally say things like “never used it” or “just gathering dust.” Not a compelling reason for me to buy.

Better ad copy would say “Lost enough weight to meet my goal, don’t need it anymore.”

Same applies to candidates for President. “Never held a real job but eager to run the entire economy” doesn’t move me to donate to you, but rather to hide my wallet.

“FREE BEER” used to be a joke so you’d listen to the real message. Now, it’s Bernie’s entire campaign slogan. No wonder he’s winning.

Joe Doakes

Well, winning among people who are inclined to vote for Bernie Sanders.

Which, unfortunately, given the devolution of our society, is a hell of a lot of people.

After my go-around earlier this week with Heather Martens – where she seemed to challenge the Twin Cities media to hold the Gun Rights movement’s factual feet in the fire – and my attempt to send a letter to the Strib accepting that challenge, I figured it’d be fair to try to actually have that “conversation about guns” with Ms. Martens.

Y’know – to let her win that cataclysmic victory of fact over superstition that she seems to think the media will conjure up when questioning the Second Amendment movement.

So I called “Protect MN’s” phone number – and got through to Heather Martens.  For the first time.

And I invited her to appear on the Northern Alliance with me on Saturday.  Or next Saturday. Or any Saturday – live in studio, or via phone.  Or if Saturdays don’t work, we could record an interview in studio or via phone any time, 24/7, at her convenience.  Or, for that matter, I could come out to wherever she wanted to meet and tape an interview.

She said she’d get back to me.

Which, to be fair, she did, in about 15 minutes, via email, saying she’d be happy to do the show…

…for a $1,500 fee.

Of course, we don’t pay for interviews.  Nobody does.  Presumably Martens knows that asking a fee for an interview is a polite-yet-condescending way to say “F**k you” to an interview request – as well, in Martens case, as an admission that she doesn’t pack the gear to a point anywhere but an echo chamber where the media is painting her toenails.

The truth remains:

• I invite any significant Twin Cities gun control activist to appear on my program, at a time of their choice.
• I challenge any Minnesota gun control activist, “gun safety” leader or lobbyist, or anti-gun politician to a public debate, on neutral turf, with an audience, with mutuall-agreed rules.  I keep challenging them; their continued avoidance simply means none of them is up to defending the indefensible.
• Heather Martens has never, not once, said or written a single, substantial, factual thing about the gun issue.

This isn’t over.

Back during one of the previous crime waves in gun-hostile Minneapolis and Saint Paul, the legislature – with the help of gun rights groups – passed a pretty significant tool for prosecutors to use against gun crimes; an up-charge for committing a crime with a firerarm, with a mandatory five year sentence.

In a subsequent crime wave, it was noted that the Ramsey County attorney at the time, the useless Susan Gaertner, had pled the upcharge out in every single case in which it was offered.

We also noted, in relation to last summer’s shooting of an armed robber by a citizen with a gun in Saint Paul, that the Ramsey County Attorney’s office had declined to use the statute to charge Laurentai Broadbent’s accomplices.

Now, MPR – in a piece by Brandt Williams – notes that  it’s a statewide trend; it’s the exception rather than the rule that prosecutors use the upcharge for gun crimes. MPR notes that the sentence is applied in only 42 percent of applicable crimes.

I’m going to speculate, here; those 42 percent come disproportionally from Greater Minnesota, most likely districts with conservative majorities or pluralities.

I’m going to try to find the numbers involved, and see if there is some sort of geographic correlation to this discrepancy.

JoeDoakes from Como Park notes the same thing I did yesterday:

Global warming alarmists lie with statistics to panic the public, hoping they’ll react in fear instead of reason.

This article from Powerline explains how to make a chart look scary by changing the scale.

I think gun controllers do it, too. I’ll look for examples.

Joe Doakes

You can pretty much name the issue:  “war on women”; “Obamacare will lower the deficit”; Obama has added less to the debt than any president since the War; more gun laws equal less crime; the science is settled.

The Big Lie is a key part of the Democrat Party’s approach; to make up an alternate reality for their low-information base, without fear of being “fact-checked” by a media that is their PR agency Praetorian Guard.

As we noted earlier in the week, the left is just dying to get the NRA out of its way.

And they have been since I started following this issue – in probably 1980.

It seems that lately, the left has taken to a three-tiered strategy for fighting the Second Amendment Human Rights movement:

1. Lie About Everything.  Everyone from the President to the hapless Heather Martens, and the entire media class in between, has spent the past couple of years relentlessly churning out easily-debunked lies; no, Mr. President, we’re not the most violent nation in the world, and states with tight gun laws aren’t safer.  And it seems to be working – while violent crime in general and gun crime in particular has plummeted over the past 20 years, most people don’t know it.
2. Refuse To Engage the Second Amendment Human Rights Movement Directly:  They always lose in open, head-to-head debates based on facts.  Always.  There has never in history been an exception, and there never will be.
3. Appeal to Magic:  The NRA is going to go away!   Someday!  You just gotta believe!

This blog has spent nearly a decade and a half engaging points 1 and 2.  Today, it’s all about the 3.

The National Boogeyman Association:  As I pointed out earlier in the week, the NRA is both vital and irrelevant; while it’s a juggernaut at federal lobbying, it’s mostly a bystanding helper at the state level, where most of the actual legislation happens.   But the left – being a fear-based institution – needs a big, centralized boogeyman.  And for this, the NRA serves their purposes.

And let’s be frank; organizations come and go (although the NRA is, and remains at, a peak of numbers and power).

 Adam Winkler – a UCLA law prof who’s popped up on this blog before, and not as an idiot – wrote an op-ed in the WaPo (reprinted earlier this week in the Strib, Read It And Weep:  The NRA Will Fall.

Before I respond, let me establish something.

Baselines:  When I first started covering the battle for Second Amendment human rights, about 30 years ago, the gun grabber movement used to wave around a Gallup poll showing that 85% of the American people favored gun control.  While that number dropped sharply as the poll got into specifics (even then, near the nadir of the Second Amendment’s fortunes), it showed where The People were at regarding our right to self-defense.

But thirty years later, things have changed; a distinct majority support the right to keep and bear arms.

All by way of saying – peoples’ attitudes change over time.

Changes:  I won’t quote extensively from Winkler’s piece – which is based on the idea that the NRA, and the Second Amendment movement, are doomed by demographics; that Latinos, African-Americans, urbanites and women are much less supportive of the Second Amendment and the NRA than rural white males.

On the one hand?  That may be true – today.  Just as it was true of 85% of the people – thirty years ago.  Attitudes change.  Are they changing for or against the NRA and the Second Amendment?  All evidence is anecdotal; the fact that Minnesota has well over twice as many carry permittees today as were ever forecast before the passage of “Shall Issue” reform might be a hint that the swing might actually be in the NRA’s favor.

Are Latinos more favorable to gun control?  Perhaps.  But Latinos aren’t a monolithic bloc; while Latinos in general vote Democrat, those who’ve been in the US longer than 2-3 generations are much more likely to vote GOP.

Asians, Winkler notes, support gun control – but again, they’re hardly monolithic; Koreans and H’mong are actually fairly likely to be shooters (if not “NRA supporters”).

Women tend to be pro-gun-control. They are also the fastest-growing group of shooters in America today.

How will these changes shake out over two decades?  Will policy be dragged to the left, reflecting these minorities’ left-leaning politics?  Or will they, too, evolve?

I know what I’m working toward.

(Let’s also not forget that most of the anti-gun minorities live in states like California, New York and Illinois, that are already relatively hostile to gun ownership).

Omens:  But let’s say Winkler is right; that minorities, new Americans, women and urbanites’ current attitudes will stay static over time.   It is a fact – noted by the estimable Kevin Williamson – that many of our minorities have vastly different perspectives on the concept of risk and freedom than white, middle class Americans do.

So if New Americans and minorities-who-will-one-day-be-the-majority don’t support the Second Amendment, is that going to be a problem for the NRA?

Who the hell cares?  It’s going to be a problem for the whole idea of “America” as a place built on the ideal of freedom.  And by “freedom”, we mean the traditional American founding interpretation – life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, protection of private property, freedom of speech, conscience, religion, press, assembly, keeping and bearing arms, security in your home, trial by jury with representation, equality before the law, the whole shebang – as opposed to the “freedoms” the Democrat party is pushing these days; the “freedom” from consequences, the “freedom” to force other people to make you free of want, the “freedom” to have government force others to give you stuff at gunpoint and enforce an arbitrary, politically-motivated concept of “fairness”; the freedom to abort your fetus and wave your privates around in public.

If the Second Amendment collapses because a majority of “Americans” don’t understand what it is to be “American” or what “America”, indeed, is, then the demise of the NRA will be the least of our problems, because there will be nothing to prevent the rest of the Constitution, and the freedoms it ostensibly guarantees, from being shredded much, much more comprehensively than it already is.

Many thanks to Dr. John Lott – partly for his piece in National Review yesterday expanding on the work that is rapidly ripping the guts out of the left’s meme that “a good guy with a gun” doesn’t save lives and that gun free zones are anything but safe-criminal areas…:

But the deterrent and life-saving effects of concealed-handgun laws on mass public shootings aren’t just anecdotal. Bill Landes of the University of Chicago and I gathered data on mass public shootings from 1977 to 1999. We studied 13 different types of gun-control laws as well as the impact of law enforcement, but the only law that had a statistically significant impact on mass public shootings was the passage of right-to-carry laws. Right-to-carry laws reduced both the frequency and the severity of mass public shootings; and to the extent to which mass shootings still occurred, they took place in those tiny areas in the states where permitted concealed handguns were not allowed.

…and partly for giving me a solid half-dozen more cases of “good guys with guns” that have interrupted mass shootings, to add to this blog’s rapidly-expanding “Good Guy or Gal With A Gun” page.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

On October 14, Dayton told people in St. Cloud that Democrats are dead-set on transforming Minnesota into a Third World state and if White people don’t like it, they should leave. The governor explicitly endorsed White Flight as a solution to racial tension. 

At last we can answer the perennial question: “Why are so many talented people leaving Minnesota?” Because you told us to. Can’t wait for real estate values to come back enough that I can afford to take him up on it. 

Joe Doakes

Well, to be fair, his ancestors moved from Dayton’s Bluff to Kenwood…

I’ll admit up front; I don’t know all the facts of this case.

And I doubt we’ll ever really find them out.  This case has been jammed forcibly onto the radars of pretty much every person in the Twin Cities media and pundocracy for quite some time now, by parties – family law attorneys – who appear to be as inept as Heather Martens when it comes to shaping public opinion.

And so I’ll admit that I don’t know everything one needs to know about the case.

But if the facts are as the father has presented them (and given the exceedingly erratic behavior of the mother throughout this case, and, in my frank opinion, the retention of Michelle MacDonald as counsel, I’m inclined to believe the father) and the defendant brainwashed the children against the father?

If that’s the case?  If there’s ever been a case to justify waterboarding someone, this is it.

Any parent who brainwashes their children against their other parent has to look waaaaay up to see Nazi war criminals.  While I oppose the death penalty on principle, I think any parent who brainwashes and kidnaps the kids to deprive an otherwise-capable parent of access to their children deserves a death that violates the entire Bill of Rights, and maybe the ISIS Constitution too.

The English language has no word dark and vile enough to describe my hatred for such people.

After reading Heather Martens’ challenge in the Strib yesterday, I wrote this letter to the Editor.

And since there’s not a chance in hell the Strib will ever print it, I’ll run it here, too:

In her October 19 reply to DJ Tice’s October 11 editorial, Heather Martens says that the Star/Tribune should “do their homework, force the gun lobby and its friends to defend their indefensible opposition to important new policies”

On behalf of my many friends and colleagues in the Second Amendment human rights movement, I accept the challenge! I urge the Star/Tribune to set up a debate between Ms. Martens and her colleagues and members of the “gun lobby”, on neutral ground, on camera and on the record, with mutually-agreed-upon rules.

As Ms. Martens notes, it would be an essential act of journalism, and it’d part of that “conversation about guns” that everyone is always asking for.

If not us (and Ms. Martens), who? If not now, when?

I welcome this paper’s initiative in helping get this vital debate organized.

Please contact me; I’ll be happy to help set things up.

Mitch Berg
Saint Paul

What the heck – it was worth a try, for laughs.

The City of Cambridge is proposing making harming a cop a “hate crime”.

It’s a hot-button issue right now, both nationally in the wake of a series of politically charged police-killings (against a backdrop of a generally very safe year for police) and the killing of a rural Minnesota sheriff’s deputy over this past weekend.

It’s a dumb idea, and not just because “hate crime” legislation is misguided.

Police have a dangerous job; not the most dangerous job, but why split hairs?

But right now, any sort of attack against a police officer – from lethal force to harsh words – is already accompanied by harsh upcharges and sentence enhancements.  If the thought of “life without parole” doesn’t deter a potential cop-killer, why would “life without parole and a hate crime conviction?”

This morning, I did something that has become almost as rote and perfunctory as showing that Nick Coleman is wrong about…well, anything; I fisked a Heather Martens op-ed.   It’s one of many, many such efforts, and I’m sure it won’t be the last.

But buried at the very, very bottom of the op-ed was something…different.

And Finally, Something Remotely True, And Historic!  We may have witnessed some history, here – Heather Martens closes out with something that is both substantial and true.

Although not in the way she might think:

Journalists ought to do their homework,

Yes.  If they did, they’d cut Heather Martens off from any further attention.   I’ve built a long history on this blog, over more than a decade, now, of showing you something that’s almost up to the level of a Berg’s Law; that Martens has never, not once, said a substantial, true, original thing about Gun Rights or gun issues.

But she’s finally said something that I agree with wholeheartedly.  And so should every shooter:  she wants the media to…

…force the gun lobby and its friends to defend their indefensible opposition to important new policies, and stop misdirecting the conversation by setting up straw men to destroy.

I agree!  It’s time for Heather Martens and the Strib to get to the facts [1]!

So on behalf of my friends in Minnesota’s gun rights movement, I accept Heather’s challenge; to set up a debate between Heather Martens and any gun-grabber activists or lobbyists she wants to bring along, and a couple of us from the Gun Lobby:  perhaps Joe Olson, Andrew Rothman, Bryan Strawser and/or myself.

There, the journalists and activists can force us to defend the policies we support, live on camera!  Allow both sides to question, and cross-question, each other, live and without a net!

Heather Martens; for all of the flak I’ve given you over the past decade and change, this is your brilliant, shining moment.

This is too important to skip!

Heather Martens:  Challenge Accepted!

PS:  Naturally, we’ll charge admission, and donate the proceeds to a mutually agreed-upon charity.

(more…)

Just because Michael Bloomberg and all his money have decided to put Heather Martens on the sidelines in Minnesota’s Second Amendment “debate” doesn’t mean that the Twin Cities media isn’t dutifully lining up to give her a smooch on the hindquarters; she had an op-ed in the Strib on Sunday, in reply to an editorial by the Strib’s DJ Tice – one of few voices of relative reason on the Strib’s board.

Before we start, let’s remember the central fact about Heather Martens:

Heather’s Law:  It’s almost up to the level of a Berg’s Law, although Berg’s laws relate to universal behavior; perhaps Martens’ behavior is universal among gun-grabbers. The Berg’s Law committee will consider this during its next meeting.

At any rate; the central thing to remember about Heather Martens is this:

Heather Martens has never, not once, uttered or written a substantial, true, original statement about guns, gun rights, gun owners or gun law.

She may have said some true things about guns – but nothing she thought of herself (things like “8,000 people were killed by firearms” are true, but they’re other peoples’ stats).  She may have some some substantial or true things in her life – but not about guns or gun laws or even “gun safety”.

Her defenders – and there are no doubt a few people among the couple dozen who know she exists who aren’t Human Rights supporters who routinely eat her lunch – may try to dispute this – but I have yet to meet anyone up to the challenge of contesting it with me, least of all Ms. Martens.

But while most journalists would steer forever clear of a “source” that routinely, constantly, forever provides them with false, even risible, information, the Twin Cities media still beats a path to her door – often with comical results.

Lie #1:  Anyway, Martens writes in the Strib:

For two decades, the gun lobby has controlled the national policy of weakening U.S. gun laws. Its solutions haven’t worked. In the U.S., we have 88 gun deaths a day, most of them suicides.

Now, Martens is a perfectly fine human being, but when it comes to Second Amendment policy, she is a vapid trifle – which wouldn’t matter if she ever told the truth, or were even accurate.

But even Martens knows that over the two decades she mentions, gun crime has dropped by half – faster still in places with more “liberal” gun laws.

What makes this troubling is that the Gun Grabber movement seems to have switched to a “Lie About Everything And Hope The Low-Info Voter Buys It” strategy.

Lie #2:  Next, Martens writes:

Guns are poised to surpass car crashes as a cause of death.

Well, no.   They’re not, except if you read the stats in the most ludicrously tortured way possible.

Not Quite A Lie; Just Dumb:  Martens continues:

Yet Tice holds proposed gun violence prevention policies to a ridiculously high standard: Will they stop all gun deaths?

Given that the right to keep and bear arms is on par with freedom of speech, religion, press, assembly, security in your home, trial by jury and all the rest, the standard isn’t ridiculously high.

But since Martens wants to romp and play in the world of ethics:

A public-health-based standard asks instead: Does the policy measurably reduce gun death and injury?

Well, now we’re onto something.  Voilá – the policies pushed by gun rights supporters have helped reduce the gun death and injury rate by almost half, and they’re still dropping (outside certain cities paralyzed by pathologies of Democrat party governance).

If Martens is interested in “public health”, that would seem to be important, right?

Lies 3 and 4:  Onward:

Leading public-health expert Daniel Webster of Johns Hopkins University provides careful analysis based on research.

Well, no; as a generation of Second Amendment activists have shown, he crudely hammers public health fact into a form that fits a political agenda.

But let’s focus, here:

In a TEDMED talk, he aptly compares effective gun polices to the public-health-based campaign that dramatically reduced drunken-driving deaths in America without banning cars.

Webster notes three basic principles common to preventing both types of deaths:

1) Limiting access for inappropriate users: Just as a history of drunken driving can keep alcohol abusers off the road, effective gun policies prohibit access to guns by those with a history of violent or reckless behavior. Requiring a background check on every gun purchase stops prohibited buyers at the point of sale. Since the passage of the Brady Background Check law, 2.4 million sales to prohibited buyers have been stopped.

Some prohibited buyers – most notably Adam Lanza – have been stopped.  Many more perfectly legitimate buyers have come up with false positives.  But the beef comes next:

But gun-show loopholes and unregulated Internet sales let too many people legally avoid a background check.

And there are two lies.

First;  go to a gun show.  Try to buy a gun.  You’ll be asked for your carry permit, or (in Minnesota) your “permit to purchase”, or run through the NICS database that Martens mentions approvingly above.  You don’t buy guns at gun shows without a background check anymore without something indicating you’re clean.

Second?  “Internet Sales” – the legal ones – go through a federally licensed firearms dealer.  Where you take – taa daaaaa! – a NICS check!

Lie #5:    She continues:

2) Holding users and sellers accountable: Accountability for drunken drivers and those who sell alcohol to prohibited buyers has been a key to success. Gun dealers, too, should be held accountable for unsafe practices…The gun lobby, for all its disingenuous bluster about “enforcing existing laws,” has induced Congress to protect reckless gun dealers from lawsuits,

Well, no.  Congress has protected legitimate businesses from frivolous lawsuits designed to drive the firearms industry out of business through endless frivolous litigation. And it’s worked.  Much to Heather Martens’ disingenuous chagrin.

Not Technically A Lie – But Just Plain Wrong:  Martens decides to wax technical – or, more likely, copy and paste a Violence Policy Center chanting point:

3) Incorporating new technologies: For cars, it was air bags and seat belts. For guns, it is smart-gun technology (guns that can recognize their authorized user and operate only for them) and microstamping of bullets to identify crime guns.

Tell you what:  I’ll use a “smart gun” when the cops and military use them.

Or to put it in terms Martens might understand?  I’ll use a “smart gun” when she allows her daughter to be operated on using a procedure that is both highly experimental that that absolutely no reputable surgeons support.

Lies #6-9 – And They’re Dumb Ones: Martens turns the corner for what passes for her big finish:

Change is coming. Since Sandy Hook, community support for gun violence prevention has grown exponentially.

No, it hasn’t.

A recent Quinnipiac poll found a 93 percent national support rate for background checks before all gun sales.

It was a vague question that not only ignores the fact that something like 98% of all legal gun sales already have background checks, but counts on the survey-taker not knowing it.

It reminds me of the survey question gun-grabbers used to throw about; “85% of Americans favor gun control”.  But when you got into suggesting specific types of gun control, that “support” fell like a greased brick.  In the early eighties, at the height of the gun control movement.  Like all such questions, when you get into specifics, and start relying on actual information, that “Support” drops fast.

The historically underfunded gun violence prevention movement has attracted millions of dollars in new resources and thousands of newly engaged activists.

The gun control movement has always had liberals with deep pockets – including Michael Bloomberg, who could buy the NRA with pocket change.

What it doesn’t have is small donors.

Per-household gun ownership is declining,

(Blink blink blink)

driving the gun lobby to increasingly extremist positions.

Like, apparently, simultaneously noting the drop in violent crime rates and electing an extreme gun-grabber president who has brought more people into the shooting sports than any previous President has.

We have begun winning at the state level — most recently in Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Washington, New York and Oregon, where background check laws have been strengthened without banning guns.

And crime has done…what?

But Wait:  There has been a disburbance in the force.

Heather Martens not only said something true and factual – but she had a good idea!

Coming at noon today.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

A Facebook friend told me she would vote Democrat because Jesus would support most of their platform. I suppose it’s a matter of interpretation.

See, when Jesus said “Suffer the little children to come unto me,” that was not a request to let a bunch of scruffy urchins sit by him as he preached (stupid disciples were so literal); what he meant was “send Me your children when I get back to Heaven” or more succinctly “kill the children.” Plainly, that’s Divine endorsement of taxpayer funded abortion on demand, a key plank in the Democrat platform. He didn’t specifically mention carving up dead children’s corpses to sell their body parts, but presumably that’s covered by an emanation of the penumbra of actions He approved.

And when He told His disciples to sell all they had to give to the poor, He didn’t mean they should sacrifice by digging into their own pockets, He meant politicians should take Other People’s Money out of those other people’s pockets to give to the poor. Redistribution of wealth to reduce income inequality is another Democrat ideal.

Finally, the story of the Good Samaritan is not about one stranger helping another, it’s a lesson about affordable health care. How much clearer could Jesus be: God approves the Obama-care individual mandate?

You know, she might be onto something. If I vote Democrat, I not only get to be on the winning side of a Minnesota election for once, my salvation is also assured, all without lifting a finger. Tempting.

Joe Doakes.

Amd the whole Lowes and fishes thing? That’s right – supports and was spending without regard to the source…

For over two months, the Isonzo river had been blissfully quiet along the border of Italy and the Austro-Hungarian Empire.  Little fighting echoed through the peaks of Mount San Michele or valleys of the Banjšice Plateau.  Following Italy’s exuberant entry into the Great War the previous spring, there had been little progress in the realization of “Italia irredenta” as both sides had exhausted themselves by August of 1915.  Italy’s second major offensive of the war at Isonzo had halted just months earlier for literally running out of ammunition.

Supplies would not be the hurdle for Italy on October 18. 1915.  1,200 artillery pieces and 19 divisions worth of men would hurl themselves against the rugged cliffs and the Dual Monarchy’s trenches in the third of twelve eventual attempts to break the Austrian line.  For the Italian soldiers who were lead forward with cries of “Avanti!“, Isonzo would become less a war than a battle of endurance – against the elements, and Italian generalship.

—

Italian light infantry of the 1st Alpini Regiment on Monte Nero, during the Isonzo campaigns

There may not have been a more difficult place on the planet to conduct a major offensive than the Isonzo river valley.    (more…)

My weekend in ND.

South Washington Citizens for Progress  and Andrea Mayer-Bruestle for School Board. 

Andy Aplikowski for Senate

And here’s today’s music playlist.

Today, the Northern Alliance Radio Network – America’s first grass-roots talk radio show – is on the air! I will be on live from 1-3PM today!

Today on the show,

• Andrea Mayer-Bruestle and Sue Richardson will join me to talk about the shenanigans in the Woodbury school bond levy referendum.
• SD35 candidate Andy Aplikowski will be joining us.

Don’t forget – King Banaian is on from 9-11AM on AM1570, and Brad Carlson has “The Closer” edition of the NARN Sundays from 1-3PM.

So tune in the Northern Alliance! You have so many options:

• AM1280 in the Metro
• Streaming at AM1280’s Website
• Streaming on IHeartRadio
• On Twitter (the Volume 2 show will use hashtag #narn2)
• Via my UStream video and chat channel.
• Send us an SMS text message – 651-243-0390
• Good ol’ telephone – 651-289-4488
• Podcasts are now available; for my show and for Brad’s
• And make sure you fan us on our new Facebook page!

Join us!