…is being treated as a sign of how very out-of-touch and cripplingly politically-correct Chicago, and the city’s airport authority, are:  airport cops – who are unarmed at O’Hare and Midway Airports – are being instructed to scamper away and hide in the event of a mass shooting at either airport:

“If evacuation is not possible, you should find a place to hide where the active shooter is less likely to find you. Block entry to your hiding place and lock the door,” but Matt Brandon, secretary-treasurer of the airport officers union, told CNN they have serious issues with the protocol.

“These men and women are sent to the Chicago police academy, and trained as police officers, and being a former police officer, I know your first instinct is to go to the problem — not run away from the problem.”

On the other hand?  I think every cop in America should be given the opportunity to contemplate facing a mass shooting with nothing but their wits and charm…

…well, no.  Not every cop in America.

Just every urban police chief.

Every urban police chief – the ones the gun grabbers always cite as supporting gun control – should be inveighed spend some time in a “gun free zone” as a “gun-free” person.  Not as a Blue Noble with the power of life and death.  No – just like every other schlub.

Failing that, though?  Unarmed cops at two of the major airports in one of the biggest “gun-free” cities / crime cesspools in the country?

Just brilliant.

The Swiss – a nation that long ago learned the hard way that yearning for peace isn’t enough, and sometimes you have to defend it – are arming themselves, and doing it fast:

Applications for gun permits in Switzerland increased by 20% between 2014 and 2015, according to a survey conducted in 12 cantons by Swiss public television, SRF.
The survey, published on Wednesday, showed that in the 12 (out of 26) cantons surveyed, the Swiss are increasingly interested in purchasing pistols, rifles and other firearms for private use.

The greatest increase – more than 70% – was measured in canton Vaud, with more than 4,200 applications in 2015, compared with 2,427 in 2014.

There is a general climate of uncertainty and an increased fear of intruders, said Pierre-Olivier Gaudard, head of crime prevention for canton Vaud.

But Martin Boess, director of Swiss crime prevention, warned against the false sense of security that guns bring.

“When there are more guns in circulation, there is a greater danger for society,” he said in an interview on the 10 vor 10 news programme. “That’s shown by experience in places like the United States. When there are more guns, there are more accidents with guns.”

Why?  Because the head of the Swiss Army (their equivalent to the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) is warning that the Swiss military, after two decades of politically-motivated drawdowns, is not going to be sufficient in the event of an asymmetric war (the quote starts with a Google translation, fine-tuned via my own German):

[General André] Blattmann writes, the situation’s risks are considerable: The terrorist threat is rising, asymmetrical wars threaten the peace in the world. In addition, there is an economic crisis. Even in the big surge of refugees and migrants looks like a danger to Blattmann.

Blattmann: “Social unrest can not be ruled out”, the vocabulary in public discourse will “dangerously aggressive”: “. The mixture is increasingly unsavory” .

Blattmann sees the basis of Swiss prosperity, “has been once again called into question.” He recalls the situation before and during the two world wars in the last century and advises the Swiss to arm themselves.

Swiss politicians responded with incomprehension at the army chief’s statement, and said his warnings are exaggerated.

The Swiss Armed Forces held maneuvers many years ago , focused on social unrest in Europe. Even the Economist warned [about the potential for trouble for the Swiss] already some time ago, before [the current] social tensions.

The Swiss are among the most well-armed people in the world, especially Europe.  Eight million Swiss own 2.5 million guns – about half of which are service weapons related to the Swiss “national service”, from which Israel borrowed its own military model.

When you tell a gun-grabber that the Swiss – among the most peaceful, stable nations on earth – are heavily armed, and that most Swiss households have at least one selective-fire assault rifle in the closet, they’ll usually frump “that doesn’t count – those are military weapons!”.  They’re wrong on three counts.

For starters – there are still well over a million purely civilian weapons!

Second – so the gun in the closet is military.  So what?  You think that would stop a criminal, all by itself?  No – Switzerland adds a pretty significant sentencing enhancement for using a military gun for non-military purposes (even opening one’s “emergency” ammo container, kept with the serviceman’s rifle and uniform at home, is a criminal offense).  So go figure – sentencing prevents crime! Case in point; when a bunch of Swiss yahoos staged a re-enactment of Abu Ghraib, they went to jail – for using their service weapons in the re-enactment.

Third?  After a Swiss citizen completes their service in the reserve, they are eligible to purchase their longtime personal weapon for a fairly nominal price.

That means for servicepeople in the “baby boom” years, a SIG “StG 57” – AKA the “Rolls Royce of battle rifles”.

The SIG Sturmgewehr 57 – standard rifle of the Swiss military from the late fifties to the mid-nineties.

A twelve-pound beast of a rifle, capable of firing the full-powered 7.5mm Swiss round, fully-or semi-automatic, it still serves as a “designated marksman’s weapon” in the Swiss Army.  The semi-auto only civilian version ran for $5,000 a pop on the US civilian market, back when they were obtainable at all.   Swiss reservists of a certain age can have their long-time service weapons (with semi-auto only actions installed) for a couple hundred bucks – less than the price of an American video-game console.

The young’uns?  They get the pretty spiffy, thoroughly-modern SIG 550s, in the NATO-standard 5.56mm caliber.

The SIG 550.

It’s basically a Swiss version of the M16/AR15, although it uses a much more reliable gas-piston operating system borrowed from the AK47.    You can find ’em in the US; if you find ’em under $1,800, it’s a bargain.   Swiss vets get theirs for less than the price of a laptop computer.

If the vet is an officer or senior NCO?

The SIG 220.

The SIG220 service pistol, one of the most coveted handguns in America, is the pistola franca of the Swiss armed forces.  A Swiss service veteran can keep their 220 for a couple hundred bucks.  When they get down to $1,000 in the US, people go crazy.

The Swiss Shooting Sports Federation – which is sort of like the NRA, but it also sells ammo and runs shooting ranges – has 175,000 members.  That’s  a higher percentage of the Swiss population than the NRA has in the US; in proportion to population, it’s the equivalent of seven million Americans going to the range and buying ammo.

Oh, yeah – and the Swiss firearm murder rate is about one quarter of the murder rate.

In Minnesota.

Pardon the gearhead tangent.

Now – General Blattman may be right, and he may be wrong.  I have a hunch Switzerland will be the last place in Europe ISIS tries its luck.

Remember when this was a representative Republic?

Either do the elites who, under Obama, have pretty well taken over:

Under President Obama, rule by decree has become commonplace, with federal edicts dictating policies on everything from immigration and labor laws to climate change. No modern leader since Nixon has been so bold in trying to consolidate power. But the current president is also building on a trend: Since 1910 the federal government has doubled its share of government spending to 60 percent. Its share of GDP has now grown to the highest level since World War II.

Change!

 Today climate change has become the killer app for expanding state control, for example, helping Jerry Brown find  his inner Duce. But the authoritarian urge is hardly limited to climate-related issues. It can be seen on college campuses, where uniformity of belief is increasingly mandated. In Europe, the other democratic bastion, the continental bureaucracy now controls ever more of daily life on the continent. You don’t want thousands of Syrian refugees in your town, but the EU knows better. You will take them and like it, or be labeled a racist.

Political correctness is to the new authoritarians what rocks through the window were for the Nazis.

Already the disconnect between the hoi polloi and the new bureaucratic master race has spawned a powerful blowback, as evidenced by the rise of rightist, even quasi-fascist parties throughout the old continent. The people at the top—including much of the business leadership—may like the idea of a central European master-state, but support for the EU is at record low. Increasingly Europeans want, at the very least, to dial down the centralization and bring back some control to the local level, and something of the primacy of traditional cultures and what are still perceived  as “European values.”

Read the whole thing.  This will be a big subject on Saturday’s show.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

If they are here as refugees, that means when the crisis is over, they go back.  So go.
joe doakes

Or at least do like every other group of immigrants – Brits, Swedes, Germans, Poles, Italians, Vietnamese, H’mong, Eritreans, Ethiopans – before you has done, and socially and economically assimilate, already.

Reading the President’s “sweeping” new “gun regulations”, it occurs to me – I was right.

The “war on guns” is one of this electoral season’s candidates for “war on women”; it’s an attempt to get Democrat, especially Black, voters, to come out for an election where there won’t be The First Black President Ever sending tingles up peoples’ legs, and vote for a geriatric white woman.   If Obama, or any president, were serious about violence, he’d send the National Guard into Saint Louis, Baltimore, Oakland, Newark, Camden…

It is, like everything Obama has ever done, a lot of big talk combined with a few little nuggets of unconstitutional abuse of power.

With the help of our friends at the Minnesota Gun Owners Civil Rights Alliance, rather than read the bill, let’s just sort it out.

You’re Being Redundant, Again, All Over:  Restating things that are currently law, including:

• Background checks
• Calling for enforcement of existing federal gun laws; Obama’s prosecutions are down 30% over Dubya’s.
• Ensuring dealers notify law enforcement if guns are stolen.
• Denying the mentally ill the right to keep and bear arms, with due process, (although the Administration seems to want to remove due process from this)
• Asking communities to keep guns out of the wrong hands.  Paging Rahm Emanuel.  And Eric Holder.
• Ensuring dealers have federal licenses, and have criminal penalties for not complying with the rules
• Watching for large numbers of sales, in conjunction with other factors. This already happens.
• Ensure criminal data is forwarded to the NICS database from the states completely and promptly.

Talk, Talk, Talk:  Stuff the President can ask for, but needs Congressional approval and, most of all, funding:

• Funding for 200 new Keystone Kops.  Er, ATF agents.  Tomayto, tomahto.
• 500 million in mental health funding.
• Mining Social Security information for info about mental health.
• Funding for “Smart guns”.  Good luck with that.

Peace And Joy Through Memos:  Calls for sternly worded memos and announcements, including:

• Demanding the AGO write a letter to the states about coughing up mental health info
• Telling the AGO to write a memo about domestic violence

Even A Blind Squirrel Can Find A Nut:  There are a few things buried in the proposal that aren’t actually stupid:

• Overhauling the background check system to make it open 24/7, and cut down on bottlenecks.  This is especially important if Obama insists on constantly launching waves of panic-buying.
• Investigating illegal online trafficking in guns.  Presumably excluding Eric Holder.  But still.
• Defining responsibility for reporting thefts at the manufacturer/carrier/dealer level (might be good, provided it doesn’t merely serve as the basis for endless litigation)
• Help for the mentally-ill.

Have You Really Thought About This?:  The President mentioons “removing the stigma” of mental illness – in the same metaphorical breath as he demands taking guns from people at slightest sign of it.

Would You Like Hobnails With Those Boots?:  These are proposals that are completely unacceptable, and pretty much stupid to boot, including:

• If the President really is trying to put firearms trusts in the hands of politicized local cops, this will be a big problem.
• Denying guns to people whose finances are being a managed by Social Security, for no other reason.

You First, Barry:  Things like:

• “Smart” guns”.  I’ll use them, Mr. President, when your Secret Service detail does.
  • Not to mention the police, to say nothing of the military.  They won’t.  Either will I.

While the Democrats love to prate and gabble about “gun violence”, they stay rigorously clear on the one “gun safety” measure that has a proven record of, y’know, reducing gun crime – prosecuting criminals who use guns.

The federal legal framework for going after gun criminals has existed for a long, long time – but different administrations, shall we say, approach the issue with different degrees of vigor:

Hinderaker:

The Clinton administration talked a good game on guns–remember the “assault weapons” ban?–but when it came to actual law enforcement, its record was horrendous. (Someone should mention that to Hillary.) Things shaped up considerably under the Bush administration, which achieved record levels of gun-crime-related convictions. But when Barack Obama became president and Eric Holder took over the Department of Justice, enforcement went straight downhill. Over the course of the Obama administration, it has only gotten worse. Today, gun convictions are down 35% since the Bush administration peak in 2005 and 2006. Obama and Holder had an agenda, but it wasn’t law enforcement.

So on guns, as with regard to most other issues, Barack Obama is all talk. He isn’t interested in solving problems, he is just seeking political advantage. His corrupt administration can’t end soon enough.

Unless, of course, it’s replaced by something worse.

…on John Hinderaker’s new career move.

To: Governor Dayton

From: Mitch Berg, Irascible Peasant

Re:  Tomorrow’s Faux Pas, Today.

Governor,

You should be getting used to the fact that your most “progressive” left of center advisers routinely lead you into policy statements that sound disconnected from reality. I say “should” be learning it; clearly you have not yet. Because your latest announcement on second amendment issues – “no-fly, no buy”, barring people who are on the federal “no fly” list from buying guns – is quite clearly an attempt to ramp up the left’s turnout in the upcoming election.

But – as we on the right, and among the second amendment Human Rights movement told you – it’s unconstitutional.

You should be getting used to this by now; they’re wrong, we are right. Every time. No exceptions.

Are we detecting a pattern, yet?

That is all.

(PS:  But by all means, keep going.  The right needs all the rallying points it can get).

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Good article on the War on Cash, but I suspect the most important motive is if Liberals can ban cash, they can control what you buy and when you buy it.  Want to buy bullets or donate to the Republicans?  Sorry, cash card not working.

Once the government gets that control, it never ends.  Trying to buy Twinkies at Cub?  Sorry, the items you scanned to purchase are not on the approved list maintained by your Health Care Provider and forwarded to the IRS to demonstrate compliance with Obamacare.  So we’ve automatically deducted $10 from your bank account as a surtax to off-set your Attempted Weight-Loss Sabotage.

Joe Doakes

Too bad we The People can’t give government a debit card.

Yet another pedestrian has been killed along the Rail Of Death Line from downtown Minneapolis to the Airport.  I’ll urge prayers for his family and the people in his life.

Map borrowed from “iridetheharlemline.com”. I do not ride the Harlem line, but it’s one of the better maps of the TC rail system I’ve seen…

This follows on two more train-pedestrian accidents on the Rail of Death Line, as well as the Gore Line through Saint Paul, last month.

If It Saves Even One Life…:That brings death totals to:

• Twelve dead on the Blue Line of Death in a little over ten years.
• Three dead on the Gore Line in about 18 months.
• And – I didn’t know this at all – four deaths on the Northstar.

That’s more deaths than in every spree killing in Minnesota history – and we’re paying for it.

Minnesota doesn’t need any spree killers, Kim Norton.  We have our transit system.

Shhh.  You didn’t get it from me.

Oh, why the cloak and dagger?  Because apparently I’m revealing a state secret.  Or at least that’s how the media’s treatment of the story feels.

It’s the story of the US homicide rate over the past 120 years.  And it elaborates on the bit I wrote about here a while back – that while murder rates are down over the past twenty years by something like 50%, a rate that the media would have hailed as a miracle if it’d applied to drunk driving or cancer deaths.

But 56% of the American people had no idea – because the media made sure they had no idea.

And if they don’t know about the past twenty years, you can bet the last hundred are as opaque as the pit of Michael Moore’s soul.

The graph is based on FBI stats from 1900 to 1991 and from 1992 to 2011. 

But what else does it track with?

Why, gun control efforts, naturally:

The source of this graph is opaque (which is why I ran the first graph at the top), but the numbers generally jibe with the FBI figures.

The first major post-civil-war gun control measures – mostly aimed at immigrants and blacks – were a little over 100 years ago.  Murder spiked during our first big experiment with prohibition.  A second major surge began around the time of the 1968 “Gun Control Act” and the “War on Drugs”, and tailed off as not only the ownership but the carry of guns by civilians became ubiquitous outside “progressive” circles and Demcrat-run crime cesspools.

Correlation doesn’t equal causation, of course.

But that’s a lot of correlation.

A lot.  Of.  Correlation.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Islam teaches it’s okay to lie to support of the spread of Islam.  A lie told in support of The Objective is not wrong.

 

Liberal reporter, activists and politicians believe a lie told in support of The Narrative is not wrong; see, for example, Dan Rather’s “Fake But Accurate” report, Mattress Girl’s fake rape campaign, Black hate crime hoaxes, and data tortured to support Global Warming or the notion that Barack Obama’s economy is robust.

 

In Minnesota, cops are taught to lie to suspects, to gain a confession.  A lie told in pursuit of justice is not wrong.

 

No wonder conservatives say America is facing a “crisis of legitimacy;” the people empowered to run this country are not trustworthy.  Conversely, Liberals, Muslims and cops can’t trust us, because they assume “normal” for us is the same as “normal” for them: lying all the time.

 

What brought America to this point?  Abandonment of a nationally shared Judeo-Christian moral code.

 

How do we fix it?

 

Joe Doakes

Kim Norton soundbites via the MN Gun Owners Caucus.

Here’s the article on one-party cities I referenced.

And of course, here’s our song list for the show.

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, I’ll be talking about the new year, the old year, the presidential race, Obama’s executive orders on guns,

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!

I’m told it’s a tradition now. I can live with that.