They start sending their child shills to do “die-ins”:

About two dozen students let their actions speak for themselves afternoon at the State Capitol. They staged a die-in outside the House chamber to draw attention to their concern that not enough is being done to keep them safe in schools.

None of their bills are coming out of committee.  The people bringing tne bills know that.  The people doing the protesting – people with Urban Progressive Privilege from ages 13 to 90 – being atrociously ignorant of civics and history, don’t.

Big Left is banking that these antics will get more Urban Progressives riled up to come to the polls than Real Americans.

And if they’re right, then this nation is even more screwed than it is.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

The story of how the court can seize a person’s guns based on one quip alone is bad enough, but I have two more thoughts:
When the cops seize your guns, do they run the serial numbers to see if they’re stolen; or test-fire them and run ballistics to see if they were used in a crime? If not, why not; and if so, what happens to the value of your never-fired-new-in-the-box John Wayne Peacemaker when they fire it and who makes good on that?
Second, assume the Liberal psychological explanation is correct – gun owners are compensating for having a small penis. In that case, taking away my guns would be physiological castration. If I were a gun owner considering seeking mental health treatment but the price I’d have to pay would be castration, you can forget about it.
“But it’s for your own good.” That’s what they told the tomcat. He didn’t like it either, but he had no choice. I do. If you want to reduce the number of men killing themselves with guns, you must find an incentive for them to accept treatment. Loss of manhood is not it.
Joe Doakes

Put it another way:   even back in the seventies, psychologists (in general) knew that telling homosexual children to not act gay was profoundly psychologically damaging; telling someone “don’t be what you are” is an invite for decades of misery.

Fair enough.

“Defend myself, those who depend on me, and my community” is as we discussed the other day a primary evolutionary imperative for men, and firearms are almost always the best way to do that.  Forget about japes about penis size – those are for people who are compensating for lousy comedic chops.  Disarming someone is an attack on what evolution tells them to be.

What could go wrong?

Remember the phrase “going postal?”

It may have  faded from widespread use in recent years, but back in the eighties and nineties, it meant “someone who’d been driven over the edge to insane, explosive violence”.  The term came from a series of massacres at post offices,n in the eighties and early nineties, including one in Edmond, Oklahoma that killed fifteen (including the shooter).   In a series of incidents fro 1983 to 1995, 43 were killed and 23 were wounded in fifteen separate instances at post offices.

The US Postal Service spent years, and millions, trying to figure out what the problem was, and endeavoring to make working for the Post Office less…psychotic-break-y.  The violence has subsided below “public punch line” levels – the phrase “going postal” has largely receded as a common idiom – although it hasn’t exactly stopped.

Anyway – the nation is currently focused on school school shootings…

…well, no.  The nation is focused on school shootings that happen in middle-class suburbs, with victims who look like the children of NPR executives.  Black and brown kids being mowed down on the streets of Detroit and their living rooms in Chicago and New Orleans, shot by mundane common criminals in episodes that illustrate the utter failure of Democrat center-left socialism, not so much.

But I digress.

Many of these episodes have one thing in common.  No, it’s not guns; it’s a kid – usually a boy, usually a boy who looks like the child of an NPR executive – who was picked on, bullied, rejected, ostracized, mellow-harshed, or otherwise tormented by someone, something, or some part or parts of the whole system.  Whatever the impetus, they get in their heads the need to take…it out on their school (as at Columbine and Parkland) or someone’s school anyway.  The profile has become borderline cliche;  a not-entirely mentally stable boy (like there’s such a thing as a stable teenager), bullied or shunned or otherwise marginalized, by others or even themselves, hatches a plan to get revenge on their tormentors – which often as not means “everyone at school”.

And while it’s not always big suburban public schools – Erik Weise killed nine in and around the Red Lake Reservation school in a shooting whose 13th anniversary passed yesterday – it’d be hard to miss a correlation with shootings at schools in the ‘burbs, like Columbine and Parkland (and Sandy Hook, although Adam Lanza was just plain insane across the board), and even big amalgamated rural schools (John Jason McLaughlin, who killed two at Cold Spring/Rocori, one of the big schools created by amalgamating several rural town schools together).

It’d also be hard to miss what it’s not:   parochial schools, charter schools, schools tightly rooted in communities (civic, faith, educational or any other) big or small.

So – what is it about American middle-class schools that creates spree killers?

Doesn’t our education system have at least the same obligation to analyze itself as the Postal Service did?

Mark Conditt, the suspect in the Austin Texas Bombing Spree, blew himself up yesterday as the cops closed in.

Manley said there appeared to be no specific reasons why Conditt targeted the people who were killed or injured in the attacks. The recording, which officials won’t release while the investigation is underway, does not clearly illustrate a motive for the bombings or explain how he chose his victims.

“He does not at all mention anything about terrorism nor does he mention anything about hate,” Manley said, “but instead, it is the outcry of a very challenged young man, talking about challenges in his personal life that led him to this point.”

Berg’s 18th Law is still in effect, of course.

But if I had to hazard a guess?

• He’s in Austin
• He’s 24
• He’s smart enough to build a couple different types of bomb
• He’s depraved enough to use all that intelligence to kill random innocent people
• He left a rambling video explaining what he did

If I had to guess, he’s a Bernie Bro.

The longer the Austin cops hang on to the video, the more sure of that I”ll be.

Perhaps I’m not prominent enough a conservative for anyone to bother with censoring, but I haven’t been affected yet; my Facebook account remains untouched, my Twitter account (which I don’t use for much, as I hate Twitter with an abiding fury) hasn’t gotten messed with (other than continued stalking by a dissociative old duffer, which isn’t “Censorship” so much as “low comedy”), and generally things are OK.

Knock wood. know people like me are getting more and more rare in the world of conservative social media.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

Kid with gun in school shoots girl, shoots boy, gets shot by armed cop in school.  Shooting over.

A good guy with a gun stopped the shooting.  Armed police inside the school immediately engaged the shooter. Nobody died.

Everything we’ve been saying about ineffective gun control was proven true in the Florida school.

Everything we’ve been saying about effective crime prevention was just proven true in Maryland.

But notice the Democrat congressman instantly leaps to the same old idea – background checks.  Didn’t work in Florida, wouldn’t have worked here, but they’re the first words out of his mouth.

Joe Doakes

Seems pretty obvious.

Which hasn’t stopped some of the less-bright lights on Big Left to tell us “who are you gonna believe – the narrative, or your lying eyes?”

SCENE   Mitch BERG is checking out the savory muffins at Whole Foods when Avery LIBRELLE notices him.

LIBRELLE:  Merg!

BERG:  Er, hey, Avery.

LIBRELLE:  You’re on my home turf, here!

BERG:  I certainly am.  Just picking up a couple of…

LIBRELLE:  Conservatives are bigots,  Progressives are not…

BERG:  I’m gonna stop you right there.  A very Democrat DC councilman just blamed snowfall on the Jews.

LIBRELLE:  Well, that’s absurd.

BERG:  I know, right?

LIBRELLE:  They control the organizations that practice weather control.  To  oppress the PLO.

BERG:  Speaking of which – is it raining literal cats and dogs out there?

LIBRELLE:  Huh?  (LIBRELLE looks – which is just enough time for BERG to escape)

And SCENE

Shot:  School shooting in another gun free zone ended cold by a good guy with a gun.

Top story in the media:  strippers and snowfall.

Chaser:  Austin bomber blows self up as authorities close in.

The chief described how authorities tracked down the suspect’s vehicle to a Round Rock-area hotel. Police began following the suspect’s vehicle, and as SWAT approached, the suspect detonated a bomb in the car, Manley said.

The name of the suspect, described only as a 24-year-old white man, has not been released, pending notification of his family, Manley said.

Now, as I note in the title, Berg’s 18th Law is in full effect.

But I’m going to hazard a guess, here, that the Austin police tracked a copycat.  Going from personal delivery to Fedex?  Going from packages to tripwires?

I’m not expert – as if – but “single bomber” doesn’t pass my deeply-unqualified sniff test.  I’d be happy to be proven wrong.   FWIW, Austin’s police chief disagrees.

By the way – this news infographic about the investigation…

…should start one thinking about data privacy:

The Democrats figured it out; no more armed security for Democrat candidates or politicians:

“We’ve talked to all possible candidates and everyone has agreed. Gun violence is a huge issue in our country, and guns are the problem. So whoever runs for president as a Democrat in 2020—be it Bernie, Biden, Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, Jerry Brown, and/or whoever else throws their hat in the ring—they will steadfastly refuse to employ security teams who carry scary firearms.”

Tyler further confirmed that if a Democrat wins the White House in 2020, their first order of business will be to disarm the Secret Service. Asked how the president would then be kept safe, Tyler revealed that they plan on introducing a gun-free zone encompassing a 500-yard radius around the president at all times.

“Problem solved,” he said.

I’m so glad they conquered the hypocrisy problem.

(more…)

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails

This congressman is correct that the second amendment exists so the people can resist a tyrant. Whether trump is such a tyrant is not the point, he’s correct about the purpose of the amendment.
So why’s he a gun control advocate? What, the people will rise up and take back the country with their .38 revolvers?
If he really meant the resist tyranny comment, then he ought to be pushing to repeal the 1934 machine gun ban. Let ordinary citizens equip themselves with the same weapons as the military and let’s see how arrogant the deep state bureaucrats are.
Hey, don’t the Swiss have something like that? Everybody serves, everybody takes their service weapon home when they muster out.
Somebody ought to call him on it. Big signs: “How can we resist Tyrant Trump if you take our guns?” at every rally from now until he loses in November.
Joe Doakes

The Democrats aren’t any more serious about “Resisting Tyranny” (after they get a majority) than they are about equality.

…that the DFL, Dave Pinto, Linda Slocum, and the Dreamdicle Kids are pimping, that were already in effect in today’s Maryland school shooting:

• People under 21 can’t possess a gun in Maryland.
• Magazines over 10 rounds are banned (and appear to have been irrelevant, although Berg’s 18th Law is in effect).
• “Universal” Background checks are in full effect.
• Carry permits are rare and hard to get.

A good guy with a guh – in this case, a cop who did his job – apparently is the hero, here.

Not “commonsense gun safety reforms”.

Dear “spontaneous” demonstration participants,

I was in high school once. And I remember how little I cared about the opinions of people my parents age.

But I was blessed to of gone to high school at a time when the teacher staff at my school included a fair number of Vietnam, Korea and World War II veterans.

And one of the unmistakable lessons we got, back in my teenage years, was that “having people pay attention to your opinion is something you earn”.

One does not “earn” this by appropriating other peoples sorrow; and it’s more than a little bit ghoulish to try

Bilge like this isn’t helping. You are wrong on every factual point, and I strongly suspect you’re not smart enough to listen long enough to figure that out.

That is all..

Given the vigor with which Scandinavian countries (and those who romanticize their welfare states with all the subtlety of Swedish Chef Night at Karaoke Hut) play up the “gender equality” card, you’d think they’d have the whole “gender equity” thing figured out.

You’d be wrong.

Comparing the Nordic countries with each other, a pattern emerges: Those with more extensive welfare-state policies have fewer women on top. Iceland, which has a moderately sized welfare state, has the most women managers. Second is Sweden, which has opened up welfare services such as education, health care, and elder care for private-sector competition. Denmark, which has the highest taxes and the biggest welfare state in the modern world, has the lowest share of women in managerial positions.

The rise of the welfare state has been a double-edged sword for women’s advancement.Essentially, the rise of the welfare state has been a double-edged sword for women’s advancement. On the one hand, it has created jobs in women-dominated fields such as health care and education, and aided the labor-market entry of women by offering day care and other family-related services. On the other, the attendant high taxes have reduced the economic incentive for both parents to work full-time, and have also made it difficult for families to purchase services that alleviate household work (such as cleaning). Parental-leave policies have given women an incentive to take long breaks from working. And state monopolies in female-dominated sectors such as health care and education have limited women’s career choices.

Also worth noting – Scandinavian societies going back to the Vikings gave women rights they wouldn’t have for centuries elsewhere in the world – the rights to own land, inherit property, and file for divorce.   An astonishing level of gender equality predated the Scandinavian social state by centuries.  Not that that stops the left from claiming credit they dind’t earn.

ivvIf you’ve been readint thias blog any length of time3, you know how “unintended conse3qiuences” work.

If you are a hack social science researcher who dabbles badly in pseudo-science and fatuous wrenchings of correlation into causation, you are living in a golden age.  Even Scientific American is running your drivel, and paying for it, with a straight face.

As we see in this piece – which attributes (white) men “stockpiling” guns to…

…well, pick your threadbare feminist trope:

The short, broad-brush answer to the first part of that question is this: men, who on average possess almost twice the number of guns female owners do. But not all men. Some groups of men are much more avid gun consumers than others. The American citizen most likely to own a gun is a white male—but not just any white guy. According to a growing number of scientific studies, the kind of man who stockpiles weapons or applies for a concealed-carry license meets a very specific profile.

These are men who are anxious about their ability to protect their families, insecure about their place in the job market, and beset by racial fears. They tend to be less educated. For the most part, they don’t appear to be religious—and, suggests one study, faith seems to reduce their attachment to guns. In fact, stockpiling guns seems to be a symptom of a much deeper crisis in meaning and purpose in their lives. Taken together, these studies describe a population that is struggling to find a new story—one in which they are once again the heroes.

Of course, we’re in the post-logic era – where the last thing you should look for in Scientific Ameircan is “Science”.

Turn, instead, to actual science – the evolutionary science that so many on the left chant their fealty to when it’s time to vent their two minutes’ hate against Christian fundamentalists, but which nearly none of them supports when it comes down to the many areas where evolution kills and dresses out their sacred political cows.

American men – especially American men in the Red States – are buying guns because it fulfills the evolutionary imperative to protect what is yours, and those who depend on you – and a rational person sees that a gun is a useful tool toward that end.

Scientific American’s not going to pay for that insight, though.

…only the police have the training necessary to deal with spree killers.  You should check your right to defend yourself at the door and let the cops do the difficult work.

The problem with Snopes isn’t that they’re biased to the left (although they very well may be).

The problem with Snopes is – much like banished commenter Dog Gone – they seem to think “Big Left’s Current Cant” is interchangeable with fact.

As we see here, it just isn’t so.

Snopes.com recently fact-checked a post that we first put up in June 2015 and updated on January 7, 2016.  This became an issue for them because a story that Fox News’ Special Report that had run a couple years ago was getting circulated on Facebook after the Florida high school shooting.  They wrote: “Our conclusion is that this is accurate based on the CPRC’s definition of a mass shooting, but also extremely misleading. It uses inappropriate statistical methods to obscure the reality that mass shootings are very rare in most countries, so that when they do happen they have an outsized statistical effect.”

Watching the CPRC go on to flense Snopes’ claim is joyful thing.  Give it a read.

Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:

This pop-gun has a thumb hole stock.

That makes it an assault weapon, under the bill proposed by Democrats. Can’t be too careful.

You might think Joe’s being facetious.

If you do, you:

1. don’t remember the 1994-2004 Assault Weapons ban
2. Haven’t had kids in school in recent years.

Patricia Torres Ray’s “Kill Our Students” bill.

Join me from 1-3PM today on the NARN!

Today on the show:

• Lloyd Cheney on the anti-Muslim resolutions at some GOP conventions

Don’t forget – King Banaian is on from 9-11AM on AM1440, and Brad Carlson is  on “The Closer” edition of the NARN Sundays from 2-3PM.

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Bernie Sanders attends a fun-grab rally…

…surrounded by armed security.

Some lives are more worth defending than others.

New Prague student who joined the nationally-coordinated, Bloomberg-funded, District-supported “spontaneous walkout” over “gun violence” with a pro-2nd-Amendment sign…

…oh, do I even need to finish the sentence?

“I came out here with a poster trying to make a difference,” said Andy Dalsin, a senior.

Dalsin said principal Lonnie Seifert told him to give up a sign that read “Guns don’t kill people. People kill people” or leave the property, citing district policy.

“I stood in the back,” he said. “I didn’t try and cause a ruckus, but I was seen by the principal and he came and we had our exchange.”

The district said in a statement that “such items must be submitted to and reviewed by school administration at least 24 hours in advance.”

The whole sham “youth protest” is part of a narrative to push the perception that yoots are anti-gun in he first place.

It was never about “free speech”. It’s about conquering the culture.

UPDATE:  Should you ever bet against the depravity of Big Left’s minions?  No, you should not.

UPDATE 2:  Should you really assume any of them know the issue well enough that policy-makers – or people serious about policy in area – should take them seriously?    Again – no, you should not.

UPDATE 3;  And if you are one of the packs of students that beclowns themselves  with thuggery and violence, they’ll let you do it again to get a better photo op.

UPDATE 4:  According to reliable sources, New Prague public schools have taken down their Facebook page, and the principal is unavailable until late next week for any comment on the subject.

UPDATE 5: Failure to exercise free speech as directed will not be tolerated.

Minnesota has a miniimum wage of $9 an hour.

Minor league baseball players, working on a (very low) salary and putting in long hours, frequently earn less than that.

Saint Paul is about to phase its minimum wage up to $15 an hour.  That’s pretty much more than anyone on a Single-A team makes.

And so the Saint Paul Saints – after wheedling a stadium out of the city’s taxpayers – say they may have to shut down if they don’t get an exemption:

Noting league rules limit the baseball team’s payroll, the Saints say without the exemption they could possibly be forced to cease operations.

“We’re in a league that has a salary cap,” Saints Executive Vice President and General Manager Derek Sharrer told state lawmakers earlier this week. “So … if minimum wage and overtime laws were to impact us, then we may be in a position to not be able to abide by our league bylaws, which would force us not to be able to operate.”

The issue comes just three years after the Saints moved into their new home, CHS Field, in downtown St. Paul. Public funds contributed $51.4 million to the ballpark’s construction.

They’ll get it.  Lawmakers love sports teams.

All the businesses in Saint Paul without the same level of political clout?

Let’s just watch the implosion.

Facebook – which is unstinting about signaling its progressive virtue domestically – is being assessed some culpability in the oppression of the Rohynga minority in Burma:

A U.N. fact-finding mission has highlighted the role of social media networks, and Facebook in particular, in fueling hate speech against the Rohingya minority in Myanmar, telling the U.N. Human Rights Council this week that “incitement to violence” is “rampant” and “unchecked.”

Reuters reports that in an interim submission to the U.N. Human Rights Council, fact-finding mission chair Marzuki Darusman emphasized the “determining role” of social media networks in the conflict, which he said “substantively contributed to the level of acrimony and dissension and conflict” in Myanmar. “As far as the Myanmar situation is concerned, social media is Facebook, and Facebook is social media,” Darusman told reporters.

Granted, it’s only the UN.  And it’s a broadside against hate speech – which is applicable in this case, but Facebook will use it as further grounds to stifle conservative speech even further.

Still, it’s nice to see virtue-signallers get slapped.

SCENE:  Mitch BERG is grabbing a bag of Banh Mi at iPho on University Avenue when Avery LIBRELLE walks in behind him. 

LIBRELLE:  Merg!

BERG:  Oh… (seeks a way out, doesn’t see one) Hey.  How’s things?

LIBRELLE:  The ReThuglicons are going to get crushed in the mid-terms!

BERG:  Do tell.

LIBRELLE:  Because it looks like Conor Lamb is going to win the Pennsylvania special Congressional election.

BERG:  Ah.  So a former Marine and 2nd Amendment supporter who is a lot more like the type of people Democrats used to elect fifty years ago than anything east coast or metro Democrat party has nominated outside the Iron Range and West Virginia in decades, and who’d get doxxed into receivership or beaten into a coma if he tried to run for office in Minneapolis or Chicago or Manhattan, is your big bout of good news?

LIBRELLE:  You’re racist.

BERG:  Naturally.   (Pays for his order, then notices somethingi) Er, Avery?  Are you going to order something.

LIBRELLE:  Oh, heavens no.  I’m just taking readings on the owners’ privilege.

(and SCENE)

Virtue, signaled (two weeks ago):

Dick’s Sporting Goods will no longer sell assault-style firearms, will ban high-capacity magazines and will not sell any guns to people younger than 21, the company announced Wednesday, a significant move for the retail giant in the midst of renewed calls for national gun reform.

Chief executive Edward W. Stack made the announcement during an appearance on “Good Morning America”, as well as through a company statement that said “thoughts and prayers are not enough” in the wake of America’s latest mass shooting. Two weeks ago, a gunman killed 17 people, most of them teenagers, in Parkland, Fla., with an AR-15 that was legally purchased. The alleged shooter, Nikolas Cruz, bought a shotgun from a Dick’s store in November, Stack said during the television interview.

Although the weapon purchased at the Dick’s outlet was not the one used in the massacre, Stack said his company was moved to act.

Virtue signal, responded to

Dick’s, which reported fourth-quarter earnings on Tuesday, said same store sales fell 2%, double the decline analysts expected…In a call with analysts, Chief Executive Ed Stack acknowledged that the new policy is “not going to be positive from a traffic and sales standpoint.”

It is difficult to say just how extensive the impact will be. Assault rifles were previously sold at three dozen of the company’s Field & Stream stores. Mr. Stack says the company has already seen pushback. “Some of those customers that buy firearms [from Dick’s] buy other things also.” They may not shop at Dick’s at all anymore, he said.

That loss is reflected in the company’s outlook. It expects same-store sales will range from flat to a single-digit decline this year. It also said that it will no longer provide analysts and investors with a quarterly outlook, underscoring the sense that the company is troubled.

It’s not all about guns.  Dick’s, like a lot of national chains, is having a hard time adjusting to a market where Amazon, as well as a raft of e-commerce retailers like CheaperThanDirt, are eating up immense market share.

But the gun thing?  That’s gonna leave a mark.