Ninnies, Wannabe Thugs And Petty Tyrants

A bit of legal background first:  A Minnesota carry permit isn’t a “Concealed Carry” permit. It allows a permittee to carry a firearm, either concealed or openly.   Now, most permittees carry concealed; partly because there’s no sense in showing a criminal who it is that might oppose them, and partly because we live in a society where some people become fairly unhinged around guns.

And by “a society”, I mean “modern, NPR-listening, Volvo-driving, St. Olaf-attending, upper-middle-class white-as-the-driven-snow urban America”.  People who’ve never had to learn to deal with cognitive dissonance, because they’ve experienced so little of it.

By the way – if I did have a carry permit (or a handgun, for that matter), I doubt I’d ever find an occasion to carry openly;  in Saint Paul, there’d be too many people getting erroneously exercised over it.  I like to pick my battles.  In other parts of the state, it’d be less of a battle.

Pick Your Battles

That is, in fact, one of the most important lessons from carry permit training; the best way to use your permitted firearm is not at all.  Never.  Using a handgun is, at best, the second-worst possible outcome to an altercation.

And if you talk with most carry permittees, you find that that lesson has sunk in.  When someone flips them off in traffic, they don’t flip back; they “wave with all five fingers”, as a carry permit instructor of mine advised.  More so?  If they see a dangerous situation brewing – a bar fight, a skeevy situation – they make themselves scarce.

Because nothing is harder to talk your way out of than a shooting.

A permitted firearm is there only for when the battle picks you, and there’s nothing – nothing! – you can do about it.

And Minnesota permittees are pretty good about picking their battles.  In ten years, there has been precisely one unjustified homicide carried out by a permittee.  That’s a murder rate a couple of orders of magnitude below the rate for the general population, and bordering on “infinitely”.

Avoidance

Earlier this week, a group called the Minnesotans for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms decided to try an awareness raising event; holding an “Open Streets – Open Carry” event at an “Open Streets” event in Southwest Minneapolis.

The “Open Streets” events are, of course, a metro-wide series of glorified block-club parties.

Twin Cities’ gun groups have, of course, done open carry events for years; most notable were the “Open Carry Picnics” at Lake Harriett.  You may have heard about them – but not because anything untoward happened there.

The intention?  Have a picnic.  Pull up a grill and some lawn chairs and socialize.

Period.

Unfortunately, MNRKBA picked the one in Southwest Minneapolis – a neighborhood full of Saint Olaf/Carlton liberals who are not well disposed to cognitive dissonance.  They called in their connections.

And Don’t You Dare Call The Media Biased!

The Strib and the City Pages covered the story…

…well, no.  The two papers served as PR agents for the neighborhood’s indignant.

Gun Rights Groups Plan To Pack Heat At Open Streets” read the City Pages headline.

“Pack Heat” is one of those things reporters write about carry (open or concealed) when they don’t really understand it, but know they feel contempt for it anyway.

As to the Strib?  “Gun Owners Target Twin Cities Street Fairs For Coming Out Party“?   If you think the title is loaded, go ahead and count the number of times writer Mary Lynn Smith uses the phrase “gun-totin'” in her article.

Loaded much?

But it’s not just the articles that are the problem.

Catnip For Ninnies With Authoritarian Streaks

Check out the comments.

Especially the ones threatening violence.   Anonymity and a public forum certainly brings out the online courage in a lot of people, doesn’t it?

Over on the MN-RKBA Facebook page, one woman stated she’d go out of her way to pick a fight with an open carrier, and then lie to the police to try to get the carrier arrested (the comments were deleted).

There were just too many people expressing an intent to cause some sort of mischief, legal or otherwise…

…over something that is every Minnesotan’s legal right, should they choose to exercise it.

Battle Picked

With the threats, and remembering the basics – avoid dangerous situations – the MN-RKBA decided to call off the open carry events.

Not because they were asked to, nicely or not.

Not because they didn’t have every legal right to be there, just like any other community group.

Because a bunch of wannabe thugs threatened to create a thing all responsible carry permittees always avoid; a situation.

I Did Say Ninnies, Didn’t I?

Of course, Heather Martens and “Moms Demand Action” – who are as devoid of “victories” as they are of any history of factual statements on the issue – are trying to claim this as a victory for the gun-grabber movement.  Both are apparently try to exploit this event as a “win” for their hapless groups.

And there’s one more ninny.  Indeed, the big kahuna of Twin Cities lefty ninnies.  More at noon.

Martens and Jane Kay are, as usual – as always – lying.  Neither “Protect MN” nor “Moms Demand Action”, nor any “organized” anti group, had any role or say in this.  Nor a case.

No, the entire decision was over the obvious potential for trouble.

And anyone who claims otherwise is lying, or trying to gin up drama for their personal, political or PR gain, or both.  Most likely both.

But again, more at noon.

14 thoughts on “Ninnies, Wannabe Thugs And Petty Tyrants

  1. Gaia, the internal dissonance these people have. Scared to death of even the idea of a citizen carrying a firearm near them, they then declare that they will create an altercation with these very same people? Won’t the evil gun leap from it’s holster, (or alternatively, use the firearm’s mind control powers over the allegedly unstable, penile size challenged carrier) and fill the hoplophobe, and ten other bystanders full of lead?

    I mean if they really thought the permitted gun carrier was so dangerous, they would not confront them, but instead should run, screaming in fear, in the other direction.

    The left is never logically consistent.

  2. Alas, their behaviour is very predictable. My daughter used to go to a school in Highland Park and I had to drive her there every day. I had to take residential city streets to drop her off. Please note, I never speed on residential streets. Close to her school, one of the residents took offense to my ride – ’03 EVO VIII, – claiming it was too loud and that I was speeding and TOLD me I was nto to use HIS streets again. He even went as far as setting up a blockade in the middle of the street, in his gigantic duelly pickup truck with ported exhaust. Luckily, there was just a week left in the school year and I run into the goon only once more, when he threatened me with his StPD connections. Fucking libeturd imbecils.

  3. Got to give credit where it’s due. At least the City Pages didn’t censor raging leftist bigots promising to “fuck up” 2A activists like the Red Star did.

  4. Also, is there some correlation between the left’s love of homosexuality and the fact that the first epithet they reach for is the size of a guy’s package?

    I’ve conclusively proved the correlation between a leftists’ head and their own asses, so I think there may be something here as well.

  5. Libturds are enboldened by an of 0bumbler ignoring the rule of Law and shredding the Consitution. Those two things mean nothing to them, other then their own twisted view of reality, damn everyone who dares to disgree with it. Why should an apple fall far from the tree?

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  7. I think much of this was done to mock the homosexual marriage people.
    -You don’t want carry folks at your party, that is just like not letting blacks into your event.
    -And using the term “coming out”.

    I think it would be good for Republicans, conservatives, or libertarians to use the Jim Crow analogy non-stop like the left does. I know it trivalizes what blacks went through 60+ years ago, but it is fun to turn the lefts goofy arguements back on them.

  8. Oh, and KSTP news today had a thing on an event this week. You are supposed to ask you neighbors if they have guns in their house.

  9. “Open Carry Picnics” at Lake Harriett

    Wow, I didn’t realize that was 5yrs. ago now!!! I don’t remember anything even close to a threat of violence at any of the Harriett Bandshell gatherings. Some anit’s sure have become violent in terms of their talk (tough talk by anonymous cowards).

  10. Chuck, that’s National Ask Day sponsored by the Center to Prevent Youth Violence. Parents are supposed to ask their neighbors if they have guns in the house, write letters, give sermons, etc. Nowhere in the suggested activities does it mention the NRA’s Eddie Eagle program to teach kids who find a gun: Stop. Don’t Touch. Leave the Area. Tell an Adult. Fear, not knowledge, will protect our children.

    http://www.cpyv.org/programs/ask/parents/ask-day/

  11. “modern, NPR-listening, Volvo-driving, St. Olaf-attending, upper-middle-class white-as-the-driven-snow urban America”.

    Mitch – please try to keep up. That Volvo thing is soooo 70s. The bien-pensants drive Priii or Subarus these days.

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