No Retreat. No Surrender.
By Mitch Berg
While much of conservative Minnesota is having a hard time with “messaging”, the Real Americans of Minnesota’s Second Amendment human rights movement have a clear, resounding one.
This from the Gun Owners Civil Rights Alliance (GOCRA), in their session-eve email blast; it’s as crystal-clear a statement of principles and positions to the Legislature as you could ask for:
- Minnesota’s law-abiding gun owners will not take the blame for the actions of criminals
We refuse to be treated like those criminals - You don’t work for Michael Bloomberg and his billions: you work for your Minnesota constituents!
- We know what [Bloomberg’s] “universal background check” proposal really is: universal registration. And we will not sit still for it.
- You have a perfectly good criminal control bill, HF1325, co-authored by 99 senators and representatives, waiting for your action
As always, the gun rights movement – GOCRA, MN-GOPAC, the TC Gun Owners and Carry Forum, the NRA and the like – will be working hard to hold back the Metrocrat orcs’ assault on Real Americans’ freedom.
And they need you.
Look – whatever group you prefer, there’s one to fit your style, temperament and philosophy.
- Dying to bite off a bite-sized piece of activism? Sign up for GOCRA, and be alerted when action – phone calls, emails, hearings at the Capitol – is needed (send ’em a few bucks; they will put ’em to good use).
- Wanna put your money to direct political use, endorsing and influencing elections? Send MNGOPAC a buck or two, or a few hundred.
- Wanna fight the fight on main street – and University Avenue, for that matter? Shelley and the crew at TC Gun Owners and Carry Forum have been spreading the gospel in the wilderness.
Hell, help out all three. It’s not like the Orcs are going away any time soon.
As much rhetoric as the Democrats have expended in the past eighty years about class warfare, this is the true class war in America; our would-be “elites” want Real America disarmed; the plebeians, the underdogs, the people are the Real Americans.
Never let the Legislature forget it.
February 25th, 2014 at 8:33 pm
The solution is simple: No firearms are permitted to be sold to, or located in a home in which resides, a person who has (i) ever been prescribed any anti-psychotic medication, or (ii) ever been diagnosed with Schizophrenia, Bipolar I, Psychotic Depression, or Autism.
.
Cross checking gun purchases with a database of the above information is a trivial exercise, and a tiny data processing task. It should be made a serious felony to have a firearm in the same home where a severely mentally ill person resides, period. Or to sell one to such a person. This is very easy to implement.
February 26th, 2014 at 2:22 pm
The implementation of such restrictions, modified to include the means of harm, of course, could just as easily reduce the spread of HIV and AIDS.
What harm can a simple database do? Particularly if it saves just one life …
February 26th, 2014 at 6:58 pm
NRA Vice President Wayne LaPierre told NBC television: “We have a mental health system in this country that has completely and totally collapsed.”
Mr. LaPierre also said the NRA backs the FBI-run instant background checks system used by gun dealers when selling firearms. It supports putting all those adjudicated mentally incompetent into the system, and deplores the fact that many states are still putting only a small number of records into the system. http://www.nbcnews.com/id/50283245/ns/meet_the_press-transcripts/#.UUDRijdv-Tk
February 27th, 2014 at 9:51 am
The NRA has always supported the NICS system. Most gun owners do as well. I was quite eager, too, thinking that individual non-FFL holders would also have access to it. Such a system would be helpful to all who want to sell a firearm, but are not comfortable selling to someone they don’t know. Right now, the personal choice of requiring the buyer have a valid purchase permit seems to work, too, and that is based on the required background check.
Indeed the “mentally ill” should be prohibited, but only on an individual basis. I would like to be sure, though, that the definition of, and criteria for being
“adjudicated mentally incompetent” are clear and based on sound quantitative medical/ psychological standards.
Additionally, those who are in the position of making the determination should also be indemnified from civil actions brought by those who may disagree with the finding, or the actions of those misdiagnosed and given the OK, then misused the firearm. Otherwise, I suspect that a majority of mental health professionals would just rubber stamp “fail” on all requests. Both as a “better safe than sorry” answer, and a as possible bias against public firearms ownership.
Conversely, there should also be a recourse for those wishing to object to the findings of their own hearing. Good luck with all that.
February 27th, 2014 at 10:52 am
Yes, those are all good points.
But here’s the rub.The NRA’s logic on mental illness is hard to follow. It says it wants background checks improved with better mental-health reporting, but opposes using the database more often, saying universal background checks are a ruse for creating the national register needed to confiscate arms.