An Idea Whose Time Is At Least Three Years Away

Remember the bloodbath that Minnesota was in 1973 and before? 

I remember the episode in November of 1971, in rural Hitterdahl, Minnesota, about 20 miles west of Detroit Lakes.  Oscar Gundersson, a plumber and handyman, was playing bridge with his wife Trina and their farmer neighbors, Rolf and Edna Berndsen.  Oscar though Edna had cheated on a hand.  Being a second-generation Norwegian-American, he skipped straight past accusation, anger and argument, and pulled a pistol from his overalls, shooting the woman.  Then, anxious to kill all witnesses, he shot Rolf and, finally, his wife, before jumping in his car and driving toward the Canadian border in a killing spree that left six additional dead and ended with Gundersson living in Indonesia, scoffing at the law.

Or the sad episode of Ruth Slorbie, who was shopping with her husband, Olaf, at the downtown Minneapolis Daytons in October 1970.  Weary of waiting in lines, she pulled a revolver from her purse and, according to a Minneapolis Star article, calmly executed six people who got in her way, calmly “changing clips” as she wandered from department to department, her husband indolently shuffling behind her holding bags of purchased merchandise, until the police responded. 

Er…wait.  None of those happened.

Before 1974, Minnesota did not require the law-abiding citizen to have a permit of any type to carry a firearm, concealed or otherwise. 

You may recall – Minnesota was a pretty low-crime state, back then.    Of course, being a Democrat-dominated state, when the winds of Political Correctness bade the left to restrict guns back in the seventies, at the Second Amendment’s legal and social nadir, Minnesota followed suit – for no real empirical reason, of course.  Which is, of course, a common thread among most gun-control legislation, and all such rules that affect only the law-abiding; none are ever supported by evidence.

Minnesota became a “may issue” state in 1974 – carry permits were issued entirely on the whim of local police chiefs, meaning that the law-abiding citizen’s Second Amendment rights were subjected entirely to the whim of their local police chief.  Police chiefs in Greater Minnesota issued permits pretty liberally; in the Metro, it was entirely based on political connections; law-abiding citizens were routinely turned down, while pals of cops and local pols could get permits even with lengthy criminal records.  The chief of Bloomington’s police department famously said that nobody in Bloomington really needed a permit, but made sure his wife – alone among the city’s women – was issued one. 

MInnesota rolled part-way back, ten years ago, with the passage of our “shall-issue” law; there are currently nearly 160,000 permits active in Minnesota, nearly double the number estimated in 2003. 

But what if we rolled the laws back even further?  To 1973? 

Last week Senator Branden Peterson and Representative Steve Drazkowski introduced a bill that would do just that; institute “constitutional carry” in Minnesota.  A law-abiding citizen would require no state permit to exercise their constitutional right to carry a firearm in a safe, responsible manner.  It’d give us the same law as Vermont, Arizona, Alaska and Wyoming. 

It’s an utterly symbolic proposal at this point, of course; the bill was introduced after the committee deadline, and even if it hadn’t been, it would have had no chance of passage with a DFL-controlled legislature and governor.  At a time when Michael Bloomberg is buying astro-turf groups to push genuine, bad restrictions in a legislature currently controlled by the DFL, it’d be misplaced to spend a whole lot of energy on it.

Yet. 

But kudos to Senator Peterson and Representative Drazkowski for firing a shot, as it were, across the DFL’s bow.  Here’s to more in a friendlier future. 

 

24 thoughts on “An Idea Whose Time Is At Least Three Years Away

  1. “when the winds of Political Correctness bade the left to restrict guns back in the seventies,”

    Lets never forget that after Watts and Detroit the left/Democrats were terrified by the existence of armed black citizens. All subsequent gun control legislation has always had the clear racist purpose of denying blacks access to guns. The drumbeat by progressives for greater gun control is always at its core a racist impulse.

  2. To be fair, MN joined the gun madness back when it was white progressives like Bill Ayers running around bombing things and threatening revolution. MN was relatively insulated from the black uprising of ’68 because it was so white, but it wasn’t so isolated from the general leftist lawless violence of the early 70s.

    Watts got us the GCA in Congress, not to mention starting CA’s gun regulation avalanche.

    Riddle me this: why is the “Saturday Night Special” so loathed? It’s no more lethal than expensive guns, usually less. So why do we discriminate so much based on a gun’s price? The answer has to do with class and race, and it’s not pretty.

  3. nerdbert, the language the democrats used to pass 1968 GCA came right out of Margaret Sanger’s social hygiene playbook i.e. the proliferation of cheap Saturday night specials was allowing socially unfit types to posses guns. They don’t so much use Sanger’s language today but the mission is still to keep guns out of the hands of blacks and latinos.

  4. Ah, conservatives, always pining for the bad old days, be it gun hugging or discrimination.

    Here’s the thing, in the interim since the mid-20th century, a lot has changed, including the leap in crime during the Reagan war on drugs failure.

    We have roughly an average of a citizen a day killed in MN by guns.

    It is a factual reality – that thing that conservatives flee, dread and deny – that states with stricter gun laws are safer and have less gun violence, while apparently being just as free in any practical sense of the word.

    Legislators like the Draz are incompetent – see the epic failure for example of any attempt to nullify federal law at the state or local level.

    But hey, keep praising the losers; it makes it easier for their opposition to win.

    I imagine you want to focus on those losing gun strategies, because of the success of things like Obamacare and Putin starting to cave under sanctions. Time for a shiny distraction from those OTHER failures.

  5. Things are just a bit more complicated than that.

    Prior to 1974, Minneapolis and St. Paul both outlawed carry without city-issued permits, which were available only to the politically connected.

    The 1974 language was generally interpreted, outside the metro, as being effectively a shall-issue law, when it first passed.

    Within the metro, it was absolutely ignored – both Minneapolis and St. Paul refused to issue permits under or to recognize the state law, and continued their own highly restrictive permitting systems.

    Which lead, in 1984, to the passage of the statewide preemption bill, invalidating the local permitting laws.

    And that lead to Skip Humphrey, when he was AG, determining that the language of the 1974 law really had been may-issue all along, and beginning a concerted campaign to convince the sheriffs and police chiefs not to issue except to armed security guards.

  6. DG always the fact challenged one mewled: ” that states with stricter gun laws are safer and have less gun violence, while apparently being just as free in any practical sense of the word.”

    DG explain Chicago, DC, etc. You can’t because your racist policies clearly don’t work.

  7. South Carolina almost passed a constitutional carry bill this year…considering what Georgia has done, I’m guessing it will be the first bill passed next year. Friendly rivalries are serious bidness down heah.

  8. We have roughly an average of a citizen a day killed in MN by guns.

    How many of those are suicides? How many accidents? How many are murders? Show your work.

    I imagine you want to focus on those losing gun strategies, because of the success of things like Obamacare and Putin starting to cave under sanctions. Time for a shiny distraction from those OTHER failures.

    Seriously? Do you even read this blog? Mitch has been writing about 2nd Amendment issues for over a decade — consistently. What you call a distraction is eternal vigilance.

  9. DG, so that you do understand, the Democrat Party has been at the business of denying guns to black people for a long time. I quote the 11th Attorney General of the United States, a Democrat, who said:

    “It would give to persons of the negro race, …the right to enter every other State whenever they pleased, …to sojourn there as long as they pleased, to go where they pleased …the full liberty of speech in public and in private upon all subjects upon which its own citizens might speak; to hold public meetings upon political affairs, and to keep and carry arms wherever they went.” Roger B Taney March 6, 1857
    You Democrats/Progressives never change.

  10. It’s worth noting that in terms of absolute numbers, the murder rate was close to its peak in 1974, following a sharp rise from the mid-1960s that accompanied (a) the maturing of a generation of illegitimate children and (b) the start of the Great Society.

    http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm

    It peaked and started to drop in the 1990s, indicating, I suppose, that the policies of actually locking up criminals started by Reagan, as well as shall issue concealed carry, were having a good effect.

  11. Give Dog Gone some credit, at least she doesn’t cut-and-paste from MinnPost directly, she draws her own mistaken conclusions.

    Assume it’s true that an average of 300 Minnesotans die from guns each year. Assume 230 of them are suicides and 70 are murders. Will banning guns stop all, some or none of the 230? Maybe – but Japan has very strict gun control and double our suicide rate. Might be more sensible to devote our efforts to mental health treatment for those who need it, rather than attempting to create more defenseless victims for violent crime.

    And how about that crime – will banning guns stop all, some or none of the 70 murders? Again, maybe – but Washington DC has very strict gun control and higher murder rate than Minneapolis, which itself is fantastically higher than outstate Minnesota. 70 drug dealers shooting each other out of 5 million residents seems to call for tougher policing, not state-wide disarmament.

    A fact asserted – even if true – is just a fact. The tortured conclusions Dog Gone draws from it are not self-evidently correct.

  12. DG,

    I get tired of having to say “everything you write is unvarnished bullshit uncritically cribbed from current “progressive” chanting points”. I truly do.

    But it is.

    So I’ll switch to the following editorial shorthand:

    dg:UVBS

    I should probably leave it at that – you won’t respond to any response, apparently believing that she who hears the last word wins. That’s just not how I’m wired – although I’m getting closer and closer.

    Ah, conservatives, always pining for the bad old days, be it gun hugging or discrimination.

    Name-calling and deflection. Boring.

    Here’s the thing, in the interim since the mid-20th century, a lot has changed, including the leap in crime during the Reagan war on drugs failure.

    Right. Things have changed. Crime has plummeted since 1980.

    What could that be? What has changed since 1980?

    Well, we’re imprisoning a lot of people.

    But gun laws have gotten a LOT more liberal, from coast to coast, even as violent crime has dropped by almost 50% nationwide.

    We have roughly an average of a citizen a day killed in MN by guns.

    Even if it’s true – and since you cite it, one may safely assume it’s not – it’s a meaningless statistic. As Mr. D asked, how many are suicides? How many are justifiable homicides?

    But – and this hardly needs to be said – you’re wrong. You’re parroting something you read somewhere or another.

    There were 91 murders in MInnesota in 2012. 53 involved guns. (At least two of those were ruled justifiable).

    Were there 312 gun suicides? Then there’s a case to be made we need to deal with mental health better than we do…

    …but that’s now what you’re talking about, is it?

    It is a factual reality – that thing that conservatives flee, dread and deny – that states with stricter gun laws are safer and have less gun violence, while apparently being just as free in any practical sense of the word.

    Go to the link I provided above (here it is again). Sort the table to show “Gun Murders per 100,000) in ascending order. What’s at the bottom of the list? Vermont – which has never required a permit for a handgun! Who else is in the bottom 10? States with liberal shall-issue laws and high rates of gun ownership! And what’s at the top of the list? The District of Columbia!

    And even there, the state stats are misleading. As Doakes points out, the vast bulk of the murders in this country are directly related to urban decay; the bulk of murders in Minnesota (murder rate 2.2/100,000) happen in a couple of neighborhoods in Minneapolis (city murder rate – ~8/100,000) and Saint Paul (~3/100,000). The same holds true around the country; urban decay, mostly drug-related (and rural Scots-Irish endemic violence) accounts for the vast majority of the American murder rate.

    So, DG, as usual, every single thing you write is either BS, or…

    Legislators like the Draz are incompetent – see the epic failure for example of any attempt to nullify federal law at the state or local level.

    …name-calling used (I’ll be charitable) as deflection.

    But hey, keep praising the losers; it makes it easier for their opposition to win.

    DG, I really do try to be civil with you. But your “condescend first, ask questions later” approach wore very thin a long time ago.

    So – after viewing the state gun murder rate data as requested, please tell me – from what source do you get the idea that states with fascist gun control rules are safest? Please provide a specific source, so – I hate to say this, but this is what it’s come to – I can do the minimal level of research needed confirm mock and taunt your sloppy research and critical analysis skills.

    I imagine you want to focus on those losing gun strategies, because of the success of things like Obamacare and Putin starting to cave under sanctions. Time for a shiny distraction from those OTHER failures.

    Er, yeah. Exactly.

    Or, put more succinctly: dg: UVBS.

  13. Dog Gone said:

    “I imagine you want to focus on those losing gun strategies”

    That 7th Law seems to come up all the time these days. I’m glad you wrote them down, Mitch!

  14. DG- The last time around, who had the “losing gun strategies”, the DFL or the Republicans? I thought so.

  15. “Er…wait. None of those happened.”
    Should have been “April fools!” Otherwise agree with every word…

  16. Is it even possible for DG to engage in actual debate??!! Sorry, stupid question.

  17. Adrian, you’d think there’d be a chance. After all, even a dog returns to its vomit. Yet DG horks and runs, probably to keep from being buried under the weight of her unsupported arguments.

  18. Is it even possible for DG to engage in actual debate??!!

    I looked back through some older posts. She did actually try to debate, once upon a time.

    But somewhere along the line she seemed to get more interested in proclaiming her supremacy than actually debating.

    (Shrug)

  19. She got tired of everyone mopping the floor with her mangy ass. Now she just drops a steaming load and runs like hell, just like a bad dog.

  20. It might be noted that, as the murder rate is driven by the urban murder rate, what we have is the obvious consequence of Democrats running things; decay.

  21. The only thing more embarrassing than watching DG’s arguments get shredded every single time ……. is watching her put those ideas out there with such conviction and condescension.

  22. good entertainment there yossarian, but always thought DG had red hair, otherwise perfect likeness!

  23. “…always thought DG had red hair, otherwise perfect likeness!”
    Well the mustache is right.

Leave a Reply

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.