Of Those With Cow, And Those With Moo

This session, Senate File 2639 (and its house companion, HF3238) have been the subject of a lot of misunderstanding (including on this very blog).   The bills would define how local authorities enforce federal law regarding dealing with firearms in the hands of those accused of domestic abuse.

The bills have also been the subject of an amazing amount of grandstanding rhetoric.

We’ll talk rhetoric first.  Then we’ll talk about the bill.

Aiming Low:  Representative Tony Cornish has, for a long, long time now, been the prime mover for Minnesota’s Second Amendment movement in the Legislature (after the retirement of Pat Pariseau).  Nobody has ever, ever called him “soft” on Second Amendment issues and escaped without being laughed out of the conversation.

But Cornish isn’t stupid.

After the debacle of the 2013 session – where the DFL marched into the legislature with reams of gun-regulation and confiscation bills copied and pasted from California, New York and Pennsylvania, and got publicly humiliated by the “Army of Davids” that the Minnesota gun rights movement mobilized, and a bipartisan assortment of pro-Human-Rights legislators – the anti-rights crowd, led by a more capable batch of professional politicial consultants and armed with shopping carts full of Michael Bloomberg’s cash, came to the Capitol with a brand new plan.  Their goal; find an emotional, red-meat issue that crossed party lines and would involve ratcheting up some sort of gun regulation, to eke out a win and help take the stench of death off of gun-control political efforts.

And there has been no better year since the seventies for the DFL to try to jam something down.  Remember – the DFL controls both chambers of the Legislature, and the Governor’s office.

All they’d have to do to pass any law – magazine restrictions and backdoor registration, to say nothing of taking guns from those accused of domestic abuse – is close ranks.

The fact that any such move would be political suicide is the result of two decades of organizing by the Minnesota 2nd Amendment movement – GOCRA, the MN-GOPAC, the NRA, the Twin Cities Gun Owners, and more. 

But politics is a two way street.  Both sides can play it – and Michael Bloomberg and the Joyce Foundation bought themselves some consultants who know how to play.

Remember – Tony Cornish, and all the other pro-human-rights legislators, are facing a DFL majority.   To avoid getting steamrolled, one of two things is needed:

  • Being OK with being steamrollered, or
  • canny negotiation.

Cornish and the rest of the pro-human-rights lobby chose negotiation. 

We’ll come back to that.

We Interrupt This Story For Some Law  – Domestic abuse is no laughing matter.  The law provides victims of domestic abuse some remedies under the law.  It also provides those accused of domestic abuse with the the right to due process.

Here, more or less, is now the process works (and every situation is different, so curb your inner lawyer.  Or outer lawyer, if you went to law school):

  1. Joe alleges his spouse, Jane, is beating him.  He goes to get a restraining order
  2. A judge signs off on an ex parte order (which means “one party”) “order for protection” (OFP).  The OFP prohibits contact (to say nothing of abuse) between Jane and Joe.  Firearms are, however, not an issue – yet.  It’s a temporary order, until the hearing (aka “due process”)
  3. Joe has Jane served a copy of the OFP.
  4. Jane has the option to request a hearing to review and contest the order.   She can (and probably should) bring a lawyer – it’s serious business (this, by the way, is the part many accused of domestic abuse skip, which screws things up for them badly).
  5. If  the judge believes, after the hearing that Jane is a significant threat to Joe’s safety, the judge may make the order “permanent” (which really means generally three years or so).
  6. If the order finds that the threat is really serious, the federal “Wellstone Amendment” may prohibit Jane from possessing firearms.

And it’s here that the contention slips in.

SF 2639 and HF 3238 were originally given to the DFL by Michael Bloomberg’s organization.   I’m not sure that Alice Hausman would have been arrogant enough to submit the bills in their original form,  which did not allow those accused any due proces at all, with guns required to be stored elsewhere as soon as the complaint was filed, before any hearing took place. 

Power Changes Everything – Like its namesake, the “Wellstone Amendment” is big on pronouncements and short on details.  It says those accused of a certain level of domestic abuse shouldn’t have firearms.  It leaves the details to the states.

And the original versions of the two bills, as sent from Michael Bloomberg’s organization, did terrible things with those details;  they would have invoked the Wellstone Amendment when the initial, temporary order was invoked (i.e. before any hearing), required the accused to store their guns with the police (for a “reasonable” fee that would be anything but in real life) and served as de facto gun registration.

And in a state like New York or Connecticut, with a weak or nascent gun rights movement, that’s exactly what would have passed.

But Minnesota’s Real Americans have spent the past two decades organizing one of the most potent grass roots movements in the state.  It’s a movement that has swayed entire elections in the past (the 2002 House race).  And after the humiliations the DFL suffered in 2013, they figured they weren’t going to get away with the “loud and stupid” strategy favored by the likes of “Moms Demand Action” and the like.

So the DFL came to the gun rights movement, looking for a solution that would give them a “win” on domestic violence, but not stir up the hornet’s nest needlessly.  And the movement – GOCRA, the NRA and the like – gave them the solution.  To return to our example above, Jane will need to store any guns she owns with friends, the police, or a licensed dealer, but only after the hearing for the permanent order.  The new bill will require Jane to transact this within three days, and for the police to notify the judge two days after that.

No guns move before “due process” – a hearing, with counsel – has taken place. 

Ever. 

Let’s make sure we’re clear on what just happened – and I’m going to put this in loud blue text to make sure everyone catches it; even though the DFL controls both chambers and the governor’s office, they had to come to the Gun Rights movement to get some form of their bill passed.   And the bill got turned from Michael Bloomberg’s fascist nightmare into something that can exist in a free society. 

It wasn’t perfect.  But when you’re outnumbered two chambers to none, and have a DFL governor who will follow whatever way Big Left pulls his leash, “perfect” isn’t an option.

Everyone’s A Kamikaze With Someone Else’s Plane – When you walk into a restaurant, and see two items on the menu – peanut butter sandwich, and lard sandwich – you can try to order a Porterhouse with a baked potato.  You can order it, and order it, and order it again.  All it’ll do is give you a pissed-off waitress, and no food at all.

And that’s the strategy that some “gun rights” groups, including Iowa-based “Minnesota Gun Rights”, took.   They spent the session demanding that the pro-Second-Amendment minority impale itself on demands to completely reject the legislation – which was the “porterhouse steak” option in a restaurant full of peanut butter and lard.

Their “plan”:  pretend that fuming and spluttering and making grand pronouncements and handing the DFL a cheap chanting point for the fall would be anything other than an invitation to a catastrophe for liberty. 

This, of course, gives us not only the prospect of watching a Michael Bloomberg-penned bill get signed into law and the wholesale violations of rights that would follow, but to the Democrats going into the fall elections with reams of Alita-Messinger-paid ads saying that GOP legislators “voted to give guns to wife beaters”.  It’s a message that only the stupid would believe – but as the 2010 election showed us, there are 8,000 more stupid Minnesotans than smart ones.  And that’s all they need to maintain control of the House – giving the DFL even more time and power to jam down even worse gun laws.

And worse, in its way?  These astroturf groups engaged in “blue-on-blue” campaign that was either deeply stupid or intensely cynical, trying to brand not only the GOCRA but Tony Cornish as weak-kneed on gun rights.

Over a bill that was going to pass in some form no matter what anyone did, but which the DFL had to come to the Gun Rights movement for anyway.

Representative Cornish, writing on Facebook, gave us perhaps the best quote there is on the subject:

When the train is coming down the track, it’s admirable to stand and raise the middle finger, but…sometimes it’s better to do the damned best you can to change it’s route and avoid a much less desirable fate.

And those were the only two choices;  throw a finger at Bloomberg, get run over by the train, and have a law that would allow people’s Second Amendment rights to get run over as well – which isn’t even a symbolic victory, since it would make taking back the House that much harder – or enact a bill that basically gave a framework to federal law that protected due process.

When you get a choice between peanut butter and lard, take the peanut butter.  And this fall, find a better restaurant.  One with some cooks that know how to cook a porterhouse.

14 thoughts on “Of Those With Cow, And Those With Moo

  1. Mitch, you got an incomplete sentence right before Power Changes Everything paragraph.

  2. SCENE: A libtard really, really, really wants to off his wife but the court has denied him access to his gun. If he bludgeon’s her to death with the large “participation trophy” his kid earned at the Earth Fair, will the Thought Police count the murder as a gun crime, since that was his preferred first option?

  3. “And the movement – GOCRA, the NRA and the like – gave them the solution.”

    They made them include the pea in their contemptible shell game, that’s a win in and of itself.

  4. I remain confused as to what has majorly changed with all this. The seizure of guns from those subject to Orders for Protection (OFP) and other judicial matters has been happening for years.

    Orders for Protection (OFP), ex-parte and permanent, are mostly customized documents that can allow specific protections to the petitioner that are unique to the situation (as well as specific “inconveniences” unique to the respondent). Firearms seizures have already been included on these for years.

    Harassment restraining orders (HRO) are basically protection orders and are also fully enforceable by law enforcement; general, civil restraining orders usually are not. They are often used in situations involving persons who do not have the type of “personal” relationships required for an OFP. Weapons seizure can also be included in HRO conditions. They can also be included in release from custody requests and subsequent orders, and during a bail hearings or 48-hour hold release requests.

    Again, it seems that no new substantial ground has been gained by the anti’s, other than the symbolic win. However, there are still other already existing mechanisms which allow for the lawful taking of non-evidentiary, uninvolved guns. I hope that these are also among those being watched by GOCRA and other gun groups.

  5. Joe, don’t be confused: you are correct that there were no significant changes.

    If the antis want to feel good because state law now mirrors federal law, well…bless their hearts.

  6. I’ve often heard people accuse the NRA of being too soft, and too willing to compromise.

    I admit that they’ve sometimes not been as aggressive as I would have liked, in situations in which they had the upper hand.

    But they play defense better than anyone.

    Think, for a minute, what our world would be like if the Brady Bill had passed in its original form – and we were stuck with a five-day waiting period, instead of an instant check?

    Or the cop-killer bullet ban? Which would have banned any centerfire rifle cartridge that could penetrate a vest. (Which would have eliminated pretty much any rifle round.)

    Or go back further. The National Firearms Act would have included all handguns as registered devices, subject to a $200 transfer tax. It was the NRA that blocked that.

    Sometimes we need to play defense.

  7. It seems that the left has never found any activity that they did not believe was better served by having several layers of government doing the same tasks simultaneously.

    They are, it would seem, the department of redundancy.

    The original bill was a mess – following some serious work by GOCRA and Tony, we ended up with a bill that actually makes the federal law less ambiguous. I have a hard time complaining about what appears to me to be a net win – actually a big win if you consider the starting point and the players on the field.

  8. Well, we have a surplus of Libtards. It appears that we also have a surplus of Contards; but there aren’t as many of them, here, yet. The Contards seem to be attempting to infiltrate Minnesota from, it appears, Colorado, via Iowa. We all have seen, and know, how well they thrived and prospered, what they achieved and produced, in Colorado; similarly, in Iowa.
    The ‘tard breed is a very special pure breed, even inbred, with a strict pedigree, even though they come in two distinct colors; red and blue (also spelled “Bloo[mberg]”). The identifying characteristic of a ‘tard is a loudly-sworn and oft-repeated allegiance to the purity and power of a simple, rigid philosophy, regardless of any and all circumstances and practical pressures; which all boils down to a simple, “I’m absolutely right about absolutely everything, because I say that it is so, because I want it to be so, because I think it would be best!” It’s a religious dogma, complete with true-believer zealots, and complete with a bitter schism between the Libtards and the Contards, who both see themselves as Gods, who can’t abide the existence of each other, and who would kill each other in any way possible, regardless of the collateral damage to the impure, genetically-polluted Mutts, whom they regard as pets who must be trained and disciplined to do the real work for them. Although they see themselves as 180-degree opposites, ad infinitum, in the real world they diverge only to the point where they meet on the back side of the planet, where everything is reversed, backwards and upside down. In this reversal, they discover that they are identical twins engaged in a sibling rivalry over which of them is going to usurp and wield the power to force their particular brand of sectarian belief, their fantasy, as our reality. Let’s hope that they don’t decide to get together, collude, and split the spoils.
    The names may change, but the faces remain the same, because of the purity of the inbreeding. We Mutts can’t tell the difference without a scorecard or a program. God, save us from those who would have you save us from ourselves! Oh, the humanity; oh, the insanity!
    Mitch, you nailed it.

  9. I suspect one of my in-laws is headed for divorce and given their history, I wouldn’t be surprised if a restraining order was issued. Andrew or David, do we know of any FFLs who are willing to hold firearms removed from owners under this law? Might be a helpful list for a gun-rights organization to post on-line.

  10. Thanks Mr. Rothman. I was quite surprised during the hearings at the apparent lack of awareness, even by those (I think there were two) whose day job is involved with these issues. However, the gentleman from the MN Sheriffs Assn. was quite well prepared and informed on the property room aspect of the issue. This is a big issue, too.

    FYI … I was the disheveled guy in the capitol hallway who handed you a GOCRA T-shirt during a break in the hearings. It was an extra. It was apparently mismarked as to size (I hope). I got a better-fitting one when I re-upped this year and wanted to return my unused and unusable spare shirt.

    Thanks for all you’re doing …

  11. Joe,

    There is no need to involve an FFL should an OFP make your in-law an prohibited person temporarily. Any non-prohibited individual can receive and hold the items, they just have to be willing to attest to the court/police that they have them and will hold them until the person becomes eligible again. (At least that is how I remember it working based on the final outcome).

  12. IIRC, any non-prohibited person can swear out an affadavit (with a notary) saying they’ll sit on the piece/s until things blow over.

  13. Mitch, you do recall correctly. AND the affidavit and the data it contains is sealed by the court, nondisclosable as private “firearms data” under the Minnesota Government Data Practices Act, except upon petition/request for the limited purposes of notifying the holder of the guns of any changes in status or compliance with the Court order and the duties assumed. Essentially, the person who receives the gun(s) is obligated not to allow the respondent to have physical access/possession. But the gun(s) can be disposed of/sold/transfered on the respondent’s behalf, at the respondent’s direction, as long as the respondent is not in any kind of possession, because the respondent doesn’t lose beneficial ownership/title to the value of the property. I think that such transfers from the holder need to be reported to the court as a change in inventory, as it were. Whether the new or different possessor upon a permanent transfer of ownership/sale/gift needs to file an affidavit that they, also, will not allow the respondent to possess such firearm(s) during the pendency of the Order is left blank, I think, because such a transfer is in derogation of any claim to ownership. In other words, “You still own them, but can’t, temporarily, possess them for a definite period of time.” They are not confiscated, forfeited, or escheated to the state; stolen by the state. If I were the holder who transfers a firearm at the order/request of the respondent, I would have the transferee file such an affidavit to get me off the hook with the Court, and the transferee on said hook; just to keep the court-sealed paper trail clear and clean, and to avoid any appearance of subterfuge/end run of the Court’s Order, as a practical matter.
    So, prohibited respondent wants his nephew to have the firearm, as a gift, for nephew’s use. Nephew loves Uncle Jack. Nephew needs to know that beloved Uncle Jack is a temporarily prohibited person and that he can’t let Uncle Jack use the gun, just because it is his, now; and assuming, of record, my obligation to keep it from his possession. An anonymous, third party sale/transfer doesn’t necessarily present those private transfer to a relative factors. However, as the holder of record with the court, I’d want it both out of official inventory with the respondent AND out of my responsibility to the Court, as the middleman, as a matter of simple common sense.
    “Respect” is most often a two-way street. And it’s easy.

  14. Mr. Doaks, the law also requires the law enforcement agency, probably the one with jurisdiction in the matter, to make storage of these weapons available to the involved person. The law also requires that the held guns be kept safe and cared-for while in custody .

    However, the concerns for privacy remain. Each gun, bullet, or whatever weapon that’s surrendered will be listed on a property/inventory form by, at a minimum, make, model, and serial number (if the item bears a serial number).

    I wonder if an FFL holder has to log held guns in and out of their FFL-mandated log book? If so, that would in effect “register” them. Particularly if the FFL is mandated to transfer them back to the owner as they would a gun they sold.

    Years back, during the Clinton reign, the then-ATF required that any guns consigned to an FFL go through the transfer process if the owner decided not to consign them or get them back for whatever reason; an obvious means to get more privately owned guns on the FFL’s book. That put an end to many gun owners utilizing what was otherwise a good way to liquidate no longer wanted guns.

    Or, would the person reclaiming the gun be required to get a purchase permit to reclaim them? No big deal to me, but some feel strongly about that.

    If none of these applied to the process, there would be no logical reason to involve an FFL. I suppose the BATFE could argue that an FFL, who has gone through the stringent licensing process, has been thoroughly checked-out and a “safe” holder.

    I’d follow Mr. Berg’s suggestion of using a non-LE, non-FFL for storage. I still wonder, though, if this process would also mandate a list of items held? Again the make, model, serial number of each would likely come into play. I’d also do some intense homework on this before deciding.

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