All the effort from this past session paid off starting yesterday. The five new gun bills passed this past session are now in effect:
- Governor Flint-Smith may not order firearm confiscations during states of emergency. To me, this is the big daddy of ’em all.
- Minnesota is now one of forty states that is compliant with Federal law regarding suppressors (aka “Mufflers for your Gun”, an accessory that is mandatory for hunting in some countries) and purchasing of long guns in non-contiguous states – both areas where Minnesota lagged federal law by three solid decades.
- Also – on August 1, it’ll be legal to use suppressors while hunting.
- Now, your carry permit is valid without any additional muss and fuss at the Capitol complex – the Capitol (not that you can get in there), the SOB, the SLOB (when it opens), the Supreme Court, the Minnesota Historical Society, and probably a few more buildings I’m forgetting.
- Finally, our carry permits are now reciprocal with more other states. No more stopping at gas stations in Moorhead or East Grand Forks to transfer something that’s legal in Minnesota but a gross misdemeanor in North Dakota from your pocket to your trunk. So says a friend of mine.
This is all to the good. But the question is – what next?
Obviously, we, the Real Americans of the Minnesota Second Amendment movement, need to focus on the big two; Stand Your Ground, and Constitutional Carry. Both of those will be long-term jobs, though, depending on an even more human-rights-friendly legislature than we have, and a pro-gun, likely GOP governor. That’s going to take some time and effort. We can do it – and this blog is going to focus on both.
But in the short term? I think banning physicians from asking about guns as part of routine patient screening would be a great place to start. It’s an entirely political exercise, suggested by the American Medical Association and the American College of Physicians and adopted by doctors both maliciously anti-gun and, mostly, those who don’t care. And it’s nothing but an attempt to use the prestige of the medical profession to bully people out of owning firearms. Several states have already acted; Minnesota should get doctors out of doing Michael Bloomberg’s work for him.
There are many things that need doing – but I think that’d be a good project on the way to the big win.
“And it’s nothing but an attempt to use the prestige of the medical profession to bully people out of owning firearms.”
It’s more than that. It’s a means of collecting information.
Real Americans should know that every year their are thousands and thousands of scholarly papers published in sociology and education journals. No one reads them. The methodology is mostly crap, and in the social “sciences”, practitioners are allowed to have biases. They are allowed to author and publish on, say, gun violence when they are vocally and fervently in favor of gun confiscation. The “findings” of this research is then foisted on judges, juries, and bureaucrat who do not have the training to tell sociological shit from shinola and may agree with the biases of the author.
So part of this data collected from physicians will one day end up in a press release claiming that “The AMA says one in two American children are at risk from guns in the home” or some other blather. The “research” will then be entered into the congressional record by some gun-grabbing time-waster in political office.
And in case DG wants to pinch and run on this thread I’d like to point out that here is another case of something that she says never happens – an armed citizen defending life and property:
http://www.startribune.com/married-former-cnn-reporters-involved-in-fatal-shootout/311448431/
“..another case of something that she says never happens – an armed citizen defending life and property.”
The claim that gun owners should be able to defend themselves against aggressors carrying firearms doesn’t seem to hold up when compared to DOJ statistics.
“In 2007-11, less than 1% of victims in all nonfatal violent crimes reported using a firearm to defend themselves during the incident.”
http://www.bjs.gov/content/pub/pdf/fv9311.pdf
There doesn’t appear to be much risk to the perpetrator.
“There doesn’t appear to be much risk to the perpetrator.”
Quite so. Which is exactly why that needs to change.
We already own twice as many guns per person as any other nation. How many more people would need to carry weapons in public in order to create a serious criminal deterrent? Five times as many? Ten? Is this even possible, let alone desirable?
Emery, did you ever hear the saying “lies, damn lies, and statistics”?
Dog Gone (and you) have a habit of digging through (or being pointed to) a single statistic in a long, complicated document and parading it around as though you you’ve found a diamond in an Arkansas clay pit. Social research is incrediby difficult. Experiments are difficult or impossible to repeat, so the scientific method — “Observe, hypothesize, experiment, revise hypothesis, repeat” doesn’t apply most of the time. There are an incredible amount of dependent variables that can’t be isolated. So a statistic like “In 2007-11, less than 1% of victims in all nonfatal violent crimes reported using a firearm to defend themselves during the incident” is only useful if the question you are asking is “What does the JD say is the percentage of victims of non-fatal violent crimes who reported using a fire arm to defend themselves during the incident”
Trying to make sweeping statements about whether individual gun ownership is good or bad using stats like that is a meaningless exercise.
The same document, for example, shows that all gun crime, fatal and non-fatal, as well as violent crime, was down dramatically between 1994 and 2011, which kind of works against the notion that increased access to guns causes more firearm crimes. Maybe because more Americans (of all races) have felonies in their past in 2011 than in 1994, and so are legally unable to purchase a firearm? The stats from the JD don’t say.
Another stat that from your document that works against the idea of the danger of owning a gun is found on page 8. People were more than twice as likely to be a victim of a non-fatal gun crime at the hands of a stranger than of a person they knew.
These stats really are junk for the purposes you are using them, Emery. While one percent report responding with a firearm, nearly 25% report fighting back and attacking the offender. What was the rate of injury for people who used guns vs people who used other means of protecting themselves, offered no resistance, or ran away? The stats don’t say.
That’s not what I asked. How many more people would need to carry weapons in public in order to create a serious criminal deterrent? Five times as many? Ten?
What is your answer PM?
‘Banning physicians from asking about guns as part of a routine patient screening’
Mitch I appreciate the sentiment, I do. I stopped getting care from the VA in part because they asked me about guns in my house.
But passing a state law to ban doctors from infringing on a Constitutional right is the wrong answer. I think you linked to an article this week that listed some free market solutions to this issue.
Your question is not answerable, Emery. First you need to ask what do I mean by “serious criminal deterrent”, and why do I care about “serious criminal deterrent” rather than self-defense?
The Second Amendment doesn’t say anything about criminal deterrence. What do you think the government is, anyhow? A playground monitor?
In 1981 I stumbled into a liquor store robbery, the robber shot me in the leg on the way out. All I could do was flip him off.
In 1985, two dudes broke into my apartment, they ran when they heard me rack a shell into my 12 ga. All I could do was send some #4 through the front door. Couldn’t flip them off holding the shotgun. Copper that eventually showed up said I was too slow…he was right.
Neither of those incidents are represented in Emery’s statistics…since I have both hands free, I can flip him off.
What is your answer PM?
Ha ha ha ha ha [choke, cough] ha ha ha ha!
EmeryTheAntiSemiticUSAHater asking for a reply? For a person who had never answered a question directed at him after being thoroughly p0wned time and time again. What chutzpa! Oh, I am sorry, did I offend your antisemitic sensibility?
When AngryClown is not around, I trust Emery to ask the stupidest questions on any given topic. He rarely lets me down.
Is “victims in all nonfatal violent crimes reported using a firearm to defend themselves during the incident.” a really good measurement of the deterrent effect of gun ownership on crime? Probably no, but it’s important to Emery.
Does a typical criminal wonder at “how many people carry weapons in public” when contemplating a crime? Emery thinks so.
But he’s kind of silly.
Emery, only 4-5% of adults have carry permits, and not all of them carry all the time. You also have the factors that (a) it costs a decent amount of money to get a permit and (b) you want to avoid trouble if you can, and it doesn’t surprise me that most violent crime victims who survive don’t shoot their attackers. This is especially the case since the nastiest cities are (a) poor and unable to afford carry permits and (b) often very hostile to permit holders.
Plus, let’s look at the Obama DOJ’s semantics; they are limiting the sample to victims, which by definition will exclude people like Tweety who have avoided becoming a victim by responsible use of a firearm.
Honestly, you can’t see through the game they’re playing? Cripes….