A Pajama Boy Night Out

SCENE:  Mitch BERG is at National Night Out, in Saint Paul, this past Tuesday.   While walking through the crowd at one of the neighborhood block parties, he notices Avery LIBRELLE, wandering from person to person,  accosting them.  BERG listens in. 

LIBRELLE ( reading off a sheet of paper, to a woman pushing a stroller):  Hey, maam!  Do you know what percentage of gun deaths in Minnesota are suicides?

WOMAN PUSHING STROLLER:  Er…(looks uncomfortable – then looks at her phone).  Oops, sorry – I think I have a call…(holds phone to ear) Yes?  Hi!  Oh, really…(makes international “sorry, I’m on the phone” signal to LIBRELLE as she quickly pushes stroller away).

(Undeterred, LIBRELLE walks to another bystander – an African-American man holding a beer and talking with his neighbors)

LIBRELLE:  Heh.  Hey!  (Man turns to LIBRELLE, looking mildly annoyed.  LIBRELLE reads off sheet of paper)  Do you believe that anyone buying a gun should first have to pass a background check to show they are not prohibited by law from owning a gun?

MAN:  Every time I’ve ever bought a gun, I had to take a background check.  It’s the criminals who don’t take the background checks, mis…er…si…er… (MAN stops talking)

LIBRELLE (reading off sheet)  I”m sorry you disagree with three-quarters of gun owners.  Have a good night”.  (LIBRELLE abruptly walks away – then notices BERG).  

LIBRELLE:  Hey, Merg!  I’m out changing hearts and minds about guns!

BERG:  Er, yeah.  Do tell.

LIBRELLE:  I’m reading from the “conversation starters” Heather Martens and “Protect Minnesota” sent to start conversations with the public on National Night Out.

BERG:  And how’s that going?

LIBRELLE:  About as well as my conversations with my family about Obamacare at our Festivus celebrations a couple of years ago.

BERG:  Naturally.

And SCENE.  

23 thoughts on “A Pajama Boy Night Out

  1. Aw, you have to make up stuff for your fictional characters don’t you, because the reality and facts just don’t work for you.

    Do you really believe, as you have your black fictional character claim, that everyone who buys a gun gets a background check? Private sales – no background checks. Gun show sales, other than by FFL, no background checks. Pawn shops, often no background checks. Internet sales, no background checks.

    Given the recent levels of gun violence in Minnesota, it would appear we have a problem. Every gun starts out as a legal sale. We need to be making sure that all sales are accompanied by background checks so we stop making it so damn easy for the wrong people to get firearms. That would include criminals, and those who commit suicide — more often murder / suicides where they kill other people before killing themselves. And we need to hold people to a higher standard of safe and secure storage.

    Do you know anyone, liberal or otherwise, who celebrates Festivus?

    Did you know how popular Obamacare has become, even among Republicans?

    No of course you wouldn’t mention that. It wouldn’t fit with the skewed picture you try to paint. Satire only works when it contains more truth than you have here.

  2. Aw, you have to make up stuff for your fictional characters don’t you, because the reality and facts just don’t work for you.

    The real facts are that Heather Martens published a list of conversation-starters.

    Satire only works when it contains more truth than you have here.

    I’ll ask – not that I suspect you’ll answer – what specically is untrue?

    And as I’ve shown over the past 13 years, every single actual fact on this issue supports me, and refudiates you.

    Enjoy the weekend.

  3. “That’s one reason why I support requiring that every gun sale include a background check to make it more difficult for a person considering suicide to obtain a gun. Do you agree?”
    How does a “background check” determine whether or not a person is considering suicide? The language is f*cked, “is” is present tense, not past tense.
    Anyhow, whatever test you could come up with that would determine whether or not a person is considering suicide wouldn’t mean that person had no 2nd amendment rights to bear arms.

  4. DG,

    As usual, for a self-styled fact-checker, you rarely if ever deal in facts.

    Given the recent levels of gun violence in Minnesota, it would appear we have a problem.

    They’ve dropped 50% in the past 20 years. The “problem” is your narrative is BS.

    Every gun starts out as a legal sale.

    So? Along the way some are stolen, some fall into dodgy hands, some are dealt to narcotraficantes by our administration (including, according to one report, the gun used in Chattanooga).

    We need to be making sure that all sales are accompanied by background checks so we stop making it so damn easy for the wrong people to get firearms.

    Which will make sure that the law-abiding gun owner is and remains law-abiding, and will do nothing to curb the flow of illegal gun sales.

    That would include criminals, and those who commit suicide — more often murder / suicides where they kill other people before killing themselves.

    Complete BS. While over 60% of firearm deaths are suicides, VERY few are murder-suicides.

    You’re making things up again.

    And we need to hold people to a higher standard of safe and secure storage.

    Oh, do we, then? What “standard” do you propose that’s not more useless legal-wankery?

  5. The “background check” is a trojan horse. Once you have a law that requires an official okey-dokey from the government, they can arbitrarily condition the background check with whatever they like. Going through a divorce? Fail. A DUI on your record? Fail. Behind on your child support? Fail.
    The goal of all would-be totalitarians is to require government approval to exercise your rights, which means that they aren’t rights at all.

  6. Prussian Blue is right. I was, of course, answering from the perspective of someone who believes the other side is sincere in its desire to curb crime. That is, of course, a pollyannaism that I only indulge in rhetorically.

    Yes, DG – the “background check” is nothing but a backdoor to confiscation. The law-abiding already pass background checks every time they buy. Criminals never will.

    All else is BS.

  7. DG:

    To say I’m not being truthful, this, which I link in my piece, would have to not exist – along with Heather Martens’ suggestion that people use the material as “conversation-starters” at National Night Out.

    But it does, and she did.

    DG, when it comes to “fact”, you are a walking, talking Berg’s Seventh Law library.

  8. Perhaps a quick appeal to data will help our puppy out; if gun control reduces gun crime, please explain to me why the murder rate greatly increased after the 1968 Gun Control Act came into force, and decreased as states implemented shall issue concealed carry?

    http://www.infoplease.com/ipa/A0873729.html

    And really, everybody here understands that Mitch greatly enjoys truthy fiction. Many of his guests, myself included, concur. In this case, the clear implication of Ms. Martens’ talking points for gun grabbers is that she intends for people to do almost precisely what Avery is doing; badger friends, neighbors, and strangers with the talking points. Since 40% of households have a firearm in them (plus or minus), we would also infer that Avery would get the exact kind of pushback she/he/it is getting.

    Honestly, Doggone, we’re going to keep rubbing your nose in that mess until you stop making it. By the way; when are you going to fess up and admit that you said that transgender therapy changes a person’s DNA?

    (like I said, we’ll stop rubbing your nose in it when you stop making it)

  9. Mostly unrelated, but I thought I’d share because threadjacking is a thing here, from what I understand. We brought an old dresser into our store a few months ago, and the bottom drawer didn’t slide in right, so I took it out . . . and strapped to the back of it with a belt and staples was a Walther P-38. It was completely corroded and non-functional, but WOW, what a find.

  10. Arguing actual facts about gun death prevention doesn’t get you anywhere with totalitarians, because they don’t care about gun deaths. Consider, for a moment, the silliness of inflating gun deaths by including suicides. These people are pro-euthanasia, for God’s sake. It’s all about power with them. In this case, they see self-defense with a firearm as giving license for white conservative guys (whom they hate) to shoot Blacks (their preferred class, these days).
    It’s not about facts. It’s about, as Lenin said, Who versus whom.

  11. Mitch: what specically is untrue? – “specically”?

    Yoss: Pshaw! If it was P-08, THEN that would be a WOW!

  12. The “WOW” factor for me was that it was strapped to the back of a dresser drawer, with a round in the chamber. What was the previous owner expecting to happen, and why the hell did they forget there was a loaded pistol strapped to the back of a dresser drawer?

    It also made me think: if someone wanted to traffic in illegal arms, they could just advertise a dresser for sale on Craigslist *wink, wink*, and then cram the dresser with illegal guns. Sure, a dresser for sale for $45,000 would be suspicious, but I’ve seen weirder stuff on Craigslist.

  13. It gets tiresome to keep refuting lies, but for the sake of any new readers here . . .

    Gun deaths come in two groups: young Black guys who shoot each other and old White guys who shoot themselves. Epidemiology of Firearm Violence in the 21st Century, Annual Review of Public Health.

    Old White men who lose hope turn to a reliable friend – a firearm. They don’t buy a new gun to commit suicide so a background check won’t stop them. They need mental health treatment but know they’ll lose their hunting rights if they ask for help, so they won’t ask. Nothing on Heather’s list will prevent these deaths.

    Young Black men shoot each other for turf and for pride. They are too young to buy or have criminal records so, knowing they can’t pass background checks, they don’t bother: they buy stolen guns from other criminals. Nothing on Heather’s list will prevent those deaths.

    Despite hysterical claims from the Left, nobody has ever shot anybody with a gun purchased from a pawn shop or gun show without passing a background check; at least, not that I know of. It’s a boogyman to scare innocent people. Show me there’s a problem using specific examples and I’d be willing to consider a solution, but not before.

  14. I could see a guy buying a gun and hiding it from the family — wife might not like it, dad doesn’t even want the kids to know there is one in the house. Eventually dad forgets about it or dies. Dresser ends up in an estate sale.
    Or it belonged to a 1960s era spy who got caught. Did the drawer smell of Old Spice? (I think that Old Spice was the preferred aftershave of cold war spies).
    When a grandfather finally went into the home, one of my uncles searched the house for guns (we knew he had several). He found pistols hidden all over the place. Grand-dad was old and getting confused, and he kept forgetting where he stashed them, and so he would go out and buy another one and hide it. Repeat for twenty years. They were all cheapies, nothing collectible.

  15. I can see that. But, Jeebus! I’m used to finding old photographs and assorted costume jewelry in dressers, but that was the first time a loaded, albeit non-functional, pistol showed up in our store. I did find a stashed knife once, however. I guess the lesson is: don’t break into old people’s homes, because they’re probably armed in one way or another.

    Or, just don’t break into people’s homes in general.

  16. What was the previous owner expecting to happen

    If you are going to keep a gun for self-defense, it better be loaded with a round chambered. Otherwise it is but a very expensive paperweight. In a heat of the altercation, whatcha gonna do, go down into the basement to look for the correct ammo to load up? Regardless, it should have been in the safe.

    But yes, discovering a weapon whilst getting rid of dust bunnies is a WOW.

  17. Always amusing when an abortion loving, leftist slob stops by with a pant load of concern for gun violence.

    Here’s a couple of FACTS, coming at ya DG.

    Obama is on the way out…taking his resume of utter failure, his forged birth certificate, his Klingon wife and heading home.

    The GOP is poised for an epic takeover. Senate, House and POTUS under conservative control…Obamacare is headed for the crapper, Planned Baby parts will be history, the Iran deal is going down bigtime and an ice cube in hell has better chances than that you’ll see any new gun regulations.

    Deal with it.

  18. The GOP is poised for an epic takeover. Senate, House and POTUS under conservative control

    I wouldn’t put that much confidence in that statement. The left are MASTERS of voter fraud, with the entire media and half the country behind them.

  19. Mittens – if the 3-way sweep you described would be Republican, not conservative. If it comes to pass you will still have McConnell and Boehner in Congress – and O-care isn’t going anywhere under their guidance. If Walker wins the Presidency, there might be real warfare between he and they; they’re much more sympatico with Obama and buying votes than they’ll ever be with Walker, unless he brings a real posse of new congressman and senators with him in numbers to push them out of control. If Jeb wins then the only thing that’s going to change is perhaps the brand of vaseline used at the spending orgy.

  20. It occurs to me that the Old White Guy suicide problem will solve itself as we die off to be replaced by Pajama Boys and Illegal Immigrants, none of whom are part of the Evil Gun Culture.

    After that, the only shooting will be a young Black men killing each other and those lives don’t matter to Liberals (only the lives of young Black men shot by White men matter). Plus a few lone-wolf Muslims committing acts of “workplace violence” and a few nutters who can’t be committed because it would infringe on their liberty and give the ACLU heart attacks.

    So this “gun problem” will melt away in a few years by itself, without any legislation at all, without new bureaucracy, without hiring more government agents. In that light, society does not need to Do Something; instead, the correct answer is to Do Nothing. Which is precisely what the NRA and all us right-wing kook gun nuts advocate. See, I knew we were right all along.

  21. And another thing . . . why should it bother Liberals if Old White Men kill themselves with firearms? We’re the Bad Guys, aren’t we? The Oppressors, the Vote Deniers, the Women War Wagers, the Privileged, College Rapists, Superbowl Abusers, the Root of All Evil and Bane of Everyone Else’s Existence, Stupidest One In the Family, Ignorant of Every New Product Advertised and Totally Without Redeeming Social Value – at least, that’s the message I keep hearing from Liberals, especially in the media.

    The sooner we die off, the sooner the Pajama Boys, illegal immigrants, baby daddies and ganstas can bring about a Worker’s Paradise in America. I would think Heather and DG and their ilk would be thrilled about that.

  22. Joe Doakes wrote:
    “And another thing . . . why should it bother Liberals if Old White Men kill themselves with firearms?”
    It doesn’t. This is all about power. If the second amendment guaranteed you the right not to bear arms, liberals would force you to do so. Kind of horrible when you think about it, but this is the world . . .

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