Shot in the Dark

Unexpected!

As carry permit applications, pre-purchase background checks, and gun and ammo sales roar to new all-time records, the NRA is being crushed with new and renewing members.

Scarcely a peep in the media (especially about the membership).

But one Democrat politician and “NRA member” “quits” – and the media is lined up out the door.

If I were a betting man (and I’m not), I’d wager good money that:

  1. He was an “NRA member” for the same reason I “joined the teachers union” when I taught a semester at Metro State, and
  2. Come his next campaign, he’s going to have at least one pic in his campaign lit, decked out in hunting camo with a duck gun.

But I won’t blame anyone for not taking any action on that bet.

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Mitch Berg

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20 responses to “Unexpected!”

  1. Dave Thul Avatar
    Dave Thul

    I’d guess the politician in question realized he was in a unique position to make a statement that would get national notice by lefties, and bring in a windfall of campaign cash for him.

  2. Bento Guzman Avatar
    Bento Guzman

    The coverage of this by our ‘unbiased’ media is awful. It is clear that they simply reprinted or rephrased a self-serving press release from a greasy politician.
    -For the first time, Oceguera is running in a liberal district.
    -Not a single reporter seems to have contacted the NRA to see if Oceguera really was a member, and when he purchased his supposed lifetime membership. The phrase ‘life member’ is suspect. He joined on teh day he was born? Or maybe last week?
    -Oceguera made the boiler plate claims that anti-gun types always make, e.g, he comes from a family of hunters (note that hunting is not a constitutional right and Oceguera never actually says that he has so much as touched a gun in his life).
    -Oceguera claims that ““Still, the NRA opposes any legislation that would help keep guns out of the hands of terrorists, criminals and the mentally ill.” This a lie commonly told by people with an irrational hatred of the NRA.

  3. Emery Avatar
    Emery

    Question about concealed carry at public events

    Imagine you are in a hotel ballroom at some sort of event with 500 people sitting in tables of ten. 25% of all the guests are carrying concealed handguns as various folks have advised us to do.

    Shots ring out somewhere in the room. Someone shouts “active shooter” and another person shouts “terrorist”. Three people at your table draw their weapons to stop the shooter. Similar numbers do so at the other tables. As you survey the room you now see about 100 people brandishing handguns and yelling. One of them thinks he spots the active shooter and fires. Someone at your table mistakes that person for the active shooter and fires at him. A person across the room spots the chap at your table and fires at him.

    Some fraction of the 100 armed people join the mayhem. Each one thinks he is acting to protect himself and the other good people. The original bad guy active-shooter decamps from the scene.

    In the final FBI forensic report it is found that the bad guy shot two people and the good guys killed or wounded 23 innocents.

    Do you find this scenario entirely implausible? Imagine that the lights go out. Imagine that some people are running, and pushing to get to the exits as others are shooting.

    LEOs are trained to identify targets and to attempt to distinguish the innocents from perpetrator. Ordinary citizens are not. LEOs are at least moderately accurate with their handguns. Many ordinary “good guys with guns” will not be accurate handgun shooters – especially under stress and in a chaotic setting.

    Most who believe in concealed carry will say to themselves “I’m not the ordinary Joe. I shoot accurately and I have good situational awareness.” So, lets grant that 10% of the armed folks are like you.

    That still leaves 90 relatively untrained guys shooting fairly randomly in a confined space.

  4. Bento Guzman Avatar
    Bento Guzman

    “LEOs are trained to identify targets and to attempt to distinguish the innocents from perpetrator.”
    So are concealed carry people, I presume. Wait, scratch that, C&C are trained only to shoot in self defense. You went off the rails in your hypothetical, Emery.

  5. Bento Guzman Avatar
    Bento Guzman

    Remember when that racist Black guy went crazy in CA? And the cops shot up a truck that didn’t even fit the description of the bad guy’s vehicle?

  6. Bento Guzman Avatar
    Bento Guzman

    Empirical data is available. Israelis are under constant threat of terrorist attack. Lots of them carry guns. How often does Emery’s scenario occur in Israel?

  7. Emery Avatar
    Emery

    There is no clear right to bear arms under Israeli law.

    /The regulations plan to make officers with the rank of lieutenant or higher and non-commissioned officers with the rank of staff-sergeant or higher eligible for firearms permits. Previously an officer had to have the rank of captain or above. The regulations remove the requirement that the applicant serve in the rank for at least two years before applying.

    The ministry said that people who have served in certain special units in the IDF and security services will be eligible, though they did not specify which ones. In addition, people who have passed the Shin Bet’s (Israel Security Agency) security guards course and those who have completed the Airports Authority security guard course can be eligible for a permit. They also said people who had graduated security guard courses approved and led by the Israel Police could be eligible.
    /In Israel firearms licenses are typically only given if one can prove they have reason to carry a gun – for instance if they work in security or law enforcement or live in a dangerous area like the West Bank. They must also be over 21 years old, a resident of Israel for over three years, and pass a mental and physical exam, a shooting test and background checks by the Public Security Ministry. They are then allowed to order a gun through a gun store with approval of the ministry and given a one-time supply of 50 bullets to take home./
    http://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/Israel-eases-gun-laws-in-bid-to-cope-with-Palestinian-lone-wolf-attacks-423925

  8. Joe Doakes Avatar
    Joe Doakes

    Yes, Emery, the situation is entirely implausible. You don’t understand why because of your elitist, bigoted stereotype of people who carry pistols.

    Imagine the same banquet hall but all diners are tenured university faculty members. 25% of the diners were female professors who ordered steak and were given steak knives with their meals. The guest speaker tells a joke about “her time of the month” and several male diners laugh. The enraged female profs grab their steak knives and wildly stab their inappropriately humorous colleagues. Final result, 2 dead, 23 wounded. Totally implausible?

    Yes. Because that’s not how female college professors would act. Oh, they’d be plenty pissed. There’d be glares, catty comments, Facebook posts, tweets, written complaints to the Regents . . . but reflexive physical violence isn’t their way. The scenario is burlesque, a farce, a fantasy.

    As is yours.

  9. mnbubba Avatar
    mnbubba

    The first thing I want to see is actual proof that he is an actual member of the NRA. Because trusting the veracity of any politicain, ESPECIALLY a Democrat, is a mug’s game. And expecting any fact checking of a Democrat by the MSM is a complete fantasy.

  10. Bento Guzman Avatar
    Bento Guzman

    When a person says that they hope to have a weapon to hand if they are in a crowd and experience a mass shooting, I don’t believe that they mean to act in a proactive manner (other than to defend themselves or innocents). Conceal carry ain’t a license to hunt human prey. It’s not a posse membership card.
    I do not carry a gun, but if I did, and I was in a public place and heard gun shots, I would do what a person without a gun would do — try to get away from the area.
    If I was in a convenience store and I realized that a crook was conducting an armed robbery, I would try to avoid detection and wait for the bad guy to leave. If the crook started shooting I suppose I would have to act, but it would be pretty scary. I wouldn’t be enthusiastic about shooting.
    From what the late Joel Rosenberg wrote in the comments here at SITD, and what Mitch has mentioned, a conceal carry permit is far from a license to kill.

  11. Mitch Berg Avatar
    Mitch Berg

    Emery,

    Along with what BG said, the premise of your problem is a little stretchy.

    For starters – 25%? Maybe at an NRA convention – and there, people know that a carry permit doesn’t confer “junior lawman” status. Carry permittees as a rule don’t clear rooms, don’t hunt suspects. They deal with immediate attacks on their person, or nearby. That’s it. So a roomful of carry permittees, told there was an active shooter, provided they followed the training they DO have, would draw, watch for immediate unambiguous lethal threats, and vacate the area as expeditiously as possible – perhaps taking cover and overwatching until it was safe to do so.

    Under MN self-defense law? If I were in the banquet hall, my first impulse would be to check my route to an exit (likely not the one I came in), and move out. If there was a stampede, I’d find some cover and, if worse came to worst, try to ambush any shooter.

    As to the police training? Well, it has its place. But in addition to BG’s notes, there’s this little bon mot; in lethal force self-defense situations, citizens shoot the wrong person 1-2% of the time. Law enforcement does it 9-11%. That’s not entirely a riff on cops; they frequently arrive at situations that are fluid, charged and intensely ambiguous. (There’s also a cautionary note emerging about a rash of accidental discharges and shootings; many cops seem to have gotten in the habit of keeping their fingers on the trigger from the moment they draw, which is of course a no-no. So “training” isn’t exactly an airtight failsafe.

  12. kel Avatar
    kel

    Emery is auditioning for Heather Martens position at Protect Minnesota by updating the cri de cœur from “blood in the streets” to something nearer and dearer to his fellow elites, hence his: “there will be blood in the banquet halls!!”

  13. Night Writer Avatar
    Night Writer

    That’s what I was thinking, Kel. The “Blood in the Streets” shibboleth has become so farcical that perhaps only Obama would try to use it with a straight face. So, time to puff up some more scary scenarios. Buy let’s say you’re in a banquet hall – or maybe an office Christmas party – where no one has a CCW and the only people with guns are “active shooters”. I bet your first thought would be, “It’s a good thing no one else here is armed or else this could really get ugly!”

  14. Emery Avatar
    Emery

    Then apparently the slogan: ‘Only a good guy with a gun can stop a bad guy with a gun” comes with many qualifiers.

  15. Night Writer Avatar
    Night Writer

    Whatever. It is certainly clear that bad guys with guns are not stopped by more gun laws.

  16. kel Avatar
    kel

    “Then apparently the slogan: ‘Only a good guy with a gun can stop a bad guy with a gun” comes with many qualifiers.” = Puerile Sophistry

  17. SmithStCrx Avatar
    SmithStCrx

    As to the Assemblyman’s Life Membership in the NRA, if his backstory is true, he comes from a family of hunters, it’s entirely possible that his parents bought him a Life Membership when he was a child or a baby (at a steep discount). Considering that every Gun Club I know about requires Club Members to be NRA Members, it’s a common occurrence in such families.
    OTOH, if he’s always run in a district similar to much of our own Iron Range, an NRA membership is almost a pre-req for running for office. Remember, the legislators that have derailed “Common Sense” gun control in Minnesota recently are the pro-gun DFLers.

  18. TriggerWarning:Swiftee Avatar
    TriggerWarning:Swiftee

    Someone that goes to shoot up a banquet hall is going to do just that; stand there and shoot the place up. He’s the offense. Everyone else, armed or not, are going to go into defensive mode, ie; hit the floor and wait until the shooter comes to them. They are not going to run around emptying their magazines.

    Identifying the crazed muzzy or hate-filled leftist maniac is not going to be as difficult as Emery hoped and dreamed it would be.

  19. justplainangry Avatar
    justplainangry

    p0wned… again and again…

  20. Night Writer Avatar
    Night Writer

    Hmmm. It appears that the good guys with guns didn’t have any trouble identifying the bad guys with guns in this historic scenario:
    http://lesterdentmuses.com/2015/12/08/the-san-bernardino-terror-attack-and-lessons-from-the-northfield-minnesota-raid-of-1876/

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