Lie First, Lie Always: The MinnPost Makes It Up As They Go Along

A couple of years ago, it almost appeared as if the MinnPost – a creation of Minnesota liberals with deep pockets intended to serve as a DFL PR outlet – might do the unthinkable; engage in some responsible journalism on the issue of the Second Amendment and gun rights.

Oh, make no mistake; they did plenty of dross – the normally excellent Erik Black underwhelmed with some of his work, and let’s not talk about their “public health” angle.  But they also engaged freelance journeyman journalist Mike Cronin, who did some excellent, inquisitive, even-handed work on the subject – so much so that the MinnPost apparently stopped publishing it.

They’re back to classic form, with this bit from Kristoffer Tigue, who apparently hasn’t gotten the memo – which someone needs to pass along to him.  To wit:

Heather Martens has never, not once, said a single, original, substantive, true thing about the Second Amendment or the Gun issue.  

Just to elaborate a little, and yet as much as any journalist should need? If you use Heather Martens as a source, your credibility is shot, as it were, right out of the gate.

Just try to count all the lies, non-sequiturs and piles of complete buncombe that this article slops in front of the public.

A Steaming Pile Of Premise:  It’s hard to know where to start with this bit:

Eighteen-year-old Dae’veon has seen everything from assault rifles to handguns, and it wasn’t hard for him to find them. In fact, he’s owned several handguns, shotguns and even a submachine gun, he said. And all of it he bought without a background check, no questions asked.

Last year, Dae’veon, who agreed to talk if his last name was kept anonymous, was caught with a gun and charged with aggravated robbery.

That’s when he decided he needed to keep his head down, focus on school and try to turn his life around. But he knows if he wanted to, all he’d have to do is make a quick phone call to get another gun, he said. “It’s like going to the store to buy a pop,” he said. “You just call whoever you know that has a gun and tell them what you want to spend.”

So let’s stop and take stock, here; we’re being asked not only to believe that seventeen-year-old Dae’veon owned pistols and “assault rifles” (already illegal for juveniles) and a “submachine gun” (illegal for most everyone for about 80 years, now), but that he bought all of them (illegal for minors)..

…from “dealers” who didn’t give him a background check while carrying out acts that, as we’ve seen above, are state and federal felonies?

Why, perhaps if we passed a background check law, those dealers would have been able to gently chide young Dae’veon to wait until he was older?

Do people actually think young Dae’veon bought his little arsenal from a law-abiding citizen, much less Gander Mountain?

Earlier this month, two DFL lawmakers, Sen. Ron Latz and Rep. Dan Schoen, introduced a bill that would require background checks on all gun sales in the state, a measure supported by a number of advocacy groups and law enforcement associations, who say it could help prevent firearms from reaching the wrong hands — like those with criminal backgrounds or minors like Dae’veon. It too has received pushback from gun-rights groups.

And for good reason.  The bill is complete baked wind.  It asks us to accept two complete balderdash premises:   that criminals will follow laws, and that government will follow the rules.

Our Diligently Law-Abiding Criminal Class:  I’m going to be charitable, and assume the reporter, Mr. Tigue, just doesn’t know the issue all that well, and is reciting what he’s been told by one Bloomberg operative or another.

There are some tells, of course (emphasis added):

And yet, for all the disagreements over whether increased background checks will work, one fact is beyond dispute when it comes to guns in Minnesota. Like it or not, they are remarkably easy to acquire.

Well, no.   They’re mildly annoying to acquire if you’re a law-abiding citizen.  They may or may not be easy if you’re a criminal buying from other criminals.

Which is a distinction the gun grabbers really, really want to keep obscured.

In Minnesota, to legally buy a gun from a store requires that the purchaser be at least 18 and have a permit issued by the applicant’s county sheriff’s office — a process that also subjects the applicant to both a state and federal background check.

But here’s the wrinkle: For those who already have a permit and simply want to sell a gun to someone else, there’s no law requiring a background check.

Therein lies the problem, said Heather Martens, the executive director of Protect Minnesota, a group advocating for tightening gun laws. The lack of regulation around private gun sales makes it too easy for those who shouldn’t own guns to be able to get them, a complication that goes beyond the oft-cited issue of gun show sales.

“If you want to fill the trunk of your car with guns and drive to any street, park there and start selling guns, you can,” Martens said. “There’s no law against that.”

Remember – it’s Heather Martens.  She has never said a single substantial, original, true thing about the gun issue.  And she’s not starting today.

So while there’s no law against loading up a trunk with guns and trying to sell them,  there are laws against selling them to criminals, and minors.   If they sell a gun to someone who goes on to use it in a crime, and it gets traced back them them, there are nasty legal consequences.

You can even do it on line, if you want:

Technology has made things even easier. Many individuals also sell their guns online on websites like Armslist.com, where all people need to do is create a free account to gain access to people selling firearms all around the state.

Right.

Now let’s say you’re one of the people who sold a “submachine gun” (banned by the feds since the thirties) to a young Dae’veon (also a crime); in other words, someone who routinely commits gun-trafficking felonies.   Ron Latz’s background check bill goes into effect.

Are you suddenly going to start running background checks from the back of your car?

If you’re the guy fencing stolen pistols in the men’s room of a bar in Farmington, are you going to step outside and run a NICS check?

If you said “why, sure”, then you might be a Ron Latz voter who thinks Heather Martens makes sense.

11 thoughts on “Lie First, Lie Always: The MinnPost Makes It Up As They Go Along

  1. I saw Bigfoot a year ago. No, really, in my backyard, right here in Como Park.

    Proof? Waddya mean, proof? You mean, like names, dates, makes, models, serial numbers? Why would I need proof to back up my incredible story – don’t you trust me?

  2. Why, there otta be a law against doing things that are against the law!
    No journalist who believes it is easy to legally buy a gun has legally bought a gun. Call it Bento Guzman’s law of Journalism #1.

  3. FYI, this is what it takes to purchase a hand gun in my state:
    1) Take and pass an approved course (8 hours, cost ~$100).
    2) Purchase a gun and pay for it. The dealer makes you pay for it, but does not release it to you until the state approves.
    3) Carry your paperwork to the county firearms office.
    4) Pay a clerk $12, get fingerprinted and photographed.
    5) Wait two weeks for the background check, etc.
    6) Go back to the county firearms office. Collect your permit, providing the state has decided to give you one.
    7) Go to the store where you bought your gun. Collect the gun and return to the county firearms office.
    8) The county then checks to gun to make sure it is the gun you were permitted to buy. The gun’s serial number is placed on file.
    9) Take your gun home.
    10) You are now allowed to own a particular handgun. You are not allowed to carry it. You are not allowed to keep it loaded. If you want to shoot it, you must carry it in a locked case in your vehicle to an approved range, and you are not allowed to travel anywhere else, to and from, while you have the weapon in your vehicle.

  4. Procedure for a Hawaiian criminal to get a gun:

    1. Go to other criminal, peel of Benjamins and Hamiltons. Walk away with gun. Keep it loaded, carry it where you want until you get caught.

  5. In a case I know of here, the alternate procedure was

    1) Find a friend who has a close relative with an FFL.
    2) Friend buys gun of choice from said relative.
    3) Relative with FFL it mails it to friend.
    4) Friend sells it to buyer, no questions asked.

    Several felonies are committed in the process.

  6. Read the comments; those from Real Americans are devastatingly accurate and calmly presented. The gun grabbing gerbils are so jaw droppingly ill informed it is no wonder they can get no traction; everyone can tell they’re idiots, ’cause they tell you so. And it is criminally biased journalism like the article in question that keeps them stupid as stumps.

    They are their own worst enemies.

  7. Anybody with the name Dae’veon:
    1) Is illegitimate, i.e. a bastard.
    2) Grew up supported by our tax dollars while his mother collected welfare.
    3) Has not been, and will not be a productive member of society.
    4) Is a career criminal. Any pretense of “turning his life around” is a line of BS intended to deflect pressure to go straight. That’s what you tell the PO or the white liberal reporter.
    That he can acquire weapons by one cell phone call or text should surprise no one but the most addled Bernie Sanders supporter. Criminals can always get guns, despite the toughest of gun laws. They need them to do business.

  8. One of the MinnPost commentators had a suggestion that we focus on publishing the names and bios of those victims of gun violence. Personally I’d be happy to do that after the commentator first writes the names and bios of the Armenians who were stripped of their firearms before the Turks committed their genocide. Of course even if he could get 10% of their names he’d still be writing day and night since there were several hundred thousand defenseless Armenians slaughtered by their government. Or maybe he’d prefer to write the bios of the several million Kulaks who were defenselessly murdered by their gun-grabbing governments. Those bios are just as important as the thousands of victims of gun violence here in the U.S.

  9. “golfdoc50 said:
    Anybody with the name Dae’veon . . .”
    Hanging onto a dumb name is, well, dumb. Derbyshire once published a good rant about people giving their kids absurd names, and the damage it caused them, voluntarily. “Voluntarily” because it is a label (his starting point was the number of children named ‘Clamydia” born in New York). You can call yourself whatever you want. Most people who call you by your first name won’t insist on seeing a birth certificate, and won’t care what it says, as long as you are not trying to defraud anyone. Many Asians will have an difficult to pronounce name on their birth certificate, but as courtesy many adopt an ‘American’ name. Shui becomes Sean, Choutou becomes Charlie, and so on. I like that, and I would certainly return the courtesy if I was in their position. My first and last name are German-American and difficult to pronounce for many people who have Chinese (or even Russian!) as a first language. If I had to work in China, I would tell my coworkers to call me Tang. If I had to work in Russia, I would tell my coworkers to call me Evgeny.

  10. Somewhere along the line, my name was inexplicably changed to “Dude”. I came to this conclusion because all of my coworkers under the age of 30 call me that.

Leave a Reply

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