Deterrence
By Mitch Berg
SCENE: MItch BERG is ordering an omelette at a local diner. Too late, he notices Avery LIBRELLE entering the building. There is no graceful exit.
LIBRELLE: Merg!
BERG: Er, hello, Av…
LIBRELLE: Shut up. The shooting in Minneapolis yesterday proved that “thoughts and prayers” aren’t enough. They were literally praying…
BERG: So it’s time to doooooooooooo something?
LIBRELLE: Why the tone of mockery? I’m serious. It’s time to…well, it’s time for action!
BERG: Any action?
LIBRELLE: Anything that works!
BERG: Great. So the state’s “red flag law” didn’t work, because for some reason nobody called the authorities about an apparently transgender person saying crazy things.
LIBRELLE: Heyyyyyy
BERG: And to ban guns you’ll have to repeal the Second Amendment…
LIBRELLE: Which we can dooooooo!
BERG: You can’t. You’ll need 2/3 of Congress – you might get 35%, once. And if for sake of argument you do, then yo’ll need 38 states. You might get 10, one time. So that’s not happening.
LIBRELLE: OK, wise guy, what do you have?
BERG: Something that been 100% effective so far in preventing school shootings.
LIBRELLE: Oooh, Go for it. I’m all ears.
BERG: It’s a policy used in 1,000 school districts nationwide. And in 25 years, there’ve been zero shootings at any of them, during school hours, on school property.
LIBRELLE: Let me guess- religious and home schools?
BERG: I said districts. Public. schools.
LIBRELLE: OK. So far so good. .
BERG: Not a single child harmed. That’s what we’re going for, right?
LIBRELLE: Right. Must be some really progressive policy!
BERG: They’ve rejected the “gun free zone” label. They allow staff to carry their own firearms. Some of them require training, others don’t’, but the point is, anyone thinking about shooting up a school has to reckon with the fact that any teacher, any principal, any janitor, any lunch lady can end them.
LIBRELLE: That’s horrible!
BERG: Why?
LIBRELLE: More guns ocn’t fix the problem.
BERG: First – it’s not “more guns”. It’s the possibility of any gun. And if “no school shootings” is your goal, then that seems to have hit the spot, doesn’t it?
LIBRELLE: That…just…
BERG: VIolates your sense of moral aesthetics?
But steam is coming out of Librelle’s ears.
And Scene.
August 28th, 2025 at 6:50 am
Scene 1: Exterior. Night. A dark alley in North Minneapolis. Dim human figures moving.
Scene 2: Exterior. Night. View from the street looking into a lit police station. Human figures moving inside.
Scene 3: Interior. TV studio. News anchorwoman sits in chair behind desk.
Woman: “Both of these scenes have men with guns. Which scene makes you afraid to go there? Is it the dark alley? Then it’s not the guns that are the problem, it’s the people holding the guns. We don’t need gun control, we need criminal control and crazy people control.”
August 28th, 2025 at 7:23 am
I’m going to state that this church massacre was in no small part due to yet another AWFL. When the shooter essentially declared himself to be insane (or at least have serious mental issues), the response of his mother (and father) was to indulge his insanity and sign off on the legal gender change (a fiction). No help. No therapy (that I know of).
Also, I’m curious why these tranny murder sprees so often end up in a suicide – even suicide by cop. Are the perpetrators convinced that killing will relieve their “pain” and then when they find out it doesn’t, the guilt is overwhelming? Suicidally so? I don’t know.
August 28th, 2025 at 9:20 am
JDM, in the case of this guy, his manifesto wasn’t so much about pain, but about how he thought the world and this country was effed up, so the action he was planning was more like destiny to him. I didn’t read it too in-depth.
Without in-depth analysis, I can’t say that he was looking to copycat or make himself morbidly famous on the way out. It was more like a feeling of resignation. “Everything is so bad, it leaves me no choice. I must do this”.
August 28th, 2025 at 10:12 am
That’s fair, BillC. I used the term pain as a proxy for whatever motivated him (that’s why I used quotes). Something for which he thought that shooting and possibly killing a roomful of children would justify.
August 28th, 2025 at 11:17 am
The old joke headline is: “Muslims fear backlash from tomorrows suicide bombing.”
It’s funny because Liberals always rush to defend Muslim killers and claim fear of backlash after every atrocity.
Frey and Walz have updated it to include trans. Very progressive.
August 28th, 2025 at 12:24 pm
^ You’re in good company, Mr Jones. From Norm Mac
What terrifies me is if ISIS were to detonate a nuclear device and kill 50 million Americans. Imagine the backlash against peaceful Muslims?
August 28th, 2025 at 5:54 pm
JFC…
What next? What heinous thing is left that isn’t normal for Minnesota?
August 29th, 2025 at 8:03 am
Good call, Merg.
https://xcancel.com/MrAndyNgo/status/1961162945553183225
Disturbing decoded parts of the Minneapolis trans mass sh—ter’s manifesto reveals he picked the Annunciation Catholic Church and school, where he once went and where his mother had worked, because it’s a “liberal school [that] does not allow teachers to carry [firearms].”