From coast to coast – and, very possibly, in the halls of the Supreme Court – the human right of self-defense is pushing the orcs back into their rancid caves.

Which doesn’t stop them from trying to gnaw away at your human rights – to say nothing of your pocketbooks – like sweaty little rats.

In a year when the Legislature has to try to deal with a 5.8 billion dollar deficit of their own making, Rep. Michael Paymer (Orc, Saint Paul) thinks gun control is the kind of thing the Legislature should be wasting its time on:

From Virginia to Arizona, federal and state gun laws are loosening everywhere from national parks to Amtrak trains.

But in St. Paul, a proposal that would send Minnesota in the opposite direction is headed toward its first hearing Friday — a bill requiring background checks on the purchaser of any firearm sold at a gun show.

The proposal pits its DFL sponsor, St. Paul Rep. Michael Paymar, against the mighty arsenal of gun rights advocates and lobbyists who have managed to turn back nearly every effort to tighten Minnesota’s gun laws in the past.

The article – by the often-excellent Mike Kaszuba – is correct, but only if you cut history off at about 1996.  Up until 1974, for example, Minnesota required no permit, training, certificate, background check or anything else for a law-abiding citizen to carry a concealed handgun.  Starting in that year – a nadir in many, many ways for the state of Minnesota as well as the nation – the gun control movement started picking up steam in Minnesota, peaking in the mid-late eighties.  The usurping of our law-abiding citizen’s human right of self-defense didn’t really start to ebb until groups like the Gun Owners Civil Rights Alliance and Concealed Carry Reform Now started their organizing efforts – to this day, one of the greatest victories of grass-roots politics in Minnesota history.

How fuzzy-headed is Paymar’s timing?  Even Kaczuba points it out:

In a session dominated by pressing financial issues, it’s unclear how much time and energy lawmakers have for an explosive gun control debate. The GOP already is saying no way. But just the attempt is arousing serious passions as all sides take aim at Friday’s hearing.

Paymar knows when to toss out a boogeyman:

“I’m not backing down,” said Paymar, a veteran lawmaker who chairs the House public safety finance division. “I think there’s an undue fear of the [National Rifle Association] here at the Legislature.”

Of course, the NRA has been a relative bit player (albeit important) in the gun control debate in Minnesota.  GCRA and CCRN-MN have done the heavy lifting, and still have a pretty powerful mailing list; the last time the DFL tried to gnaw away at the law-abiding citizens’ human rights (the late ’90s and early ’00’s votes against Shall-Issue), outstate DFLers got spanked, many of them being tossed from office in defeats largely attributable to the state groups’ organizing.

I’m wondering what some of the outstate DFLers are thinking right now; harried by the Tea Party and their party’s association with the tax-guzzling spending-whores of the metro DFL delegation, they’ve gotta be thinking “thanks for nothing, Paymar; you’ve painted a metaphorical, rhetorical, electoral target on my butt”.

How fuzzy-headed is the timing of Paymar’s bill?  Even Kaszuba points it out (emphasis added):

Whatever the outcome, the nation’s pro and anti-gun lobbies are using Paymar’s proposal to make their points. Gun rights groups say the law makes no sense at a time when gun registrations have gone up in Minnesota, yet crime has gone down.

Serious crime decreased in Minnesota during four of the past five years, while permits by individuals to carry weapons in the state have risen by more than 6,000 in the past seven years.

Kaszuba is correct in spirit, but he’s got the numbers wrong; as of today, 71,182 Minnesotans have carry permits (and hundreds more every month) obtained since 2003.

I’ll be watching this.

(Via AAA)

This entry was posted by by Mitch Berg on Thursday, March 4th, 2010 at 1:00 pm and is filed under Democrat Party, Minnesota Politics, Progressive Tyranny, Victim Disarmament. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.