Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
it appears true heroism in the Obama era consists not of bravely facing the enemy in combat, but in kowtowing to the party line.
joe doakes
If Obama could run for a third term, we’d see the IRS running the militiary.
The Strib ran a relatively decent story about the background of the New Hope shooting incident, where 68 year old Ray Kmetz, using an illegally-obtained 12 gauge shotgun, shot and wounded two New Hope police officers before being killed.
The officers are recovering, Kmetz is dead, and the issue is mostly closed…
…except for the matter of Michael Garant.
All Straw, Nothing But Straw: Garant purchased several shotguns from an online gun auction. According to the Strib story:
Kmetz was the highest bidder for three shotguns from K-Bid Auction in Maple Plain, which were actually bought by Garant in August at Full Metal Gun Shop in Princeton, authorities have said. Garant informed gun shop owner Troy Buchholz that he used the alias “Ray Kmetz” during the online auction because he didn’t want people contacting him from K-Bid’s site, according to court documents.
Show me a law-abiding gun owner who doesn’t look at that story and ask “who does Garant think he is? The BATFE?”
As the story notes, the gun shop screwed up bad; the Strib writer (one David Chanen) talked with John Monson of Bill’s Gun Shop, who spelled out how it’s supposed to work. Long story short: not like that.
Longer story shorter; Garant allegedly used an illegal purchasing tactic to put a gun in the hands of Ray Kmetz.
And Garant is being charged. End of story. Right?
Not My Job, Man: Back in the 1990s, after some high profile shootings, the legislature and some city councils worked to give county prosecutors some tools to use against gun criminals, including straw buyers. These were laws that had the combined, bipartisan approval of anti-gun zealots and pro-Second Amendment Real Americans, by the way – because they went after criminals, rather than the law-abiding gun owner.
And the county prosecutors used those to tear into criminals who used guns with a vengeance.
No, not really. The laws largely languished. Sources tell me that former Ramsey County attorney Susan Gaertner pled the charges from the laws away as parts of plea bargain deals every single time, sticking zero gun criminals with charges stemming from the anti-gun-crime laws.
And yes, prosecutors have some discretion in their charges, and plea bargains are a useful tool for unclogging the courts. But it’s also no surprise that an extreme gun-grabber prosecutor would avoid the use of a law that might provide objective evidence that gun violence is a matter of violent people, not availability of firearms.
Susan Gaertner was that anti-Second-Amendment extremist. And some say Henco prosecutor Mike Freeman is, too (although he’s made a few good calls in his career)
Gun shop screws up bigtime.
Bored To Tears: When the police traced Ray Kmetz’s shotgun, the trail led to Garant.
You don’t need an expert to know what happened; Kmetz, who had been civilly committed several times, was utterly unable to buy a firearm. Garant allegedly bought the gun, using Kmetz’s name but his own background – and then showed up at the gun shop in Princeton and bought the gun under his own name.
How illegal is it? John Monson of Bill’s Gun Range calls it:
“This was a classic straw purchase,” Monson said. “If this guy couldn’t get arrested and charged, who could?”Monson says “internal process woulda stopped this cold”.
After the New Hope shooting, police traced the gun to Garant, and arrested him; it was the Thursday afternoon after the shooting took place.
And on Friday, notwithstanding the fact that the prosecutors have 36 hours to investigate and come up with evidence, Henco attorney Mike Freeman cut Garant loose – according to sources with knowledge of the situation, Garant was released as the Henco Sheriff’s office was still investigating.
Sheriff Stanek was not amused:
Sheriff Rich Stanek said he was befuddled by that decision. “We absolutely had state law supporting us,” he said. “We just need enforcement of current law.”
The state statute on straw buyers reads that “whoever recklessly furnishes a person with a dangerous weapon in conscious disregard of a known substantial risk that the object will be possessed or used in furtherance of a felony crime of violence is guilty of a felony.”
Stanek said he understands that the county attorney has prosecutorial discretion, but he believes the Legislature’s intent in creating the law supported charges against Garant.
According to Henco prosector Freeman (as related in the Strib), it was just too much a stretch (echoing Dakota County attorney and anti-gun zealot Jim Backstrom,who seems to think his attorneys are too incompetent to tell the difference between a murder and self-defense).
Here’s the applicable statute: MN 609.66.1c:
Subd. 1c.Felony; furnishing dangerous weapon. Whoever recklessly furnishes a person with a dangerous weapon in conscious disregard of a known substantial risk that the object will be possessed or used in furtherance of a felony crime of violence is guilty of a felony and may be sentenced to imprisonment for not more than ten years or to payment of a fine of not more than $20,000, or both.
Garant admitted to furnishing the weapon. The Strib story indicates there’s evidence that Garant knew Kmetz’s record made him ineligible to buy it himself. Proving Garant knew there was “substantial risk” – well, isn’t that why all those attorneys make the big taxpayer bucks? Admitting he knew Kmetz was unqualified is the very definition of “knowing and reckless!”
This should have been a no-brainer for Freeman’s office.
So why would Mike Freeman let a case like this slide, only for the Feds to pick it up?
Because he doesn’t want to give any, er, ammo to the Second Amendment movement by using a law we support to put an obvious criminal in jail?
Road Not Taken: But that last graf of mine is conjecture.
And it’s about the best I can manage right now – because I’m a mere blogger. A guy who writes polemics in his spare time, works a full time day job, yadda yadda.
You know what would help, though?
If there were an institution – perhaps one that owned things like printing presses and transmitters and, nowadays, websites. And maybe staffed by people whose job it is to look into stories like “why doesn’t the county attorney in the state’s most violent county use the straw buyer law to pin local charges on a guy who put a gun in the hands of a man who shot two cops?” People who, perhaps, consider themselves part of a near-monastic order of people who consider “the peoples’ right to know” a sacred calling, above reproach by mere lay people, but which exist to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable”…
…even if “the comfortable” is a former gubernatorial candidate from a party whose asses their various publications kiss with full tongue?
NPR’s Teri Gross – one of the most overpraised figures in the American media, a woman who is to interviewing what Jay Cutler has been as a quarterback – busted out her deep thoughts about history and politics in a recent interview with American Sniper star Bradley Cooper.
Gross started with the obvious – NPR is soaking in bias (emphasis added):
“Clint Eastwood directed the film – and very well. He directed it very well, I think,” she said. “But I’ll tell you, after he interviewed the chair at the Republican National Convention, I thought, wow, I’d be scared to work with him after that. And I’m wondering if you had any reservations about, you know, having him direct the film knowing that he could interview the chair.”
Cooper laughed: “You got to ask him about that one time (laughter) if you ever get a chance to.”
But it’s Gross’s deep thoughts about the nature of mankind’s most brutal habit, and the place of morality, that is the real big news (emphasis added):
Gross also sounded strange when she insisted that people on the Left want to oppose the war, but support the troops, but “they draw the line when the troops had to do something like kill someone.”
In other words, they support the military when it’s just like another social program; when it’s thousands of people sitting around collecting checks and not really doing much.
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
A local lawyer of my acquaintance wants to be a judge in the worst way. He’s applied several times, never got an interview, thinks maybe he needs to network, find someone to put in a good word with the Judicial Selection Committee.
Dude, you’re playing the game under the Old Rules. It’s not gonna work.
You’re a 49-year-old straight White Male, married with two kids, Christian, not a veteran, not handicapped. You get no diversity points; in fact, you’re the guy we’re trying to replace by giving Everybody Else diversity points.
You’re a party-line Democrat but only in the voting booth; you’re not tight with Senators Amy or Al, Mayor Chris or Governor Dayton’s puppeteers so nobody is willing to move your resume to the top of the pile.
A bunch of kids in his children’s school are sick. He’s certain it’s because of those damned right-wing kook anti-vaccine people. Maybe. Or maybe they’re unaccompanied illegal immigrants that Obama caught, released and disbursed all over the country to spread exotic South American diseases throughout a population that’s not inoculated against them. Gee, sorry your kid is sick but it was an entirely foreseeable consequence of a policy adopted for the Greater Social Good. Gotta break a few eggs, you know, and one of them is yours.
He’s also setting aside money in a 529 Educational Savings plan that Obama wants to tax so other people’s kids can go to college free.
See what being a dutiful Liberal gets you? Not a damned thing. In fact, the exact policies he supports For A Better Society are the ones holding him back. He’s like that guy in the Sprint commercial wanting to “stick it to the man” except it turns out, he is The Man. I believe the French expression is: hoist on your own petard.
I keep waiting for the scales to fall from his eyes and a new Conservative to be born. Any day now . . . .
And the left calls Christians “faith-based”…
Make sure you call your legislators about the Data Privacy proposals.
To support Senator Petersen’s SF32, call your Senator.
To support Rep. Scott’s HF327, contact your member of the House.
Today, the Northern Alliance Radio Network – America’s first grass-roots talk radio show – is on the air! I will be on from 1-3PM today!
Today on the show, King Banaian and Ed Morrissey will join me for the long-awaited “Seventies Music Special” – a jaunt through the absolute worst music of one of the most maligned – justly or not – decades in the history of American popular music.
We will also be talking with Sen. Branden Petersen about the various electronic privacy initiatives in the legislature this year.
Don’t forget – King Banaian is on from 9-11AM on AM1570, and Brad Carlson has “The Closer” edition of the NARN Sundays from 1-3PM.
So tune in the Northern Alliance! You have so many options:
Join us!
The jelly beans are on my desk, to greet passersby.
I’ve got a pot of stew in the crock pot, ready for the traditional family dinner, when I tell my kids how unlikely it is they’d have been born but for today’s birthday boy, and why.
It’s time for the official Shot In The Dark holiday. Today would be Ronald Reagan’s 114th birthday.
I’ve been writing about Reagan – who, along with PJ O’Rourke, Solzhenitzyn, Dostoevskii and Paul Johnson is the reason I’m a conservative today – as long as this blog has been in existence. His eight years were not perfect, and I don’t beatify my presidents, even if they’ve been out of office for twenty years (to say nothing of in their first month of service). His last term wasn’t as stellar as his first, and his last two years were very difficult.
Still and all, he was the greatest president of the second half of the 20th Century.
But in these difficult times, when a President is promoting fear and malaise in the guise of “change” and “doing something”, it’s worth remembering Reagan’s example; when times seemed at their most dire, Reagan walked onto the scene with a smile and a vision, and a backbone of steel, and cleaned up the mess lefty by his failed predecessor – something our next president will need even more of in 2016.
And the most important part? He did it by unleashing something that many, then as now, thought was dead – the inner, optimistic, take-charge greatness of the American spirit.
Oh, there are those who say “today’s GOP wouldn’t nominate Reagan!” – to which I respond with a contemptuous sign, before telling the critic to listen to “A Time for Choosing”, and tell me who is more resembles; Arne Carlson, or Scott Walker?
Reagan’s gone. But that spirit, the one he understood, almost alone among American politicans of his era, lives on in the American people. Most of it, anyway.
So Happy Reagan’s Birthday, everyone!
NOTE: While this blog encourages a raucous debate, this post is a hagiography zone. All comments deemed critical of Reagan will be expunged without ceremony. You’ve been warned.
You have the whole rest of the media to play about in; this post is gonna be gloriously one-note.
The rumor spread yesterday that Jordan’s King Abdallah, enraged by the grisly, medieval murder of Jordanian fighter pilot Moaz al-Kasasbeh, is personally leading, or even flying, combat missions.
It’s apparently not true, causing at least part of the US media to spring into action against an enemy they hate vastly more than ISIS. And I can’t imagine many air forces that’d be too keen on having a 53 year old fighter pilot (even if he were rated on combat aircraft, which according to several Arabic newspapers, he’s not; he’s an infantryman who is rated in civilian aircraft and unspecified helicopters), to say nothing of their chief executive flying directly into harm’s way. .
On the other hand, after six years of a President who can’t be inveigled to condemn extremist Muslim terrorism today without comparing it to Catholic terror from 700 years ago, who equivocates between all sides in every issue (unless it’s Democrat vs. Republican, naturally), who is like hot air in that he equalizes himself across all available intellectual and moral space, I can see why the idea of a leader who leads, who makes moral judgments and personally drops 2000 pound GPS-guided judgment on the guilty, is so seductive.
Gary from Saint Paul emails:
Has anyone in the Twin Cites media asked him if he’s going to Netanyahu’ s speech?
Just thinking.
I’d be interested in finding out.
Side-bet: I’ll bet if he skips it, the Twin Cities media will bury that fact, if they report it at all.
The “study” is laughably unscientific.
The “evidence” may well be cherry-picked to fit the writer’s premise.
But the premise makes intuitive sense.
All of these women were arrested for the same thing – sex with a minor, varying only slightly in age – so there’s virtually no difference in the objective eyes of the law. And yet some of them got absolutely no prison time, while others were jailed for over 20 years. Do you see any difference in the offenders?
Justice has never been “blind”; there’s a reason lawyers tell their clients to wear suits and get haircuts before trials. And I’d be interested in knowing:
But it does appear as if the sentence for sleeping with a high school boy is being handed down by a college-age guy…
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
Doesn’t this just take the cake? The people who refuse to vaccinate are NOT ignorant, inbred, redneck right-wing trailer trash as we might conclude from the vitriol in the media and on the Internet; they’re Mac-Groveland types: wealthy, educated, White, English speaking Liberals as proven in a 2011 government study.
I particularly like this guy’s quip about mapping anti-vaccers by drawing a circle around Whole Foods stores.
Liberal parents won’t risk their precious children getting sick from vaccines. Instead, they depend on everybody else’s kids getting vaccinated. That way, their own kids get a free ride because the rest of the herd is immune. Which works fine until all the Liberal free-riding parents put their unvaccinated kids together at, say, Disneyland, then they all get sick.
Liberals steal a free ride off everybody else . . . disaster results. Who woulda thunk it?
Joe Doakes
Academically, I can see the libertarian case for making vaccinations voluntary.
I can also see the flip side; practicing social stigmatizing of anti-vaxxers, and barring them from any privately-sanctioned event or business to prevent the spread of communicable diseases.
But I revel in the brutal irony of it all; the liberal anti-vaxxers that live in those circles around those Whole Foods stores are the same people who chant along with NPR that man-made glerbal werming is “settled science” and that they are “reality-based”, unlike those superstitious Faux-News-addled conservative rubes who hate them some science.
I hate see people put out of work.
And I really hate to see more small, independent bookstores spinning in.
But if there’s any silver lining to this situation, it’s that it’s a bunch of lockstep Obama voters taking it in the shorts, here.
Back in 2005, I started writing a series – “Twenty Years Ago Today” – about various episodes that have happened in my life 20 years previously, starting with my decision to move to the Twin Cities.
As I worked my way through 130 episodes of that series over the course of about six years, I often marveled at how much things changed over the six years in the story – and in the 20 years hence.
And I’m getting close to the same, whack upside the head moment right now. Because it was 13 years ago today that I started writing this blog.
13 years ago today, I was an angry, incoherent, voiceless guy with a couple kids working at a misbegotten dotcom that was rapidly swirling down drain of the post 9/11 tech bust. This will probably be the 12th time I related the story – I read an article in Time Magazine about Andrew Sullivan, a leading “conservative intellectual” voice in the new, do it yourself medium of blogging.
And that night, after I hustled the kids to bed, I sat down at “blogger.com” and tapped out the first ever installment of “Shot In The Dark”. And suddenly, I was…
… Well, still angry and incoherent – but I had a voice.
It goes without saying a lot of things of happened since then; the blog led me to the talk show; the talkshow lead me to the regional forefront of blogging as a brave new medium, in the middle of the last decade.
That, of course, was then. Blogging has receded from the bleeding edge of cultural consciousness since then, and with that a lot of bloggers. There are people who ask why keep blogging?
Because I enjoy it.
Which isn’t to say there haven’t been periods of intense burnout. I just went through one of those, in fact; postelection fatigue and unexpected job change over the winter led to one of those, from which I’ve just emerged over the past couple of weeks. And writing through those periods of burnout has, in its own way, then even more personally instructive and interesting than the periods where I feel like I’m on fire; I’ve learned a lot from prevailing over my own mental limitations in those situations
Of course, writing when you are absolutely on fire is a lot of fun too.
Anyway – as always, I think all of you readers for having gotten, and stayed, interested over this past 13 years. I know you won’t take it as ingratitude when I say “I do it even if none of you to dinner every day” – I do it because I enjoy writing – but having all of you here every day is certainly a kick, too.
So thanks!
Back during the 2008 presidential campaign, John McCain was right about one thing, anyway; despite all of governments foul-ups the fundamentals of the American economy are basically strong.
We have ideas, and entrepreneurial energy, I don’t labor force that (2008 and 2012 elections not withstanding) we’re pretty smart and capable, and one of the worlds larger, wealthier consumer markets. Those, among other things, give the American economy’s a degree of resilience that is going to be hard to extinguish, even after 14 years of flagrant overspending and six years of crypto-socialism.
That’s the economy. Not the governments massive piling up of debt. That’s a whole ‘nother thing.
Why does it matter? Because the fact that the American private market is bigger, stronger, and smarter than its government – for now – may be the only thing that saved it from complete collapse six years ago.
Some of my fringe-libertarian, as well as “progressive”, friends are fond of chanting “Anti-Zionism isn’t Antisemitism”.
Give to the “National Metaphor Society”. Because a mind that stops developing its metaphorical facility in fourth grade is a mind the world doesn’t need to have unleashed on it.
That’s a little like saying “I endorse the policies that involved the destruction of Native American culture, the near-extinction of their people and the carving of their conquerors’ chiefs’ faces into their holiest piece of real estate – but I sure *admired* the Lakota”.
Remember – the reason to distrust the alternative media, and keep your faith in the mainstream media’s veracity, is their reams and reams of gatekeepers and fact-checkers that ensure the story you get is the unvarnished truth:
On “NBC Nightly News” Wednesday evening, Williams read a 50-second statement apologizing for his characterization of the episode.
“After a groundfire incident in the desert during the Iraq war invasion, I made a mistake in recalling the events of 12 years ago,” he said. “It did not take long to hear from some brave men and women in the air crews who were also in that desert. I want to apologize. I said I was traveling in an aircraft that was hit by [rocket-propelled grenade] fire. I was instead in a following aircraft. . . . This was a bungled attempt by me to thank one special veteran and, by extension, our brave military men and women, veterans everywhere, those who have served while I did not.”
Good thing “Politifact” got to this story…
…Oh, wait.
Well, good thing the media-ethics watchdogs at NPR’s “On The Media…”
…Dammit.
Snopes?
It’s both utterly true, and a fart joke.
What could go wrong?
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
New York Times now says regime change is bad?
US interventionism in WW II made things worse for a short time, especially in Germany. So we shouldn’t have sought to change Hitler’s regime? Washington and Jefferson were right all along about entangling alliances in European affairs? Is that what we’re saying?
Wouldn’t really bother me that much.
The European Union is about to collapse because Germany won’t subsidize Greece and the Russians can’t pay their bills because the Saudis are winning the oil price war while a bunch of vicious Middle East tyrants may be replaced with different vicious Middle East tyrants. Nothing I can do about any of it and for damned sure, Obama won’t. Boehner and McConnell don’t seem to have a clue between them, so I don’t count on the Republican Establishment for anything, either.
The “radical shift in American foreign policy” sought by the Times requires a courageous leader: Winston Churchill, fighting on the sands and beaches; Harry Truman, ending the war by dropping the bomb; Ronald Reagan, growing our military so fast the Russians collapsed their economy trying to keep up; Margaret Thatcher sending England’s baby flat-tops halfway around the world to kick Argentine ass over some tiny islands nobody really wanted but damn it, they’re ours.
No such American leader in sight.
Joe Doakes
Oh, I think there are. In 2016. If we deserve them.
The alleged straw buyer who is believed to have supplied Ray Kmetz the riot gun used to shoot two New Hope cops last week has the Feds on his back.
No “gun show background check” wod have stopped this – although it would have caused a lot of law abiding citizens to have to jump through pointless hoops at best, get registered at worst.
Remember Cindy Sheehan?
The woman whose soldier son was killed in action in Iraq, and became an anti-war crusader, and a hero of the left (until she started attacking Barack Obama, when she became an untouchable). Before she parted ways with the left, the left said her ordeal gave her “absolute moral authority”.
And indeed it’s not unusual for people to grant a little extra credence and tolerance to people who’ve directly suffered because of something they’re protesting against.
So I expect lefties with integrity to belly up behind a Colorado bill drafted by a Columbine survivor, which would allow law-abiding citizens with carry permits to carry at schools:
Colorado Rep. Patrick Neville, R-Castle Rock, was a student at Columbine High School in 1999 when two seniors went on a massacre that killed 13. Now he has introduced legislation that would allow anyone with a concealed weapons permit to be able to conceal and carry in public schools, according to The Denver Post.
“This bill will allow honest law-abiding citizens to carry a concealed firearm for protection if they choose to,” Neville said in a statement. “But most importantly, it will give them the right to be equipped to defend our children from the most dangerous situations.”
Can you hear that? That’s moral authority talking.
When was Mark Dayton’s last alcoholic relapse?
What sort of psychotropic medications is he on? And why?
Our media here in the Twin Cities doesn’t think you, mere peasant, have a “need to know”.
But never let it be said the Twin Cities media won’t hold big government’s feet in the fire over the tough issues!
Because, boy howdy, they sure will!
Joe Doakes from Como Park emails:
Revenge. Don’t hear many World Leaders talking about that nowadays. Refreshing.
The article asks if Abe has some plan to enhance or create an ability for Japan to actually make good on the threat of revenge. Hmmm: does the phrase “ninja assassin” ring any bells?
That would be a great video. Ninjas beheading some terrorists as they are huddling in their caves. I’d pay money to see that.
Joe Doakes
Wow it sounds like fun, there’s a complication; if there’s a country in the world that has done more than Germany to mothball it’s warrior past, it’s Japan.
If you live in St. Paul, and I’m a Republican, or conservative, or just someone who’s tired of St. Paul being a one party city, then I hope you can turn out tonight.
It’s the St. Paul Republican City Committee caucuses, and they’re being held tonight in the auditorium at St. Paul College.
It’s hard enough being a Republican in StPaul – and over the previous few years, the city committee fell into near complete your relevance. There’s new leadership – full disclosure, I’m part of it – and we’re hoping to change that. Starting tonight.
We’ll have a couple of guest speakers – Sen.Dave Thompson, and Andy Richter of “CommunitySolutions”, which has turned around politics in the city of Crystal. Will also be talking about the nuts and bolts of turning the cities political culture around.
St. Paul College is a block north of the Cathedral, at Summit and Marshall. If you park in the college’s parking lot, save your ticket – vouchers will be issued, so parking won’t cost you.
Come on down!
It’s been a busy couple of years for Real Minnesotans (and Real Americans) [1].
We’ve had an anti-gun president for six years, and we spent two years with a completely DFL government – and the DFL platform calls for restricting guns in the hands of the law-abiding (“Reasonable gun control that promotes public safety and crime prevention”). They were energized by the Sandy Hook massacre and, moreso, hundreds of thousands of dollars of Michael Bloomberg’s money.
And it all came to nought, due to the efforts of Minnesota’s pro-Second-Amendment grass roots, especially the Gun Owners Civil Rights Alliance and the Minnesota Gun Owners PAC.
Now, we have a GOP majority in the State House – including several members elected with direct support of Real Minnesota – and a Senate DFL majority that has many significant pro-gun members.
It’s time to go on the offensive.
And that’s precisely the agenda that GOCRA announced on Monday. Here are the highlights:
[1] Minnesotans/Americans who believe all ten amendments of the Bill of Rights are rights of the people.
OK. Deep breath. It’s game time.
I tried twice yesterday to get through a piece by Rochester TV reporter Devin Bartilotta of WTTC television in Rochester. There were two references to “Packing Heat” in the first ten seconds of the report; I just couldn’t go on.
But with that out of the way, it wasn’t a complete lost cause:
Bartilotta:
BCA data indicates a 312 percent increase in the number of permits issued to women from 2011 to 2013 in the zip code zones that are mostly in Olmsted County. In 2011, 122 permits were issued to women in that area. In 2012, the number jumped to 134. Then in 2013 it nearly doubled to 381 permits. 36 percent of those permits issued to women in 2013 were issued to women who were younger than 40-years-old. Those numbers are still dwarfed by the more than 1,200 men who got permits in 2013 in the same area.
Lisa Polowski, who processes the gun permits in Olmsted County, says the national 2013 firearm bump could be prompted by the 2012 shootings in Aurora, Colorado and Newtown, Connecticut.
“Things like that in society were really feeding into this, that people really feel the need to protect themselves” Polowski said. “Our numbers went up by probably 60 percent for a permit to purchase.”
But in generally safe and quiet Southeast Minnesota, women might still feel threatened.
“Self defense is what it boils down to,” said Marquette.
“Many times it’s an equalizer. Because many times their attackers are bigger, stronger, and this may help them,” Bierly said.
OK, after a couple of false starts, that’s not bad. And incredibly, we actually saw a news report about a Minnesota that doesn’t bring in an obligatory comment from the useless Heather Martens – perhaps an advantage to getting news from a Greater Minnesota outlet.
So that’s all to the good.
We almost made it to the end without another cliché.
I said almost:
But in an increasingly violent world, the need for personal protection is putting more women on target.
Ms. Bartillota – does that sentence actually mean anything?
To the extent it does, it’s wrong; the idea that the world is getting more violent is, like “packing heat”, another media cliché – and unlike “packing heat”, it actually does some harm. The world is not “increasingly violent”. Violent crime is plummeting – in the parts of the country where guns are least “controlled”, anyway, where violent crime is off by half in the past twenty years.
But hey, at least we got to the end!
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