I went to a die-in at the State Capitol on Wednesday, marking the anniversary of last year’s slaughter at Virginia Tech, where a deranged kid killed 32.I brought my Glock.I didn’t really. It would have been weird and crazy to take a gun to an event marking a massacre, especially the very kind of gun used in the massacre.<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Actually, it’s…well, I won’t say “weird and crazy”, but it’s a little odd to lead off with a joke about it.<\/p>\n
\nBut then again, this country is weird and crazy about guns.<\/p>\n
I went to a local gun store Wednesday (I have a permit) and found I could get a nifty Glock 19 — the 9-millimeter semiautomatic model that Cho Seung-Hui used on April 16, 2007 [not to mention an awful lot of policemen and, let it be noted, tens of thousands of honest citizens – Ed<\/em>.] — for less than what Cho spent.<\/p>\nHe bought his Glock for $571 at a Roanoke, Va., gun store. I could have purchased one Wednesday for $550.<\/p>\n
It was on sale! Who says Americans don’t celebrate history?<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
“So what?” is the first thing to jump to mind. The ebbs and flows of the handgun market have what <\/em>to do with the story? What’s the connection?<\/p>\n“More expensive handguns equal mass murder?”<\/p>\n
\nThe die-in (it was called a lie-<\/em>in, actually) [then why change the name for your column? – Ed<\/em>.] was organized by Protect Minnesota, an umbrella group representing five gun-control organizations pushing for tighter rules on sales and universal background checks on buyers. Thirty-two people wore black T-shirts that said, “Minnesotans Against Being Shot” as well as ribbons of maroon and orange (Virginia Tech’s colors) made by families of the victims. One by one, to the solemn beat of a drum, they went down on the Capitol steps and remained motionless, as if asleep.<\/p>\nIt was like the state Senate, but without the pompous speeches.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Or the Strib newsroom<\/strike><\/p>\n\nOK, it was one of those media events that is easy to mock and, indeed, it was<\/em> mocked by a few underemployed members of the gun-rights lobby who couldn’t resist the temptation to spoil a somber moment by holding up frat boy signs to the effect that a teacher or student packing heat could have stopped the carnage, which is the kind of thing I wonder about when a cop gets shot.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\nLeaving aside Coleman’s failed attempt at clairvoyance (he asked the pro-liberty guys what they did for a living?) or the ad-hominem attack (frat boy signs?), or the complete illogic of comparing the “teacher or student packing heat” with a cop, who is paid (inadequately) to go where danger is…<\/p>\n
…well, if you leave all of that aside, there’s nothing left to talk about.<\/p>\n
Never mind.<\/p>\n
Next, Coleman skirts perilously close to fairness…<\/p>\n
\nGuns don’t kill people. People with guns kill people. And sometimes people with guns kill other people with guns.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
…without quite getting there:<\/p>\n
\nIt’s as complicated as our feelings, and nobody’s come up with a convincing response to slaughters such as Virginia Tech, especially proposals to let college kids carry guns on campus. Rep. Tony Cornish, a Republican from Good Thunder, introduced one such obscenely timed proposal Wednesday.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Neither Nick Coleman nor I can define obscenity. But like most people, I know it when I see it.<\/p>\n
Do you wonder how many guns were sold in the week after Virginia Tech, or Columbine, or Red Lake (hint: plenty). Do you wonder how many people started carrying, with or without a permit, after massacres like those? (Lots). How many NRA memberships are applied for after events like this? (A big surge, usually).<\/p>\n
It’s from people who know the real <\/em>obscenity; that while there is no guarantee that an armed student or teacher could have ended Cho Seung-Hui’s killing spree, having a gun increases your odds of walking away when the next Cho – or mugger, or abusive ex-spouse, or rapist or thug in the street – commits his or her next obscene act.<\/p>\nStill, Coleman does note both sides of one key fact:<\/p>\n
\nThe Virginia Tech killer shouldn’t have gotten a gun, because he should have been in a psychiatric ward. Virginia closed that loophole two weeks after the 32 died.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
All the more reason, of course, not to assume government will take care of you.<\/p>\n
\nBut there remain many loopholes to shut, including in Minnesota, where some unlicensed sellers can still sell guns to unknown buyers without background checks. To tighten those laws is not anti-gun. It is pro-safety.<\/p>\n
“It’s harder to transfer title to my fishing boat than a gun,” said St. Paul City Council Member Lee Helgen…<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Then perhaps Minnesota’s boat control laws are almost as dumb as our gun control laws?<\/p>\n
\n…who was displaying a gun shot map showing that the area north of the Capitol was well-sprayed with gunfire last month.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
I’m confused: Does Mr. Helgen – member of Dave “No puking Republicans!” Thune’s ultraliberal “Gang of Five” bloc on the Saint Paulitburo<\/strike> City Council – think that the “Well-sprayed” North End is being shot up by college professors and 21-or-older students with carry permits?<\/p>\n“I don’t know why everybody has to shoot somebody every time there’s a misunderstanding,” said 70-year-old bus driver Barb Sjerven, who was drawn to the steps by all the commotion while waiting for her Osakis, Minn., sixth-graders to finish touring the Capitol. “I mean, it’s OK to have guns,” Sjerven said. “But it seems like everybody<\/em> has guns. So I can’t blame [the die-in people] for being concerned. There’s way too much shooting going on. And there’s something wrong with us. There really is.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\nYou don’t have to be on the side of anything more than common sense to agree with Barb Sjerven from Osakis.<\/p>\n
There’s too much shooting.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
And none of it is coming from people who give a rat’s ass about gun transfer laws, Lee Helgen’s map, or the “die-in’s” objectives.<\/p>\n
It’s coming from criminals<\/em>; the people who don’t care what the law is; the people who are too addled, impaired or defective to care about laws, morality, symbolic protests or Lee Helgen’s little maps. The people that are drawn to our city by the policies of people like Lee Helgen!<\/p>\nIt’s not coming from college students, professors, office workers, bricklayers, bus drivers or even Metro columnists who are over 21, have clean criminal records, training, and the motivation to avoid being the next statistic for someone to mourn on the Capitol steps, under the watchful eye of a media who has the story about the significance of their death already written.<\/p>\n
\nGlocks are on sale all month.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Keep ’em. I hate the trigger pull.<\/p>\n
Wait – is that “obscene?”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Plenty of bloggers fisked the bejeebers out of Nick Coleman’s column from a week ago Sunday (April 13); KAR lit it up pretty well, among several others. But it’s still sitting out there, taunting me. And so while I’ve been trying to hand off the Nick-fisking duties to the crop of newer bloggers, and have […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45,22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2460","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gun-free-zones","category-victim-disarmament"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2460","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2460"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2460\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2460"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2460"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2460"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}