The other day, I was talking with Sheila Rae Thorvaldssen, a woman from Dilworth Minnesota who writes the liberal-leaning blog\u00a0Oh Noes, Wingnutz Are Blooming Like Loosestrife On My Lawn<\/em>. \u00a0It is one of the leading blogs, left or right, from outstate Minnesota.<\/p>\n The conversation went something like this:<\/p>\n THORVALDSSEN: \u00a0Har har, Merg! \u00a0You gunny wingnuts have been pwn3ed again! \u00a0Tony Cornish said stuff that wasn’t true<\/a>!<\/p>\n ME: Yeah, that’s the problem with being a pro-Second Amendment activist. \u00a0If you’re a gun controller, all you have to do is keep repeating the same lines over and over again. \u00a0On our side, you have to keep up with current events. \u00a0Israel “toughened<\/a>” up their gun laws in the last decade or so!<\/p>\n THORVALDSSEN: \u00a0It must be awkward to realize you were wrong on all the facts!<\/p>\n ME: Well, it sucks bobbling facts, and we all try not to. \u00a0But here’s the rub; \u00a0you’ve heard that old saying, “the British lose all the battles but win the wars?”<\/p>\n THORVALDSSEN: \u00a0No. \u00a0Did Conan O’Brien say it?<\/p>\n ME: Nope. \u00a0Anyway – it’s a little like that when you’re a 2nd Amendment activist. \u00a0Every once in a while you may bobble a fact, or factoid, that’s part of the larger discussion – but we’re still right on the actual conclusions.<\/p>\n THORVALDSSEN: \u00a0Oh, riiiiiight.<\/p>\n ME: Well, wrapped around that factoid about the Israelis “toughening” their gun laws are two facts that everyone, like you, that jumps up and down about Rep. Cornish – and me! – bobbling the fact is the inconvenient truth that that factoid reinforces two conclusions that we’ve always made.<\/p>\n THORVALDSSEN: \u00a0That’s just crazy talk.<\/p>\n ME: Well, yeah, but not in the way you think. \u00a0For starters, the “tightening” of gun laws – on the law-abiding – in Israel cut the number of legal firearms in half – but more than doubled the number of illegal ones, and reinforced the black market. \u00a0Which is exactly what happens whenever gun control is tried, whether in Tel Aviv or Chicago.<\/p>\n THORVALDSSEN: \u00a0Hah hah! \u00a0You said there were two conclusions, but you only gave one! \u00a0You are a liar!<\/p>\n ME: Well, the other one is this; \u00a0whatever happened in Israel in the past decade or so, and whatever they do now,\u00a0it is a historical fact\u00a0<\/em>that in the seventies, there were several attacks on Israeli schools and school children – \u00a0the 1970 Avivim Massacre<\/a>\u00a0which killed 12 kids, the Kiryat Shmona<\/a> massacre (which began as an attempt to kill the children at a kibbutz school and evolved from there, ending in 18 dead, eight of them children), and the Ma’alot Massacre<\/a> (terrorists killed 22 children and five adults). \u00a0That’s 42 dead children among three incidents, in a population about the size of Minnesota’s. \u00a0Can you imagine almost five Red Lake massacres in four years, the affect that’d have here? \u00a0Anyway – at the time, one of Israel’s responses – one of many – was to allow teachers in high risk areas along the borders to carry legally-permitted guns.<\/p>\n THORVALDSSEN: \u00a0So?<\/p>\n ME: So the attacks on children stopped. \u00a0They found softer targets – actually, they largely switched to bombs and rockets.<\/p>\n THORVALDSSEN: \u00a0But Cornish got current Israeli law wrong. \u00a0So your entire point is invalid! \u00a0Hah! \u00a0Bow down before my superior reasoning, bitchez!<\/p>\n ME: \u00a0Not if your point is “there are some ideas out there to stop school violence”. \u00a0The point being, once schools became harder targets – in this case, harder because teachers in vulnerable areas were armed – school shooting stopped.<\/p>\n People like Cornish – and me, by the way – say that that just might be a better than the “gun-free school zones” that we’ve been trying for the past 25 years or so.<\/p>\n THORVALDSSEN: \u00a0But you forgot the ultimate argument against arming teachers.<\/p>\n ME: What’s that.<\/p>\n THORVALDSSEN: It won’t work. \u00a0Period.<\/p>\n ME: What makes that the ultimate argument?<\/p>\n THORVALDSSEN: \u00a0I said “Period” at the end.<\/p>\n ME: Hm.<\/p>\n THORVALDSSEN: \u00a0That means you’ve been pwn3d.<\/p>\n ME: Huh.<\/p>\n THORVALDSSEN: \u00a0Do you feel awkward yet?<\/p>\n ME: Sure, why not?<\/p>\n And SCENE.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The other day, I was talking with Sheila Rae Thorvaldssen, a woman from Dilworth Minnesota who writes the liberal-leaning blog\u00a0Oh Noes, Wingnutz Are Blooming Like Loosestrife On My Lawn. \u00a0It is one of the leading blogs, left or right, from outstate Minnesota. The conversation went something like this: THORVALDSSEN: \u00a0Har har, Merg! \u00a0You gunny wingnuts […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45,63,22],"tags":[236],"class_list":["post-32886","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gun-free-zones","category-lefty-alt-media","category-victim-disarmament","tag-dramatization"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32886","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=32886"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32886\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32920,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32886\/revisions\/32920"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32886"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32886"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32886"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}