{"id":34853,"date":"2013-03-07T08:00:24","date_gmt":"2013-03-07T14:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=34853"},"modified":"2014-12-12T14:51:22","modified_gmt":"2014-12-12T20:51:22","slug":"doug-grow-narrative-fluffer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=34853","title":{"rendered":"Doug Grow, Narrative-Fluffer"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was down at the State Capitol yesterday for a press conference, as Representative Deb Hilstrom (DFL Brooklyn Park) introduced the gun bill\/s we talked about yesterday.<\/p>\n

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The bills, as we noted yesterday, would exert the state to solve actual problems – close gaps in the background check system, add mandatory penalties for using guns in crimes or possessing them illegally…<\/p>\n

…y’know. \u00a0Controversial stuff<\/em>.<\/p>\n

At the presser, I saw a big group of legislators from both chambers and both parties lining up to support Hilstrom’s proposal. \u00a0Reps, Senators, Democrats, Republicans – it was probably the most bipartisan assembly I’ve seen that wasn’t in the lounge at the Kelly Inn after hours.<\/p>\n

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Not just legislators; guys in uniform. \u00a0They weren’t just there for the fun of it – guys in uniform never are. \u00a0No, they were from the Minnesota Sheriff’s Association.<\/p>\n

And I saw media. \u00a0Oh, lord, did I see media.<\/p>\n

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And Heather Martens was there, naturally; where there is truth about the Second Amendment, Martens will be there. \u00a0To lie. \u00a0And lie and lie and lie (note to the media who bothered to speak to her; she has uttered not one substantial word of truth in her years at the capitol. \u00a0Ask me).<\/p>\n

And the “groups” she represents put out a call for their “membership” to turn out in force to oppose this bill – probably remembering the hundreds of Second Amendment supporters who turned out daily to oppose the DFL’s gun grab bills a few weeks ago.<\/p>\n

We’ll come back to them.<\/p>\n

One person who was\u00a0not\u00a0<\/em>there was Doug Grow, from the\u00a0MInnPost<\/em>.<\/p>\n

To be fair, I haven’t seen Grow in person in over 20 years; I might not recognize him.<\/p>\n

But judging by the story he wrote about the conference, and the bill itself<\/a>, even if Grow was there, his\u00a0story was pre-written, and would have appeared in exactly the same form had Mothra emerged from the Supreme Court chamber shooting flame from wherever Mothra did whatever he did, since I never watched the movie.<\/p>\n

Rep. Debra Hilstrom, DFL-Brooklyn Center, has discovered again that there is no comfortable middle ground when the subject is guns.<\/p>\n

At noon at the Capitol, Hilstrom, standing with Hennepin County Sheriff Richard Stanek and Rep. Tony Cornish, the gun-toting legislator from Good Thunder, introduced a gun bill that she said \u201ccan bring people together\u2019\u2019 on the volatile subject of guns.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

“Gun-toting”.<\/p>\n

Scare quotes.<\/p>\n

No, no bias here.<\/p>\n

The Astroturf Consensus<\/strong><\/p>\n

Grow, like most of the Twin Cities mainstream media, labors under the delusion that there’s a large, organized mass of people supporting gun control, and that they were out in force yesterday.<\/p>\n

Her words were still echoing in the Capitol when critics, who had hoped for much stronger actions from the Minnesota Legislature, lambasted the effort of Hilstrom and a bipartisan group of 69 other legislators to \u201cclose gaps\u2019\u2019 in current state gun law.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThis is just a band-aid over a huge problem,\u2019\u2019 said Jane Kay of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense, an organization formed in the days following the mass shooting of school children in Newtown, Conn.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Only in America can a two-month old pressure group with fewer members than there were legislators standing behind Hilstrom get the breathless adoration of the media. \u00a0Which is what “Moms Demand Action” and “Protect Minnesota” both are; astroturf checkbook advocacy groups funded by liberal plutocrats with deep pockets – with “membership” numbers in the single digits.<\/p>\n

Provided they share the goal of fluffing the left’s withering narrative on gun control.<\/p>\n

Of course, Grow wasn’t the only offender; Pat Kessler of Channel 4 asked Hilstrom why the bill included no universal background check which, he asserted, “70% of Minnesotans oppose”.<\/p>\n

The correct answer – the polls ask people about background checks without explaining the consequences of those checks as the DFL and Governor Messinger<\/del> Dayton currently propose them; they will result in a\u00a0de facto\u00a0<\/em>gun registry, which is a necessary first step to universal confiscation.<\/p>\n

More on gun-related media polls in another piece soon.<\/p>\n

The Pre-Written Story<\/strong><\/p>\n

But Grow himself is the real problem here. \u00a0His piece, while short on the sort of insight that actually\u00a0engaging people on both sides of the issue\u00a0<\/em>might have given it, is long on \u00a0evidence that Grow wrote the story long before yesterday’s press conference.<\/p>\n

There’s the inflammatory reference to every leftymedia member’s favorite boogyman:<\/p>\n

\u00a0The bill has the support of the National Rifle Association, presumably because it does nothing to require background checks on all gun sales and because it does nothing to restrict sales of military-style weapons or even the quantity of rounds in ammunition magazines.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Well, no.<\/p>\n

The bill has the support of gun-rights organizations because instead of wasting time and effort putting niggling restrictions on the rights of the law-abiding that\u00a0didn’t affect crime in any way the first ten years they were tried<\/em>, they actually address the real problem; criminals, the insane, the addled, and the holes in the data the state sends to the Feds for the background check system.<\/p>\n

(And while the NRA makes a nice, recognizable, stereotyped boogeyman for the lazy propagandist, the NRA actually has very little to do with the day to day heavy lifting of the gun rights movement in Minnesota. \u00a0It’s the Gun Owners Civil Rights Alliance that turned out 500 or more people a day to attend the gun grab hearings a couple of weeks back. \u00a0Grow either doesn’t know that, or doesn’t want people to know that. \u00a0You know where my money is).<\/p>\n

More evidence that Grow wrote the story entirely off of DFL and “Protect Minnesota” chanting points?<\/p>\n

Despite the fact that it\u2019s a bill that authors hoped would unite people, it seems to be dividing. Yes, there was a mix of Republican and DFL representatives standing with Hilstrom, Cornish and Stanek. But there were no law-enforcement organizations represented at the news conference where the proposal was unveiled.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That’s false.<\/p>\n

Here’s the video of the press conference:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n