mass-shooting<\/em> into a political win at an all-liberal Minnesota state Capitol.\u00a0 This\u00a0is the closest they’ve come to one; Coleman is trying, in his ham-fisted way, not to waste the crisis.\u00a0<\/li>\n<\/ul>\nLet me re-emphasize this:\u00a0 Coleman, and the dim bulb Jane Kay and habitual liar Rep. Heather Martens, are doing the end-zone happy dance over the non-news non-occurrence of a non-event.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
That’s it.\u00a0 That’s their “victory”, the only one they had, even in a state run entirely by liberals.\u00a0 For now.<\/p>\n
That’s just pathetic.<\/p>\n
Insert The Usual Boilerplate – <\/strong>Coleman lays out the scenario.\u00a0 Sort of:<\/p>\nThe story started Monday when a gun-owners group used its Facebook page to invite members to attend the first of this summer\u2019s \u201cOpen Streets\u201d events this coming Sunday in South Minneapolis. Although \u201cattend\u201d doesn\u2019t quite cover it: The gun owners specifically were encouraged to bring their weapons and to flash them<\/span> in public, carrying them openly for the benefit of all those in attendance at \u201cOpen Streets,\u201d an ongoing series of good-humored street fairs promoting bicycling and pedestrian rights.<\/p><\/blockquote>\nAnd – Coleman omits – the various virtues of neighborliness.\u00a0 Second Amendment supporters have been doing events like this for years, most notably our “Open Carry Picnics” a few years back at the Lake Harriet Bandshell, where dozens of regular Minnesotans would gather, eat, talk with their neighbors – many with their legal firearms in plain view.\u00a0<\/p>\n
If you heard about them, it wasn’t in the news.\u00a0 The only thing that ever happened was a good time.\u00a0 In the couple such events I attended (sans<\/em> visble firearm; that wouldn’t be my style, even if I did own a gun and have a carry permit), I remember one person – white, upper-middle-class, female, oozing “Carlton College” attitude from every manicured pore – running to the park police and demanding mass arrests, and being politely rebuffed because we were doing something legal<\/em>, in a legal manner.\u00a0<\/p>\nHe Doesn’t Know Stuff!\u00a0 – <\/strong>Coleman:<\/p>\nThis Sunday\u2019s kickoff event is scheduled for a 20-block stretch of Lyndale Ave. South, one of the south side\u2019s gun-plagued corridors.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
And there’s the conceit the left keeps trying – and with the dimmer members of our media and political class, succeeding – at passing off; the idea that guns <\/em>are the problem.\u00a0 That there’s a “plague” of guns <\/em>prowling Lyndale from the Twenties through the Fifties, randomly picking off innocent passersby and kids doing homework in their living rooms.<\/p>\nIt’s untrue, of course; we have a plague of people\u00a0<\/em>who use <\/em>guns to enforce their gangs’ rules, protect their (illegal) business’ turf from competition, take out revenge for various slights (in a manner our modern urban culture glorifies), with guns.<\/p>\nNot a one of them has a carry permit.\u00a0 Not a one of them passed a background check, taken the training course, or bought their firearms legally.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Maybe Coleman doesn’t know the distinction.\u00a0 Or maybe he, like the anti-gun groups with whom his “Uptake” shares funders, really really wants the distinction to be blurred.\u00a0<\/p>\n
If it’s the former, he’s wrong.\u00a0 If it’s the latter, he’s lying.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Again.<\/p>\n
The Original Classist Gangsta – <\/strong>Coleman – the child of a highly prominent legislator, the stepchild of a prominent publisher – loves to try to\u00a0pound the outlines of his childhood into the rough-and-tumble Irish-Catholic-In-America myth.\u00a0 He’s spent a career trying to\u00a0portray himself as\u00a0a Studs Terkel “Everyman with a Typewriter” type street journo.\u00a0<\/p>\nIt’s a crock, of course; the last we checked, Coleman lived in a tony part of Saint Paul, near Grand and Summit, a leafy neighborhood dotted with private colleges and tudor homes.\u00a0 And more power to him!<\/p>\n
But\u00a0watch Coleman wrap himself in the “urban activist warrior” flag:<\/p>\n
\u00a0For some reason, the promise\/threat of suburban gun flashers<\/span>brandishing their weapons along the avenue did not have a reassuring effect on the benighted city dwellers who prefer fewer guns, not more, on their streets.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n(“Hey!\u00a0 We don’t vote on civil rights!” Remember that from the gay marriage debate?)<\/p>\n
A quick look at the city\u2019s \u201cshot spotter\u201d maps, in addition to showing an alarming number of recorded gun shots on the city\u2019s North Side (dozens each week), shows that there have been a couple dozen shots fired on the streets in the Lyndale-Hennepin area in the past two months.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Yep.\u00a0 Now – can Coleman show us that any of them <\/em>were fired by law-abiding citizens, much less carry permittees?<\/p>\nOf course not.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Now, it’s time for some classism!:<\/p>\n
Imagine how reassured you would feel when hundreds of bearded guys from Andover and Elko show up in North Minneapolis or the Summit-University area of St Paul (\u201cOpen Streets\u201d events will take place in both of those communities later this summer) with Bushmasters and Brownings slung over their shoulders or Glocks and Rugers hanging from their paunches.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Condescension for People Not Like Nick is the main color in Coleman’s palette.\u00a0 That and junior-high pseudo-sexual japery.<\/p>\n
It’s also part and parcel of the most cancerous trait of the Left; the battle isn’t ideas versus ideas, or even people vs. people.\u00a0 The battle they fight is Classes against Classes.\u00a0 And they define the classes.\u00a0<\/p>\n
At the very least, it’s a mark of intellectual laziness.\u00a0 At the worst, it’s a cancer that’s killed millions in the last 100 years.<\/p>\n
But let’s run with the thought; what if <\/em>hundreds of guys from Elko and Andover and Forest Lake – some bearded and paunchy, some elderly and flinty, some young and smokin’ hot, but every last one of them a carry permittee with the legal right to carry a firearm – did <\/em>show up at the festivals?<\/p>\nWhat would happen?<\/p>\n
The smart money says “Not a damn thing” – other than anti-gunners acting out on their paranoia.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Thought Experiments for The Unthinking – <\/strong>But since Nick’s in a mood to play hypotheticals, let’s come out and play, shall we?<\/p>\nHere\u2019s a neat mental exercise: Try to imagine hundreds of inner-city residents carrying weapons at the Andover Family Fun Fest, July 13. Just because they can.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Nick, if you’re reading this;\u00a0 let’s do indeed!<\/p>\n
I’ll take you up on your challenge!\u00a0 Let’s you and I get “hundreds” of “inner city residents” (by which I assume you mean “black people”, as opposed to “family guys who live in Saint Paul’s Midway”, like me), with legal carry permits<\/em>, just like you had, and just like I may hypothetically have – complete with objective proof that they are law-abiding citizens that the permit conveys – and\u00a0trek out to Andover on July 13!<\/p>\nAnd let’s see what happens!<\/p>\n
Just think, Nick:\u00a0 you and me can watch the hijinx unfold!<\/p>\n
What do you suppose is going to happen?<\/p>\n
Nothing.\u00a0 Nothing is going to happen.\u00a0 Oh, some ninny may run to a cop, who’ll investigate, see the “inner city resident” is a regular schlemiel with a carry permit, and gently tell the complainant to relax.\u00a0\u00a0 Just like happens with legitimate carriers all over the state or, more usually, doesn’t happen.\u00a0<\/p>\n
More likely?\u00a0 The “inner city” – which I suppose\u00a0does mean “black” or “Latino” or “H’mong”\u00a0 in Coleman’s mind – carry permittee will tell us to get tied; they have a live to live.<\/p>\n
And they’ll be right.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But let’s do get the ball rolling on this, Mr. Coleman.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Heres’s How You Tell A Hack With A “Journalist” Badge He Got From A Box Of Cracker Jacks – <\/strong>Next, Coleman drops any pretense of “journalism” that may have evaded extinction, and openly parrots his whiny pals in the gun-grabber movement; I added emphasis to the really demented stuff:<\/p>\nOpenly carrying firearms inside the Minnesota Capitol this winter helped gun-law opponents shoot down gun-safety legislation<\/strong>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\nColeman is regurgitating Heather Martens’ delusion that the law-abiding carry permittees who had notified Capitol security of their intent to carry, and visibly wore their legal, permitted <\/em>firearms into the hearings, were doing it to “intimidate” the legislators.<\/p>\nIt’s bullshit, of course.\u00a0 It was a demonstration of “civil obedience” – showing the legislators that the law-abiding gun owner isn’t the cartoon that ghouls like Jane Kay and Nick Coleman and the City Pages portray to their audiences.\u00a0 We’re regular schlubs who work day jobs and raise kids, just like everyone else.\u00a0 And we vote.\u00a0<\/p>\n
And it worked.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But Coleman isn’t going to let facts get in his way:<\/p>\n
But the tactic backfired this time. Maybe you can intimidate people<\/strong> in the Capitol, but not in the cycling community. Bicyclists wee outraged and told the gunslingers to stay away.<\/p>\nThey wavered. Then they cracked. Finally, they called off the whole thing when the Gun Control Mommas stood up to them.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Let me put this as bluntly as it needs to be put:\u00a0 Coleman is lying.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\nThe “Gun Control Mommas” – “Moms Want Action”, Jane Kay’s toxic little astroturf group with fewer members than “the Uptake” has paid staff – had nothing to do with the cancellation.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Neither did Coleman’s mythical “cycling community” (Note, Nick:\u00a0 I’m part of the “cycling community”.\u00a0 There was no memo).\u00a0<\/p>\n
Coleman is making things up.\u00a0 He’s taking correlations (a memo from the impotent Jane Kay, facebook proclamations from wannabe “biking community” spokesbots) and making up a causation.<\/p>\n
He’s lying.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The Gun Flashers<\/span> ran for cover. By Thursday, the skedaddling gunsters canceled their Gun Wiggle<\/span>, blaming the liberal media, bicycle punks and the \u201cintolerance\u201d of the mamas who opposed the plan they had clearly hoped would get them some media time and notoriety. Their plan worked, but not the way they hoped. The guns blew up in their faces.<\/p><\/blockquote>\nIt’s the closest the gun-grabber “movement” – really a collection of astroturf checkbook advocacy groups – have come to a victory in recent years.\u00a0 And they’re jumping up and down like toddlers that just made a good pants.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Candy asses.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
\u00a0That’s big talk, coming from Nick Coleman, a nakedly (ew) partisan blogger who as we’ve shown makes things up left and right to gain “street cred”; a man who knows nothing about anything he wasn’t told by other people in his vanishingly tiny social circle,\u00a0but\u00a0who sat down\u00a0to share his every thought with the moon. Like a grafitti artist holding a spray paint can between his knees, he’s tagging the public square, and doing it very, very badly.\u00a0<\/p>\n
A man who’ll never answer for\u00a0any of his lies and\u00a0distortions because he’s never had to; he’s used and abused the “journalist\/columnist’s” factual “get out of jail free” card while\u00a0enjoying the protection of the Big Institutional Media system his entire career, and who now – let’s be honest – gets paid to parrot the lies he’s told to parrot.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Same as he ever was.\u00a0 Just much, much smaller.<\/p>\n
UPDATE:\u00a0 I didn’t even catch all of Coleman’s lies.\u00a0 Attorney David Gross – one of the legal workhorses of the Second Amendment movement in Minnesota – left a comment which points out even <\/a>more perfidy.\u00a0<\/p>\nOne of many quotes worth reading (hence you should read the whole thing):<\/p>\n
…Coleman was lying some more, as I read the published material, when he claimed that the Open Streets sponsors were against what Shelley had planned. I guess he can\u2019t help himself from not letting the facts get in his way.
\n\u201cPriem said Open Street organizers will not ask the gun owners not to attend. \u2018Everyone is welcome at Open Streets,\u2019 she said.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Keep ’em coming.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Anyone remember this classic? So, how is it that nakedly partisan bloggers who make things up left and right are gaining street cred while the mainstream media, which spend a lot of time criticizing themselves, are under attack? Or this one? \u201cBloggers don\u2019t know about anything that happened before they sat down to share their […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[326,130,263,79,255,100],"tags":[333],"class_list":["post-36859","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-big-alt-media","category-tc-media-bias","category-narrative-for-sale","category-slander-files","category-the-racket","category-your-papers-please","tag-brian-lambert"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36859","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=36859"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36859\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":52983,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36859\/revisions\/52983"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=36859"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=36859"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=36859"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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