{"id":51743,"date":"2015-03-04T07:00:52","date_gmt":"2015-03-04T13:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=51743"},"modified":"2015-03-03T21:48:11","modified_gmt":"2015-03-04T03:48:11","slug":"carry-on-my-straight-laced-son","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=51743","title":{"rendered":"Carry On, My Straight-Laced Son"},"content":{"rendered":"

There’s not much happening on Second Amendment issues – that the mainstream media wants to report on, anyway; I never expected they’d cover the local Real American Second Amendment Human Rights movement going on the offensive<\/a>, especially.<\/p>\n

But there were a few half-hearted attempts to roil the pot this past week.<\/p>\n

Channel 9 noted last week that carry permit issuances are off by 1\/3<\/a> in the past year – while leaving it to the reader to figure out for themselves that they’re still running 2.5 times ahead of 2010, before the Obama Panic started.<\/p>\n

Regional lefties tried to make a little hay over these numbers:<\/p>\n

Individuals with permits to carry committed 1,320 crimes in 2014, according to reports from law enforcement. Only 20 of those crimes involved the use of a pistol to commit the crime, while more than half of these crimes were DWIs or other traffic offenses that had nothing to do with firearms.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In other words, a group making up 3% of the population commits a tiny fraction of 3% of the state’s “gun crimes” (and let’s ignore for a moment that “gun crimes” means everything from murder – there were none – to inadvertently carrying a gun in a post-office).<\/p>\n

Simple fact; law-abiding gun owners are better citizens, on the average, than the typical Minnesotan.<\/p>\n

More context? \u00a0There are now about 180,000 Minnesotans with carry permits. \u00a0Ten years ago, the House Research office figured that a maximum of 90,000 would get their cards; I figured it’d peak around 55-60,000, since most “shall-issue” states tended to level off around 1% of the population. \u00a0We’re around triple that now. And while the numbers will likely drop (and could drop to zero, if we pass “Constitutional Carry<\/a>“, which won’t happen until 2017 at best), they have completely blown away even supporters’ most optimistic predictions…<\/p>\n

…in every way but literally, as MPR’s Bob Collins noted in a story earlier this week<\/a>\u00a0that pointed out that…:<\/p>\n

\u201cThey thought the streets were going to be running with blood, but statistically, it hasn\u2019t shown itself as a problem in terms of an increase in the amount of gun crimes,\u201d Cmdr. Paul Sommer of the Anoka County Sheriff\u2019s Office told the Star Tribune.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s right. More than 10 years after the pitched battle over the law, it\u2019s clear the hyperbole from both sides was overwrought. We\u2019re not ducking road-rage shootouts, but we\u2019re not fending off criminals, either, the Pioneer Press said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Well, Collins is half right. \u00a0The opponents’ hyperbole – as was predicted in this space – turned out to be the same onanistic fantasy that it’s been in every other state that’s adopted “shall-issue” permitting.<\/p>\n

But what was the “hyperbole” among the supporters?<\/p>\n

There was none. \u00a0No credible supporter predicted that we’d see groups of law-abiding citizens with carry permits holding off crooks like a beleaguered Vietnam-era firebase, up to their knees in enemy bodies and spent cartridges. \u00a0 We predicted at the time, in fact, nothing spectacular; just a slow, quiet diminution in crime.<\/p>\n

Although I’d love to ask Bob Collins “why so bloodthirsty?” \u00a0There haven’t been many self-defense shootings by permittees – we’ve reported<\/a> on several<\/a> in this space over the years – although each of them involves an innocent person who is alive that likely would not have been without a gun. \u00a0And the stats don’t reliably count the number of deterrences that don’t involve anyone getting killed (like this one<\/a>) much less without shots being fired.<\/p>\n

It’s not much ado about nothing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There’s not much happening on Second Amendment issues – that the mainstream media wants to report on, anyway; I never expected they’d cover the local Real American Second Amendment Human Rights movement going on the offensive, especially. But there were a few half-hearted attempts to roil the pot this past week. Channel 9 noted last […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-51743","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-victim-disarmament"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51743","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=51743"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51743\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":51770,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51743\/revisions\/51770"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=51743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=51743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=51743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}