Heather Martens has never, not once, said a single, original, substantive, true thing about the Second Amendment or the Gun issue. \u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\nJust to elaborate a little, and yet as much as any journalist should need?\u00a0If you use Heather Martens as a source, your credibility is shot, as it were, right out of the gate.<\/p>\n
Just try to\u00a0count\u00a0all the lies, non-sequiturs and piles of complete buncombe that this article slops in front of the public.<\/p>\n
A\u00a0Steaming Pile Of Premise<\/strong>: \u00a0It’s hard to know where to start with this bit:<\/p>\nEighteen-year-old Dae\u2019veon has seen everything from assault rifles to handguns, and it wasn\u2019t hard for him to find them. In fact, he\u2019s owned several handguns, shotguns and even a submachine gun, he said. And all of it he bought without a background check, no questions asked.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Last year, Dae\u2019veon, who agreed to talk if his last name was kept anonymous, was caught with a gun and charged with aggravated robbery.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s when he decided he needed to keep his head down, focus on school and try to turn his life around. But he knows if he wanted to, all he\u2019d have to do is make a quick phone call to get another gun, he said. \u201cIt\u2019s like going to the store to buy a pop,\u201d he said. \u201cYou just call whoever you know that has a gun and tell them what you want to spend.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
So let’s stop and take stock, here; we’re being asked not only to believe that seventeen-year-old Dae’veon owned pistols and “assault rifles” (already illegal for juveniles) and a “submachine gun” (illegal for most everyone for about 80 years, now), but that he bought all of them (illegal for minors)..<\/p>\n
…from “dealers” who didn’t give him a background check while carrying out acts that, as we’ve seen above, are state\u00a0and federal\u00a0<\/em>felonies?<\/p>\nWhy, perhaps if we\u00a0passed a background check law<\/em>, those dealers would have been able to gently chide young Dae’veon to wait until he was older?<\/p>\nDo people actually think young Dae’veon bought his little arsenal from a law-abiding citizen, much less Gander Mountain?<\/p>\n
Earlier this month, two DFL lawmakers, Sen. Ron Latz and Rep. Dan Schoen, introduced a bill that would require background checks on all gun sales in the state, a measure supported by a number of advocacy groups and law enforcement associations, who say it could help prevent firearms from reaching the wrong hands \u2014 like those with criminal backgrounds or minors like Dae\u2019veon. It too has received pushback from gun-rights groups.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
And for good reason. \u00a0The bill is complete baked wind. \u00a0It asks us to accept two complete balderdash premises: \u00a0 that criminals will follow laws, and that government will follow the rules.<\/p>\n
Our Diligently Law-Abiding Criminal Class<\/strong>: \u00a0I’m going to be charitable, and assume the reporter, Mr. Tigue, just doesn’t know the issue all that well, and is reciting what he’s\u00a0been told by one Bloomberg operative or another.<\/p>\nThere are some tells, of course (emphasis added):<\/p>\n
And yet, for all the disagreements over whether increased background checks will work, one fact is beyond dispute when it comes to guns in Minnesota. Like it or not, they are remarkably easy to acquire<\/strong>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\nWell, no. \u00a0 They’re mildly annoying to acquire if you’re a law-abiding citizen. \u00a0They may or may not be easy if you’re a criminal buying from other criminals.<\/p>\n
Which is a distinction the gun grabbers really, really want to keep obscured.<\/p>\n
In Minnesota, to legally buy a gun from a store requires that the purchaser be at least 18 and have a permit issued by the applicant’s county sheriff\u2019s office \u2014 a process that also subjects the applicant to both a state and federal background check.<\/p>\n
But here\u2019s the wrinkle: For those who already have a permit and simply want to sell a gun to someone else, there\u2019s no law requiring a background check.<\/p>\n
Therein lies the problem, said Heather Martens, the executive director of Protect Minnesota, a group advocating for tightening gun laws. The lack of regulation around private gun sales makes it too easy for those who shouldn\u2019t own guns to be able to get them, a complication that goes beyond the oft-cited issue of gun show sales.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you want to fill the trunk of your car with guns and drive to any street, park there and start selling guns, you can,\u201d Martens said. \u201cThere\u2019s no law against that.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Remember – it’s Heather Martens. \u00a0She has never said a single substantial, original, true thing about the gun issue. \u00a0And she’s not starting today.<\/p>\n
So while there’s no law against loading up a trunk with guns and trying to sell them, \u00a0there\u00a0are\u00a0<\/em>laws against selling them to criminals, and minors. \u00a0 If they sell a gun to someone who goes on to use it in a crime, and it gets traced back them them, there are nasty legal consequences.<\/p>\nYou can even do it on line, if you want:<\/p>\n
Technology has made things even easier. Many individuals also sell their guns online on websites like Armslist.com, where all people need to do is create a free account to gain access to people selling firearms all around the state.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Right.<\/p>\n
Now let’s say you’re one of the people who sold a “submachine gun” (banned by the feds since the thirties) to a young Dae’veon (also a crime); in other words, someone who routinely commits gun-trafficking felonies. \u00a0 Ron Latz’s background check bill goes into effect.<\/p>\n
Are you suddenly going to start running background checks from the back of your car?<\/p>\n
If you’re the guy fencing stolen pistols in the men’s room of a bar in Farmington, are you going to step outside and run a NICS check?<\/p>\n
If you said “why, sure”, then you might be a Ron Latz voter who thinks Heather Martens makes sense.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A couple of years ago, it almost appeared as if the MinnPost – a creation of Minnesota liberals with deep pockets intended to serve as a DFL PR outlet – might do the unthinkable; engage in some responsible journalism on the issue of the Second Amendment and gun rights. Oh, make no mistake; they did […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[340,1,22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58081","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lie-first","category-uncategorized","category-victim-disarmament"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58081","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=58081"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58081\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58083,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58081\/revisions\/58083"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=58081"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=58081"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=58081"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}