Fair Enough

SCENE: Mitch BERG is riding his bike down a suburban street when Edmund DUCHEY, riding a recumbent bike, pulls out onto the street to cut BERG off. Duchey is proprietor at the (possibly fictional) progressive blog “MinnesotaLiberalAlliance.Blogspot.com”, and was badly scarred by a childhood in which he was routinely bullied – by much younger children

DUCHEY: Merg!

BERG: Jeez, you little feeb, you’re driving like a crazy f***.

DUCHEY: You wingnug ammosexuals want to carry guns at the state fair?

BERG: It’s got little to do with carrying anything, anywhere. It’s about a government body being able to arbitrarily restrict law-abiding citizens civil rights in violation of state law.

DUCHEY: Hah! Stupid ammosexual! The State Fair is a private corporation!

BERG: A private corporation that had its own police force, with arrest power? Which has called itself a part of state government in its own court filings for over 100 years? Seems like a bit of a stretch. And Minnesota statute is fairly clear that state governments, outside the judiciary, aren’t allowed to bar law-abiding citizens from practicing their civil rights.

DUCHEY: Stupid wingnuts. So you want to carry your guns, so you can intimidate people at the fair?

BERG: First – thanks for confirming Berg’s 16th Law of Cognitive Dissipation. Second: “intimidate”?

DUCHEY: People walking around with guns on their hips, or an AR47 slung over their shoulder, are by definition intimidating.

BERG: I could meet you halfway, if you were smart enough to realize it; open carrying in a crowd is a little tactless. I’d never do it. But the ones who have permits are not the people you need to worry about, and the only time criminals carry openly is when they’re pushing it in your face to rob or carjack you. But again, this isn’t about your feelings. This is about the law, and whether we make the state follow it.

DUCHEY: So you want to carry your little gun concealed? You wingnuts will probably shoot your p****rs off.

BERG: And further down the Berg’s 16th Law rathole we go. But I’ll tell you what – there are over 300,000 carry permittees in MInnesota. If we were having accidental shootings in any significant numbers, you’d be hearing about it.

And when I did carry, it was like a .380. I’d need more like a 10 gauge with slugs. No way to conceal that. Now, for you, a .25 ACP should do the trick.

DUCHEY: Was that an insult?

BERG: As far as you know, it’s a diagnosis.

(BERG pedals around DUCHEY, who sits, puzzled)

And SCENE.

3 thoughts on “Fair Enough

  1. I would have gone to the State Fair openly carrying my bazooka but they’re going to require masks so forget it.

  2. Pingback: This Is Today’s MNDFL | Shot in the Dark

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