{"id":29217,"date":"2012-07-27T12:25:59","date_gmt":"2012-07-27T17:25:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=29217"},"modified":"2012-07-27T11:09:18","modified_gmt":"2012-07-27T16:09:18","slug":"a-simple-experiment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=29217","title":{"rendered":"A Simple Experiment"},"content":{"rendered":"

The whole \u00a0Chick-Fil-A story <\/a>brought to mind an Idea I’d had years and years ago.<\/p>\n

Almost twenty years ago, a bunch of orc “community organizers” brought down the full weight of Saint Paul’s regulatory bureaucracy against “Saint Paul Firearms”, a gun store opened in the Midway by an electrician who’d invested his life’s savings in the place. \u00a0After a years-long battle, the city finally squeezed the owner, Greg Perkins, out of business.<\/p>\n

And I hatched the idea for an improbable but fun experiment. \u00a0How improbable? \u00a0It was all predicated on me winning the Megamilliions and having a couple hundred million to play with<\/p>\n

With that out of the way? \u00a0I’d lop a cool mill out of my account and buy up a block of blighted housing in a Minneapolis or Saint Paul neighborhood with potential. \u00a0The whole block. \u00a0Every single house. \u00a0 Maybe an old-school block with a corner store; .<\/p>\n

Then I’d get\u00a0Jeff O’Meara<\/a>\u00a0in there to rehab ‘every building to a fine sheen. \u00a0I mean, serioiusly – make ’em middle-class dream houses.<\/p>\n

And then I’d re-sell them to people – privately, natch. \u00a0$150,000 apiece. \u00a0Or $75,000 if you had a valid carry permit, a clean criminal record, and had attended a GOP caucus meeting or primary election. \u00a0Ditto the corner store –\u00a0I’d sell it back at half price to anyone who’d display a “Protected By Smith and Wesson” sign in the front window, and a “God Made Man; Colt Made Man Equal” plaque and a “God Bless Ronald Reagan” poster behind the counter. Or maybe with a billboard on top that ran adds for Ruger, the GOP, “Armed American Radio” and such.<\/p>\n

And I’d take out annual full-page ads in the Strib and PiPress showing how crime had dropped, not only on that block, but throughout the neighborhood.<\/p>\n

I’d love to see the official reaction. \u00a0There’d be no\u00a0discriminating <\/em>against non-gun-owners and voters for the anti-business, pro-blight and pro-criminal party when I sold the houses –\u00a0we’d just be giving a discount for those who exercise their constitutional right to keep, bear, and know how to use arms, and support a party that supports improving life, rather than making blight tolerable.<\/p>\n

I’d have loved to have seen the official reaction from the city involved.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The whole \u00a0Chick-Fil-A story brought to mind an Idea I’d had years and years ago. Almost twenty years ago, a bunch of orc “community organizers” brought down the full weight of Saint Paul’s regulatory bureaucracy against “Saint Paul Firearms”, a gun store opened in the Midway by an electrician who’d invested his life’s savings in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[24,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture-war","category-pc"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29217","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=29217"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29217\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":29226,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29217\/revisions\/29226"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=29217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=29217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=29217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}