You will pry my gun from my cold dead fingers
Earlier this month, I wrote about the MN If It Moves in a Way I Don’t Like, I’m Going to Riddle It with Bullets bill and how it pretty much would allow you to shoot anyone you want with the claim that you felt threatened and it was self-defense. Retreat? Why the fuck would I do that, muthafucker? ::Pew pew! Pew pew!:: You would think it was a showdown at high noon the way some of the GOP congresspeople were swaggering around, fondling the butt of their guns*.
“This is our town, and we don’t want no varmint scurrying around!” I think they imagine themselves as part of the old Wild West, shooting the baddies, and winning the heart of the fair maidens**. “Aw, shucks. T’weren’t nothing, Ma’am!” Tip of the hat, and SCENE. As I wrote at the time, it was a recipe for disaster, and I had hoped Governor Dayton (D) would veto it, but I wasn’t sure which way he’d go because guns are pretty big in MN.
This is why voting matters
As I noted in the aforementioned post and an earlier post about the 2010 elections, we went from having a Republican governor and a Democratic majority in both houses to having the Republicans grab control of both houses and a Democratic governor – the latter by a mere 9,000 votes. The minute the Republicans gained control of the legislature, they started pushing the same loathsome bills, including anti-woman bills, we’ve seen across the country. In addition, they passed a bill to allow Minnesotans to vote on the civil rights of teh gayz (Constitutional amendment banning SSM) in November.
Why am I rehashing this? To remind my fellow Minnesotans and, indeed, people around the country, that voting does matter. Part of the reason more crazy shit hasn’t been passed locally is because we have a Democratic governor. I tweeted him my earlier post on this Shoot It if It Moves Until It’s Dead Dead Dead bill, but I honestly thought he would pass it. As I said, MN is very pro-gun, and he was getting a lot of pressure to sign the bill into law.
I’m proud to say that after three days of deliberation, Governor Dayton vetoed the bill. He cited concerns by police and prosecutors as to the increase of danger on the job (police) and the broadness of the bill (prosecutors). He quoted federal figures that report we have more than 5 million guns in the state and added that state laws “already provide the authorizations for law-abiding citizens to use deadly force to defend themselves or others, either inside or outside their homes, so long as that force constitutes ‘reasonable force.’”
Governor Dayton thought it over, pondered the consequences, and made a thoughtful decision. Imagine that!
In the past few days, the horrific and heartbreaking story of Trayvon Martin has gotten national attention – I will be doing a post on him soon – and it was exactly what I fear would happen if the Shoot Anything That Looks Black Suspicious to You bill passed in Minnesota. I have no doubts that a Republican governor would have signed this bill into law – none at all.
I emailed Governor Dayton to thank him for vetoing this bill, and I tweeted him my thanks as well.
This is why we vote. This is why it fucking matters.
ETA: Governor Dayton’s handle on Twitter is @GovMarkDayton, and you can email him here if you would like to thank him, too.
*I just made that up for emphasis. To my knowledge, there is no actual butt-fondling going on in the Minnesota Legislature.
**Or misters. The author of the bill was female.
Man, I am happy to see this go down.
I’m sure the Repubs will try to bypass the veto, though, if they can.
The gun advocates would have us believe they’re heroically brave, standing against…whatever.
They’re not. They’re chickenshits. They’re consumed, utterly consumed, by fears they dare not mention.
How can it be otherwise? They need it for “protection”, they say.
I’ve lived more than half a century without ever owning a firearm. Shot a few, of various types, and I’m not afraid of them, I just don’t really feel the need for one, and that was true even when I lived on the West Side of Chicago in a neighborhood some people were quite afraid of.
(I’m not an idiot, I don’t take silly chances, I just think I can deal with most of the world and still remain short of killing people to do it.)
They’re afraid of everything down to their own shadows, even when they’re hiding behind their own locked doors.
Cowards, really, and fools.
That, or it’s a major case of overcompensation for…something.
Thank you for this post. I’m sending your governor thanks as well and I’m in California. Looking forward to your post on Trayvon Martin; I could barely get through the articles and definitely cannot listen to the 911 tapes; too angry and heartbroken by this.
“MN is very pro-gun…”
So the ‘MN’ in your name is really Minnesota!
When I left, ‘Daytons’ was just a department store.
I leave you guys for 40 years, and you become pro-gun?
Don’t make me come down there!
I’m actually brave enough to cross the room without my piece.
GOP sissies.
Hey, I ran onto your blog recently, and just want to thank you for articulating the outrage I feel on a daily basis with the insanity coming out the legislature, not to mention the batshit crazy coming out of the mouths of the “conservatives”. What a fucking misnomer. Anyway, kudos also for the Violent Femmes video you posted so perfectly with this gun piece. Don’t shoot shoot shoot that thing at me! Made me feel better to sit and listen to that. Thanks.
rrgedeb, welcome! Pull up a chair and get comfy. We at #ABLC are keeping the pedal to the metal with all the crazy bullshit going on. And, I find music helps both in making my point and in chilling me the fuck out, so I use videos liberally in my posts.
Be grateful you have a sane governor. I live in a pistol packing state where a state Rep pulled her little pink Glock from her purse & pointed it at a reporter.
Just IMO, and any can feel free to challenge me on this. The tragedy with Trayvon Martin involves more than racism. I believe that the cops were totally racist & egregious. I’m not so absolutely sure about Zimmerman.
Maybe he was and maybe he was just one more ignorant, gun toting, self important asshole with a gun. According to what I read he appointed himself to “neighborhood watch” No one elected him but he did have some kind of “in” with the local cops. He was a wannabe. They probably left him on his own & laughed behind his back. That will be on their ignorant racist heads.
He was a fuck up with a gun. He had no training, no discipline & ignored the direction to stand down & wait for the police. In short what ever else he might be, he was an ignorant fuck up with a gun. He needs to pay the price for killing Trayvon Martin.
Aquagranny, I agree that the Trayvon Martin case is not simply just racism, though it’s been reported that Zimmerman was focused on young black men as suspects. I will delve deeper into it when I write the post.
P.S. I am VERY grateful we have a sane and thoughtful governor. I remember your congresswoman with the pink handgun.
I am looking forward to that because I think we need to confront these issues of racism, especially as they involve our police & elected officials. We also need to fight this issue that every armed asshole can get away with shooting anyone at will.
I am so sick of these self-appointed fuckwads who carry guns & think they can determine their own “law & order.” I would use worse than a rusty pitch fork on them. I would suggest they volunteer themselves as targets at a gun range so they could understand what it feels like to get shot at.
A ray of light amidst the crazy darkness that is enveloping this country! I’m so glad to hear your guv vetoed this bill. Kudos to him (and to you!).
So this law would have made duelling legal.
“I thought he was about to pull out a gun and shoot at me, so I’m legally allowed to do the same, right? We agreed on it in advance and everything.”
While I understand about the need for a gun, one thing that never fails to annoy the hell out of me are the ones that act like children about it. I just want to scream, “Stop watch all those John Wayne movies!” Guns are tools that can kill (to a lesser extent, majorly wound) and you’re going to have to live with the consequences. It doesn’t make you a badass to wave it around and brag about want to shoot things.
That reminds me of a quote from “Shoot ‘Em Up”:
I grew up in an area where almost everyone had guns. The funny thing is, that every one of the people who had them would have been aghast about how the “right to carry” people act. None of them would have dreamed of taking a gun to church, into a bar, keeping a loaded gun in the house, or even walking around all day with one stashed in a holster somewhere on your person.
Most of the people who carry pistols for “personal safety” have watched one too many westerns and action movies. In reality, any attempt to use your gun to “protect yourself” in those situations is more likely to either get yourself killed, kill an innocent bystander, or have your gun stolen from you because you’ll never get it out in time.
I grew up rural too. I’m not anti-gun just anti gun nuts. I will point out that it was an elderly woman and two men, ALL UNARMED, who subdued the Tucson shooter before he could reload for more carnage.
There was much hoopla here about if someone there was packing a gun this would not have happened. A cop friend of mine called that big BS. He said first of all these things happen real fast, untrained people are not prepared to react as a professional would & even a pro would have to determine the source of gun fire & just how many bystanders would go down if he drew his weapon. He feels that if someone else there had a gun it would have been much worse
All I have to do is read any account of a police shootout with an armed suspect, and the insanity of the reasoning of the gun nuts jumps into focus. There’s usually a lot of bullets fired, with very few actually hitting someone, and that’s with people who are well-trained. Speaking from experience, whatever you can do on a nice shooting range does not mean you can do it when it’s hitting the fan.
My former roommate was a firearms instructor so, even though I never planned on owning a gun, I went to her class at the shooting range.
She loaned me her glock (sp?), showed me how to hold it and stood me with a line of others in front of the target. We held the guns down and then when she said, “Gun!” we were to point them at the target and shoot.
I never once hit the target mainly because when I heard the other guns go off I shot too. I’m lucky I didn’t shoot my own foot off.
Anyway, I skipped the afternoon class and went home at noon. By then I had realized that the armed person I was most afraid of was me.
“I just made that up for emphasis. To my knowledge, there is no actual butt-fondling going on in the Minnesota Legislature”
I think Michael Brodkorb would disagree with you, unless he’s just bluffing for a bigger payout…
http://www.minnpost.com/glean/2012/03/top-legislators-deny-%E2%80%94-and-demur-%E2%80%94-capitol-affairs
I’m so glad MN has a sane governor. We have to get ours recalled over here in WI right quick before he signs any more of these ALEC/NRA boilerplate bills into law. It didn’t take long after he signed a stupid ‘castle doctrine’ bill here before we had our first victim, a young kid who ran up onto the porch of the wrong house in the dark. Murdered in cold blood by a chickenshit who now won’t have to face any punishment for his lunatic over-reaction.
http://www.wisn.com/news/30601812/detail.html
“Morrison’s mother also talked to 12 News. She said the homeowner ‘took one bullet and killed my son. But he also killed six others — his father, me and his brothers and sisters. He wiped out an entire family, in no time.’
Lauri Morrison described her son as ‘a good, beautiful kid. He was 20. This is when you start your life, not end it.’”
Oh, Gavia, that’s so heartbreaking. I can’t even imagine. I’m in tears.
I am a supporter of gun rights, but I have to say these types of laws are ridiculous. Yes, it should absolutely be legal to discharge a firearm if necessary to protect oneself and others. But necessary does not mean being confronted by a black kid walking down the street in the dark. I am a member of the military, I know how to use a weapon, and I’m pretty damned good at it. And even after a tour in a warzone where thankfully I did not come into direct contact with the enemy (they fired mortars at me from a distance, not much you can do against that with a rifle), I live in fear of the day that I may need to fire my gun at another human being. I will absolutely shoot someone if I need to do so, if the alternative to taking a life is mine or another’s life being taken, but in no way do I ever want that to happen, nor would I ever actively seek out such a situation. Anyone who carries a gun with the intention of finding a “bad guy” to gun down should not own a weapon. I am in favor of the right to bear arms, but with that right comes responsibility. The responsibility to know when to use your phone rather than your handgun, when to leave a situation rather than escalate it, to know when a kid is just a kid walking home from the store with a candy bar.
I won’t completely disagree with you but I have to share this that happened some years ago to a friend of ours who spent 30 years in the Marines and saw plenty of combat where people were shooting rifles at him & he shot back.
In the middle of the night, two guys broke into his house. He confronted them, shot one guy, the other hit him with a baseball bat, took his gun, killed him and ran away. The Gunny did protect his home & family which I am sure was most in his mind but the point here is that just having a gun & knowing how to use it won’t always protect you.
Nothing will “always” protect you, anyone who thinks that they are invincible because they own a gun is an idiot. But the fact that you don’t like guns should not impact my right to own one.
Heather, if you read all my posts here you would know that I am not a “don’t like guns person” I would never step on your rights to own guns or enjoy their use. I know lots of people who target practice or hunt. I grew up rural & have handled guns myself. I only shared that story because I think guns don’t always protect people like some might think.
The issue I have is that we are allowing too many untrained & possibly unstable people to pack guns & shoot at will. You must agree that can’t be good especially after all the training you have received. You respect the power of your weapon & know how to use it appropriately.
Unfortunately too many in my state of AZ do not. Our lax gun laws allowed a known mentally unstable person to go to Wal-Mart purchase his weapon of choice plus ammunition, kill six people and wound 19 more.
This is the issue I have about gun ownership. Vet the person who wants a gun & then require some real training on use & safety. Even then don’t believe that a gun will always save you.
Can we agree somewhere here?
Absolutely. I believe that anyone who buys a gun should be required to spend a set number of hours in marksmanship and safety. But I also believe that the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. The fact that I enjoy firing guns and that I believe that people should have the right to own guns, especially for home defense, does not mean that I believe that owning a gun will keep me safe. The incident you mentioned above is simply a very good argument for trigger locks. The kind wherein you must be wearing a magnetic ring in order to fire the gun are excellent. The the intruder would not only have to take your gun, but your ring as well, which is much more difficult.
“Trigger locks” is something totally new to me & way before what happened to our friend. This is something that could be so good in households where there are small curious children. In the old days we always locked up all guns so secure from our children that they would have been no use to us in real need.
I do live on & learn with more understanding of your thoughts & position. Thank you for this info.