"We tend to idealize tolerance, then wonder why we find ourselves infested with losers and nut cases. -- Patrick Nielsen Hayden

"I have seen gross intolerance shown in support of tolerance." -- Coleridge

Cue the music.

The United Nations has proclaimed today, November 16, as the International Day of Tolerance. This came in the wake of the UN proclaimimg 1995 the International Year of Tolerance -- whose successes Wikipedia documents in grueling detail. (Apparently, many did not get the memo.)

• February 13 - A United Nations tribunal on human rights violations in the Balkans charges 21 Bosnian Serb commanders with genocide and crimes against humanity.
• February 15 - Hacker Kevin Mitnick is arrested by the FBI and charged with breaking into some of the United States' most "secure" computer systems.
• February 17 - Colin Ferguson is convicted of 6 counts of murder for the December 1993 Long Island Rail Road shootings and later receives a 200+ year sentence.
• February 21 - Ibrahim Ali, a 17-year-old Comorian living in France, is murdered by 3 far-right National Front activists.
• March 1 - In Moscow, Russian anti-corruption journalist Vladislav Listyev is killed by a gunman.
• March 3 - In Somalia, the United Nations peacekeeping mission ends.
• March 6 - On an episode of The Jenny Jones Show ("Same-Sex Crushes"), Scott Amedure reveals a crush on his heterosexual friend Jonathan Schmitz. Schmitz kills Amedure several days after the show.
• March 16 - Mississippi ratifies the Thirteenth Amendment, becoming the last state to approve the abolition of slavery. The amendment was nationally ratified in 1865.
• March 20 - Sarin gas attack on the Tokyo subway. Members of the Aum Shinrikyo religious cult release sarin gas on 5 subway trains in Tokyo, killing 12 and injuring 5,510.
• March 31 - Tejano superstar Selena is killed by the president of her own fanclub, Yolanda Saldívar.
• April 2 - An explosion in Gaza kills 8, including a Hamas leader.
• April 19 - Oklahoma City bombing: 168 people, including 8 Federal Marshals and 19 children, are killed at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. Timothy McVeigh and one of his accomplices, Terry Nichols, set off the bomb.
• April 24 - A Unabomber bomb kills lobbyist Gilbert Murray in Sacramento, California.
• May 16 - Japanese police besiege the headquarters of Aum Shinrikyo near Mount Fuji and arrest cult leader Shoko Asahara.
• May 17 - Shawn Nelson, 35, goes on a tank rampage in San Diego.
• May 20 - U.S. President Bill Clinton indefinitely closes part of the street in front of the White House, Pennsylvania Avenue, to vehicular traffic in response to the Oklahoma City bombing.
• May 23 - Oklahoma City bombing: In Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, the remains of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building are imploded.
• June 2 - Waffen-SS Hauptsturmführer Erich Priebke is extradited from Argentina to Italy.
• June 22 - Japanese police rescue 365 hostages from a hijacked All Nippon Airways Flight 857 (Boeing 747-200) at Hakodate airport. The hijacker was armed with a knife and demanded the release of Shoko Asahara.
• June 29 - Iraq disarmament crisis: According to UNSCOM, the unity of the UN Security Council begins to fray, as a few countries, particularly France and Russia, become more interested in making financial deals with Iraq than in disarming the country.
• Iraq disarmament crisis: Iraq threatens to end all cooperation with UNSCOM and IAEA, if sanctions against the country are not lifted by August 31.
• July 1 - Iraq disarmament crisis: In response to UNSCOM's evidence, Iraq admits for first time the existence of an offensive biological weapons program, but denies weaponization.
• July 5 - The U.S. Congress passes the Child Protection and Obscenity Enforcement Act, requiring that producers of pornography keep records of all models who are filmed or photographed, and that all models be at least 18 years of age.
• July 11 - Bosnian Serbs march into Srebrenica while UN Dutch peacekeepers leave. Large numbers of Bosniak men and boys are killed in the Srebrenica massacre.
• July 21-26 - Third Taiwan Strait Crisis: The People's Liberation Army fires missiles into the waters north of Taiwan.
• Iraq disarmament crisis: Following the defection of his son-in-law, Hussein Kamel, Saddam Hussein makes new revelations about the full extent of Iraq's biological and nuclear weapons programs. Iraq also withdraws its last UN declaration of prohibited biological weapons and turns over a large amount of new documents on its WMD programs.
• August 4 - Croatian forces launch Operation Storm against Serbian forces in Krajina, with the cooperation of the ARBiH, and force them to withdraw to central Bosnia and Herzegovina.
• August 5 - Croatian forces take Knin and continue to advance.
• August 7 - Operation Storm ends with a UN-brokered ceasefire; remaining Serbian forces start surrendering.
• August 24 - Microsoft releases Windows 95.
• August 28 - A Serbian mortar bomb near a Sarajevo market square kills 37 civilians.
• August 29 - Eduard Shevardnadze, the Georgian head of state, survives an assassination attempt in Tbilisi.
• August 30 - The NATO bombing campaign against Serb artillery positions begins in Bosnia and Herzegovina, continuing into October. At the same time, ARBiH forces begin an offensive against the Bosnian Serb Army around Sarajevo, central Bosnia, and Bosnian Krajina.
• September 6 - NATO air strikes continue, after repeated attempts at a solution with the Serbs fail.
• September 19 - The Washington Post and The New York Times publish the Unabomber's manifesto.
• September 27-28 - Bob Denard's mercenaries capture President Said Mohammed Djohor of the Comoros; the local army does not resist.
• October 1 - Ten people are convicted of bombing the World Trade Center in 1993.
• October 4 - France launches a counter-coup in the Comoros with 600 soldiers. They arrest Bob Denard and his mercenaries and take Denard to France; Caabi el-Yachroutu becomes the interim president.
• October 16 - The Million Man March is held in Washington, D.C.. The event was conceived by Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.
• October 23 - In Houston, Texas, Yolanda Saldivar is convicted of first degree murder in the shooting death of Selena Quintanilla Perez and 3 days later is sentenced to life in prison.
• November 1 - Participants in the Yugoslav War begin negotiations at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio.
• November 2 - The Supreme Court of Argentina orders the extradition of Erich Priebke, ex-S.S. captain.
• November 3 - At Arlington National Cemetery, U.S. President Bill Clinton dedicates a memorial to the victims of the Pan Am Flight 103 bombing.
• November 4 - Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin is assassinated at a peace rally in Tel Aviv.
• November 10 - Iraq disarmament crisis: With help from Israel and Jordan, UNSCOM inspector Scott Ritter intercepts 240 Russian gyroscopes and accelerometers on their way to Iraq from Russia.
• November 10 - In Nigeria, playwright and environmental activist Ken Saro-Wiwa, along with 8 others from the Movement for the Survival of the Ogoni People, are hanged by government forces.
• November 16 - A United Nations tribunal charges Radovan Karadžić and Ratko Mladic with genocide during the Bosnian War.
• November 21 - The Dayton Agreement to end the Bosnian War is reached at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, Ohio (signed December 14).
• December 14 - The Dayton Agreement is signed in Paris.
• December 15 - The European Court of Justice rules that all EU football players have the right to a free transfer among member states at the end of their contracts.

Worldwide response to this abbreviated version has been dramatic.



Meanwhile, blogging continues . . .

The irreplaceable Randazza encourages tolerance for anonymous douchebags, while Jack of Kent does not urge all that much tolerance for the UK's much-mocked libel laws.

Personal injury lawyer Erik Turkewitz has decided to stop tolerating spam in his comments section from law firms, but tolerantly limits his response to outing them. (Apparently, his bastinado is in the shop.)

Many writers are somewhat less than tolerant of Google's habit of scraping the entire contents of their works for Google's benefit. The Author's Guild and the AAP sued -- a post mortem on the now-defunct settlement proposal as a look toward a new proposal was performed by Matthew Sag at Concurring Opinions. (Full disclosure: I said no to the proposed settlement; the remix doesn't look any better to me.)

Moving on . . . I don't follow such things closely, but I understand that the transportation of an imperfect oblate spheroid consisting of a swine's epidermis for short distances and/or interference with said transport can be a very profitable profession, and has inspired many bons mot. One such highly-paid inflated epidermis transporter engaged in such clever formulations as 
was one Larry Johnson of the Kansas City "Chiefs". Moved by the persuasiveness of the above and similar such clevernesses, his employers have, with minimal tolerance, invited him to seek other employment; Rob Radcliff furnishes the details.

Intolerance (as well as lack of humor) is utterly prevalent, of course, in airline travel, where the fearless screeners of the Federal Airline Transport And Security Service (known, strangely, by the acronym of "TSA") strive mightily to prevent the smuggling of any of the traditional hijacker's tools -- guns, knives, boxcutters, the Medal of Honor, bottled water, nail clippers, meat thermometers and such -- aboard airplanes, but have now decided that cash, even in multi-thousand-dollar quantities, does not represent an immediate danger. (This may be a relief to those who carry smaller amounts of cash -- say, $20 worth of quarters -- in a heavy sock in their carry-on.)

What does? Dean Vernon Wormer has explained that we're all on Double Secret Probation. TSA Spokesperson Lauren Gaches has explained that the memo that would tell us all what we can't carry is only available if it's waterboarded out of her in response to a FOIA request.

Up until recently, a great deal of tolerance was displayed by the US Army with regard to one Major Nidal Hasan, whose presentation to senior Army MDs on the medical subject of I Am About to Engage in Sudden Jihad Syndrome If You Don't Stop Me, The Koranic Worldview As It Relates to Muslims in the US Military was followed by his transfer from Walter Reed to Fort Hood. John Philips argues -- persuasively to this intolerant amateur -- that the apparent facts of the situation rendered the Army's lack of discrimination unnecessary, and they could have, maybe, like, fired him.

The Fort Hood murders have inspired a lot of questions, as well as the usual posturing, which I'm going to skip. Eugene Volokh dispenses with what seems to me to be one of the easier ones -- does the Second Amendment prevent the army from banning soldiers from carrying firearms on military bases? No.

Another easy one -- too difficult, it seems for Wolf Blitzer at CNN -- is how a lawyer who used to be a soldier could choose to represent a man accused, manifestly for good reason, of a horrible crime. Ken at Popehat shows limited tolerance for that stupid question.

One area where tolerance seems to run rampant society is for bad behavior by guys who have been issued badges.
The video shows Maricopa County Detention Officer Adam Stoddard snooping about and finding some interesting reading material in a defense counsel's folder --

She subsequently, and a bit irritatedly, explains, "you don't get to do that!" (That appears to not be the case, at least in Maricopa County.)

-- and sharing it with an equally badged friend, who promptly spirits it out of court.

Lawyers from all over the blawgosphere have been making intolerant statements about Mr. Stoddard's reading preferences, very much not in the spirit of today.

One particularly cogent comment came from Mark Bennett, who noted that "Also note that the defense lawyer's first reaction is to want to know if she's being accused of wrongdoing." Occurred to me, too, that she might have been worried that narcotics had been planted there. Wouldn't be the first time.

The sequel showed a lot of tolerance, by the way; when Stoddard, under oath, told self-contradictory stories about why he ended up going through the defense counsel's briefs (the legal kind, silly), the judge simply set another hearing, for further tolerant dithering.

The video, also by the way, was the official court video; no amateurs involved.

In England, though, the problem of police officers concealing their identities, presumably when performing various naughtinesses, has come to the attention of the authorities, who have come up with a simple solution: a "request" that all videos and photography of said naughty badged boys be thrown down the memory hole, brought to us by Charon QC.

The authorities in Stoughton MA apparently, though, are not tolerant of former police officer David M. Cohen's demand for overtime payments for his work on a criminal case, totalling "at least"

... $113,000, which includes 87 accrued vacation days, 125 unused sick days, 144 hours of compensation time accrued for not using sick time, 152 hours of supervisor comp time, 481 hours for court appearances related to his criminal case, 280 hours of overtime to prepare for his case, at least 61 percent education incentive pay for 2007, and 61 percent for accrued stipends and benefits.

For some reason -- intolerance, perhaps -- the demand has been rejected; Cohen was the defendant in the criminal case, and convicted on four charges.

Great tolerance has been demonstrated in the sad case of Tennessee State Trooper Brent Gobbell, who decided to send himself a remarkably racist email, but accidentally ended up sending it to 787 other state employees; he's getting 15 days off and a stint of diversity training, presumably after which he'll return to his prestigious job providing security at the Tennessee Supreme Court. (I don't make this stuff up, you know.)

Turning away from the tolerance issue . . .

Tomorrow is the NRA's birthday, and as good an excuse as I can find for a bit of gun stuff. Self-admitted occasional NRA supporter Todd Wilkinson gnashed his teeth at the HuffPo over his anguish that shortly, state laws about carrying guns will be applied to National Parks. He doesn't, for some reason, show that this is a bad idea because of the flurry of shootings in state and local parks in those states, probably because there hasn't been one. If I understand him correctly, his argument is "Do it for the bears."

The bears, when pressed for comment, murmured something about "pickanick baskets."

Media Matters rends its garments over how the Hasan shooting hasn't, unlike previous shootings in victim disarmament zones, excited a flurry of gun control discussion and perhaps yet more legislation.

In Germany, a postscript to their mass shooting earlier this year: German regulations now permit the authorities to enter gun owners' households without notice or warrant, just to be sure that the guns are stored with Teutonic correctness. In that case, the gun that the young murderer used hadn't been locked up.

Over in the US, neither was Jacksie King's:

"Jacksie King was an elderly grandmother who lived in a small Illinois house on dead-end Gaty Avenue since her youth. At 87, she mostly stayed at home and enjoyed frequent visits from her daughter. Her life changed one December night when an unidentified intruder cut her phone lines, pried the security bars off her window and invaded her home. After severely beating her, the man robbed her house and escaped. The case was never solved. Two months later, King awoke to the sound of an intruder breaking through her storm door at 2 a.m. As before, the bars were pried off her window to access an enclosed porch, and again the phone lines were cut. King reached for her only remaining lifeline--a .38-cal. Colt revolver her daughter had given her for protection. This time the would-be victim fired, striking 49-year-old Larry Tillman in the chest, immediately dropping him on the doorstep. Terrified, King stayed in her chair for four hours, clutching her revolver, until her daughter arrived. Police later learned Tillman was a career criminal with an extensive record, including residential robbery."

Last year's Heller decision is beginning to percolate through the courts; the DC Circuit weighs in, and the Chicago Gun Case is gearing up to be heard by the Supreme Court.

(As I understand it, the authorities in Chicago found a little-known addition to "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed, unless, like, we want to, then it's totally okay.")

Expect oral arguments on January 11, another snappy 5-4 decision forthwith, or maybe fifthwith.

This weeks' WTF gun law moment was provided by the UK, where a man who found a sawed-off shotgun dumped in his yard promptly brought it to the nearest police station, only to be arrested, prosecuted and convicted for doing so. Paul Clarke will spend at least five years in prison. I guess maybe the Brits need even stricter gun laws.

Meanwhile, the Hasan rampage has excited more commentary on gun control. The eminent legal scholar, Chicago's second Mayor Daley, explains:

"Unfortunately, America loves Guns. We love guns to a point where that uh we see devastation on a daily basis. You don't blame a group."

Well, there's always the murderers, but . . . Daley is mayor of the city with the strictest gun control laws of any major city in the US; it also has one of the highest violent crime rates; it would be intolerant to show the connection between the two, but John MacAdams obliges.

Perhaps more sober analysis of what to do -- rather than "don't blame a group" -- in the unlikely event you find yourself around an active shooter is provided by Karl Rehn here, courtesy of Lawrence Person.

A few goodies just don't fit in with either of the two themes of the day, but I couldn't leave out Jamie Spencer's entry, which combines a pointer to a tour of Oaksterdam University, "the first cannabis college" and a pointer to U.S. v. Villar, where a guilty verdict was immediately followed by an email from one of the convicting jurors to the defense attorney, where the juror explains that he and two other jurors really didn't think that the convicted had been proven guilty, but was sure that there was no point in holding out, as the guy wouldn't get any better a jury the next time around. (As I understand it, three of the jurors weren't sure he'd been proven guilty, but were sure that he'd been proven to be Hispanic.)

I can't quite close this with that bit of ugliness, so I'll just point to the new scourge that is just ruining the reputation of Las Vegas: Strippers in a Box, and, courtesy of Grits for Breakfast, the only funny Taser video I've ever seen.

#

My own views on tolerance were shaped by General Charles Napier, who explained to a group of Indian gentlement that Her Majesty's forces were utterly committed to tolerance. (The issue was the practice of "suttee" in India, where a widow, out of grief at the loss of her husband, would invariably throw herself upon his funeral pyre, often assisted by a bunch of men who were pretty sure that her own protestations and struggles to the contrary were purely pro forma.)

You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: When men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.

Then again, I'm not known for my tolerance.

Happy birthday, NRA.

(Thanks to the anonymous Ed. of Blawg Review for offering me this opportunity, and to both him and Colin Samuels for many great suggestions for links.)

Well, now that the Nobel Committee has decided that the major qualification of a peace prized laureate is being Not George Bush, I think there's a few folks worth considering, beyond those usually being mentioned.

Hell, restricted this just to folks who, like Nobel Laureate Jimmy Carter, have been President, we've got quite a few choices.  I suggest the following

Bill Clinton: in the Agreed Framework, when President Clinton explored the inadequacy of remuneration for absention agreements in limiting nuclear proliferation, he expanded pioneering work beginning with Aethelred the Unready's payments to the Danes and continuing with the surprisingly un-awarded Neville Chamberlaine's work, almost a thousand years later, at the Anglo-German declaration in Munich.  For this expansion on previous implementations of danegeld, Clinton is far more worthy of the Nobel than Obama.

Ronald Wilson Reagan:  there are few things in modern history that have both distanced the spectre of global war and increased the opportunity for peaceful development than the collapse of the Soviet Union. While quite literally billions of people aided in that effort, the final push culminated during the Reagan administration, with the Strategic Defense Initiative, which finally forced the Soviets to spend themselves into bankruptcy and irrelevance; the fall came soon after.  While, clearly, the fathers of SDI include not only General Daniel Graham, as well as Pournelle and Possony -- see the Strategy of Technology -- the final push by the Reagan administration included persuading the Saudi entity to lower oil prices, forcing the Soviets to deplete their cash reserves, rather than selling oil to enhance them, a .

Harry S. Truman: Operation Downfall would have finally ended WWII, certainly, but at a huge cost of lives, both US and Japanese.  Casualty estimates for the Olympic campaign vary, but there's little reason to quibble with the Shockley estimates of hundreds of thousands of Allied deaths, and multiple millions of Japanese.  The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki resulted in roughly a quarter million deaths -- an order of magnitude smaller.   

About the only good thing I can think about in the whole Polanski fooforaw is that it gives folks who wouldn't otherwise have had one an easy opportunity to stake out a not particularly morally difficult or brave position against middle-aged guys raping young girls, and in favor of said assholes being given appropriate punishment for it.

Miami lawyer Brian Tannebaum takes a little time out from both what is apparently a very successful legal practice (as well as endless fascinating with moderately expensive wine and an obsession as to which group of men is marginally better at transporting an oblate spheroid constructed of a fragment of inflated swine's epidermis in an arbitrary direction) to point out some obviousnesses; Brian has, from time to time, a keen eye for the obvious.

A lot of folks have been blogging about Polanski.  I'll join in, perhaps, but  . . . I'd like to know a little more, before I start flogging my own keen eye for the obvious.

Which leads to my questions -- which aren't of the hypothetical of "What sort of rope would, in a saner society, be used to execute the 'suspended sentence' that the bastard deserves?" as easy and tempting a target as that might be.

Nah.  Realistically -- and forgetting about what should or shouldn't be done -- what sort of sentence would a guy who doesn't have a plea bargain be likely to face, today in California, for the offense Polanski pleaded guilty to?  (I'm not asking about what somebody who pled out recently would get; the law may have changed in CA in the ensuing decades, and I'm assuming -- although certainly willing to be corrected -- that he'd be sentenced based on what the law was then, as opposed to now.)

Also:  on the flight charge or charges, what would the CA crimes be that he's at least possibly going to be prosecuted for violating by his flight?  And what, should he be charged and convicted, would he likely to face in terms of time for those?

I'm not asking any lawyer to put his law license into the pot for the purposes of satisfying my curiousity, but if anybody -- with or without a law degree -- has any knowledge on the subject that they'd care to share, I'd love to see it in the comments.

 

... and a look back at how to solve the problem of the armed village idiot...

There's folks who say (I'm one of them) that the MCPPA is one of the best carry permit laws in the country.  They -- we -- have a point. 

Quick digression:  I'm occasionally praised for being one of the folks who helped write the law.  That's flattering, but it's not true; I've learned a fair amount about how to draft legislation since, and do have some future plans to help write some in the future, but, just to keep the record straight:  I had no hand at all in authoring the bill.

(In fact, because I was involved in writing the book at the time that the law was being negotiated and drafted, Joe Olson and I made the decision that, for ethical reasons, I was to be kept out of the loop on the discussions, so as not to unfairly disadvantage a -- hypothetical and nonexistent, as it turned out -- competitor.  In retrospect, I think we bent over too far backwards, but . . .)

While the main author of the bill was Lynda Boudreau, then a member of the MN House, most of the language was drafted by Joseph Olson and David Gross.  It's hard to overstate the importance of Joe in the modern Second Amendment movement, so rather than get into it, just take my word for it:  he's one of the giants.  It's easy to understate the importance of David's contributions; David does it all the time.  While Joe had a lot of trial experience in his younger days, he's mainly been an academic for some decades, now; David's experience in the trenches -- and the lessons learned from that experience -- was critical.

One of the problems facing anybody crafting a carry law is this:  who should and shouldn't get a permit?  One view -- and it's mine -- is that the Second Amendment simply recognizes a right, and that there should be no need for permits at all; we don't, after all, have to get a religion permit in order to be able to fast on Yom Kipper, attend High Mass, or head over to D'Amico to worship the Flying Spaghetti Monster by consuming the traditional zuppa de clams, after all.

But, as a practical matter, that wasn't what was going to happen in Minnesota in 2003 -- or probably ever.

Another view -- which I reject -- is that carrying a handgun for personal protection is a great privilege, which only the most special people should be allowed to have.

The MCPPA strikes a balance.  As a matter of presumption, just about anybody who is legally entitled to possess a firearm at all, and who has gotten what can be comically minimal training in the safe use of a pistol --

Training may be demonstrated by ... completion of a firearms safety or training course providing basic training in the safe use of a pistol...  

(b) Basic training must include:

(1) instruction in the fundamentals of pistol use;

(2) successful completion of an actual shooting qualification exercise; and

(3) instruction in the fundamental legal aspects of pistol possession, carry, and use, including self-defense and the restrictions on the use of deadly force.

-- gets a permit within thirty days of applying. 

But, you might say, what do you do about the borderline cases?  Let's say you have some raving nutcase who is able to get through a minimal carry class, and who hasn't gotten in such serious legal trouble that he's forbidden from so much as possessing a firearm, even under supervision -- are you saying that he gets to wander around with a loaded handgun, until he commits a felony?   

Good question; I'm glad I asked it.   

One simple solution would be to give some governmental authority -- the local sheriff, say -- the right to decide that some applicant was just too dangerous and nutty to be wandering around in public with a loaded gun.  And that would have some benefit to it, sure.  But it would also have some risks:  what do you do about a sheriff who goes beyond that?  Historically, in Minnesota and everywhere else, anytime you give some politician or government official any power at all, some are going to abuse it.

And there was a real history of permit denial abuse in Minnesota.  The Richfield police chief famously said that, as far as he was concerned, if you're running down the street being chased by an axe murderer, you shouldn't be able to have a gun to defend yourself.  (No, I'm not making that up.)

Which is why the MCPPA provides both authority to the sheriff, and a check on it.

(a) The sheriff must, within 30 days after the date of receipt of the application packet described in subdivision 3:... (1) issue the permit to carry [or] ... (3) deny the application on the grounds that there exists a substantial likelihood that the applicant is a danger to self or the public if authorized to carry a pistol under a permit.

Hmmm... so the sheriff can deny a permit to a known knutcase, even if he isn't legally barred from handgun possession. But what, you ask, is to stop the sheriff from just denying it to, well, everybody?  Yeah, sure, somebody can take him to court, but that gets expensive.

And here's where Joe and David were stone fucking brilliant; I'm going to quote the whole subdivision, adding some emphasis:

Subd. 12.Hearing upon denial or revocation.

(a) Any person aggrieved by denial or revocation of a permit to carry may appeal by petition to the district court having jurisdiction over the county or municipality where the application was submitted. The petition must list the sheriff as the respondent. The district court must hold a hearing at the earliest practicable date and in any event no later than 60 days following the filing of the petition for review. The court may not grant or deny any relief before the completion of the hearing. The record of the hearing must be sealed. The matter must be heard de novo without a jury.

(b) The court must issue written findings of fact and conclusions of law regarding the issues submitted by the parties. The court must issue its writ of mandamus directing that the permit be issued and order other appropriate relief unless the sheriff establishes by clear and convincing evidence:

(1) that the applicant is disqualified under the criteria described in subdivision 2, paragraph (b); or

(2) that there exists a substantial likelihood that the applicant is a danger to self or the public if authorized to carry a pistol under a permit. Incidents of alleged criminal misconduct that are not investigated and documented may not be considered.

(c) If an applicant is denied a permit on the grounds that the applicant is listed in the criminal gang investigative data system under section 299C.091, the person may challenge the denial, after disclosure under court supervision of the reason for that listing, based on grounds that the person:

(1) was erroneously identified as a person in the data system;

(2) was improperly included in the data system according to the criteria outlined in section 299C.091, subdivision 2, paragraph (b); or

(3) has demonstrably withdrawn from the activities and associations that led to inclusion in the data system.

(d) If the court grants a petition brought under paragraph (a), the court must award the applicant or permit holder reasonable costs and expenses including attorney fees.

That last paragraph isn't just unusual in carry laws; it's unique.  And it provides a good, albeit imperfect, check on bad judgment or bad faith by the sheriff:  while the denied applicant does have to come up with some money -- usually around $3000 -- for a lawyer, if he wins, the court must order the sheriff to pay him back.

Nobody's perfect, not even -- maybe particularly not -- guys with badges. And it works both ways to correct errors.

Let's take a perhaps not entirely hypothetical case.  Some guy with a history of relatively minor brushes with the law -- interfering with a 911 call, a couple of disorderly conducts and two DWIs, say, manages to get through some sort of carry class at local gun shop -- and applies for a permit.  Looking at the application and his criminal history, the deputy says something like, well, Josh hasn't been in trouble again for a few years; maybe he's gotten his act together -- let's just cut the guy a break, and issues the permit.

Well, maybe it was the right call at the time; maybe not.  But let's say that this perhaps hypothetical guy goes on to pick up another DWI, a third and then a fourth disorderly conduct conviction, and tops it off with a 5th degree assault when he peppersprays a customer at his security guard job, and spends thirty days in jail.  

Is the sheriff out of luck just because none of those are felonies?

Not at all.  Look at the law, again, specifically Subd. 4 (c):

The sheriff must conduct a background check by means of electronic data transfer on a permit holder through the Minnesota Crime Information System and the National Instant Criminal Background Check System at least yearly to ensure continuing eligibility. The sheriff may also conduct additional background checks by means of electronic data transfer on a permit holder at any time during the period that a permit is in effect.

Yup.  Every year, the sheriff has to redo the electronic background check at least once, and can do it at any time.  And if he finds that there is, as the law says, "a substantial likelihood that the applicant is a danger to self or the public"? 

See Subd 8:

The sheriff ... may file a petition with the district court therein, for an order revoking a permit to carry on the grounds set forth in subdivision 6, paragraph (a), clause (3).

Pretty neat, eh?  Which is among the many reasons why, in the greater scheme of things, the MCPPA is probably the model against which other modern, mainstream, commonsense "shall issue" carry permit laws will be measured.

Oh -- and as a minor thing: it's also why one village idiot (pictured at right) will likely be getting a knock on the door, sooner than later, and finding a deputy serving him with his copy of a revocation petition.

All's well that ends well.

[Update, 12/29/09: the village idiot himself weighs in; see the comments.]

Here we go again . . .

Near as I can figure out, Josh Hendrickson of Minnetonka MN, didn't have anything useful to do last Saturday, so he headed on down to the Obama Worship Seminar at the Target Center, where thousands and thousands of Minnesotans were assembling to hear Barack Obama explain that the folks who had done such a wonderful job with delivering our mail are now ready and eager to take over our health care, or something like that.  

I can actually understand why somebody who has a Minnesota carry permit (often mistakenly called a "conceal and carry permit") might reasonably choose to carry a handgun under his outer clothing when heading into downtown Minneapolis -- or, actually, anywhere else.  Bad stuff can happen anywhere, and the area outside the Target Center is not a mugger-free environment, nor is the walk from there to wherever one parks.  As Hendrickson later, in a moment of lucidness, said to a Star Tribune reporter, when he leaves his house, "I grab my wallet, my keys, and my gun."  Nothing wrong with that.   .

And I can certainly understand why somebody would want to be part of a counterprotest against Obamacare.  "We are Americans.  We have the right to disagree and debate with any administration," as Hillary Clinton said, back before she joined this administration.  She was right then; she's right now.

So far, so good.

And it was also, all in all, pretty good that somebody in the Secret Service and/or MPD apparently spotted a telltale bulge at Hendrickson's waist.  Concealment isn't difficult, mind you, but a lot of folks who have taken inadequate carry classes haven't been given good directions as to how to do that, and some who have taken good carry classes weren't paying attention.

So, it was perfectly reasonable that a couple of MPD cops came over and checked out his carry permit -- something they've every right to do, under the law -- and then a Secret Service agent stopped by for a quick, professional chat.  It's not like there was any chance that Hendrickson was going to get near the President, after all -- hell, he couldn't have gotten inside the building without going through a metal detector -- and while there's no reason at all to think he planned on shooting President Obama, it didn't hurt to check him out.

But then, his little incident having been concluded with no muss, no fuss, and no arrest, Hendrickson proceeded to chase down the nearest reporter, and make sure that he got the attention that he so desperately craved.  Apparently dressing so that the authorities would "accidentally" see the bulge in his clothing hadn't gotten him enough attention, the poor dear.

He did get his attention, and he isn't liking it. The idiot's been posting up a storm, ever since. 

As it turns out, Josh Hendrickson's is pretty lengthy, and pretty bad:

• CASE NO. 27-CR-08-57490 June 8th, 2009 Convicted-5th Deg. Assault-Intent to Cause Bodily Harm

• CASE NO. 02-CR-07-7671 Oct. 6 2008 Convicted Disorderly Conduct-Brawling or Fighting

• CASE NO. 10-VB-07-8199 Apr. 16, 2008 Convicted Disorderly Conduct

• CASE NO. 27-CR-06-084595 Feb 14, 2007 Convicted 3rd Deg. DWI

• CASE NO. 27-CR-04-014473 Sept 29, 2004 Convicted Disorderly Conduct

• CASE NO. 27-CR-03-025265 Apr 21, 2003 Convicted Interfere with Emergency Call

• CASE NO. 27-CR-99-011521 Feb. 18, 1999 Convicted Alcohol con. .10 or more

• CASE NO. 27-CR-98-086285 Sept. 14, 1998 Convicted Reckless Driving

• CASE NO. 27-CR-96-109111 Jan. 9, 1997 Convicted Disorderly Conduct

Yucko.  Four convictions for disorderly conduct?  How the hell does anybody manage that?  Discon is, often, one of those bogus charges that cops throw at somebody who they really don't have anything on, and which quickly gets dismissed as soon as a real lawyer enters the case.  Four of them?  Interfering with an emergency call?  Two DWIs?  And let's not get into the pepper-spraying incident that cost him his most recent conviction for 5th Degree Assault.

Why somebody with that kind of record would try to draw both police and public attention to himself is pretty easy to explain. 

See, there's apparently been an open position in Minnetonka for a village idiot, and, having gotten fired from his job as a security guard for pepper-spraying a customer, Hendrickson was just looking for work.

Earth to Josh Hendrickson:  the position of village idiot doesn't pay well, or at all. 

Sheesh.  I was going to be blogging about another idiot, but . . . some other time. 

Addendum:  a fair number of folks have asked why this nimrod had a carry permit in the first place.  It's a good question.  The Minnesota Citizens Personal Protection Act is, by design and intention, a liberal law -- the notion is that somebody should not have a fundamental right restricted, except under unusual circumstances.  Hendrickson would have lost his right to possess firearms -- and his carry permit -- if he'd been convicted of any felony, or a domestic violence misdemeanor.  Among his cornucopia of convictions -- including an amazing four disorderly conducts, a couple of DWIs, interfering with a 911 call (!), and his latest feat:  the assault where he spend thirty days in the more structured environment suitable for his special needs -- there aren't any of those.

But there is some hope, and it's in the law:

(c) The sheriff of the county where the application was submitted, or of the county of the permit holder's current residence, may file a petition with the district court therein, for an order revoking a permit to carry on the grounds set forth in subdivision 6, paragraph (a), clause (3). An order shall be issued only if the sheriff meets the burden of proof and criteria set forth in subdivision 12. If the court denies the petition, the court must award the permit holder reasonable costs and expenses, including attorney fees.

Yup.  Hendrickson's sheriff can, if he chooses, file a petition to have Hendrickson's permit yanked, on the grounds that "there exists a substantial likelihood that the applicant is a danger to self or the public if authorized to carry a pistol under a permit."  Hendrickson's due process rights would be intact -- and, if he managed to beat the petition, he'd be awarded his lawyer's fees.

I don't think that's likely, though.  Sounds like a slam dunk to me, and I wouldn't find it at all surprising if Hendrickson loses his permit, sooner than later. 

I guess we'll see. 

There's been an interesting discussion of manufactured apparent expertise over at SJ, which appears to have inspired Bennett to weigh in here. 

The spark for the discussion was one of the many blogs that not-quite-promises to generate huge wads of cash for lawyers by gaming social media and them what loves it:

The thought of becoming an "expert" in 6 months may seem impossible to you. But I did it and I'm going to show you how.
But first let me share my story with you a bit because I think it's instructive.

Well, yeah, it was instructive:  I learned that somebody can, with some study and careful choice, become acknowledged by Google as an expert in some subject he may or may not give a damn about in less time than it takes to make a baby.

I mean, seriously -- this guy spent only six months studying this stuff, and then he's an expert?  Sheesh.

So, there I was, last weekend, giving a speech, billed as "Second Amendment Expert Joel Rosenberg".  (The speech is here; you can watch it, if you don't mind downloading a quarter gig -- one of the many things I'm not an expert in is turning a long .MOV video into a shorter one in some other format.)  I think it was a decent speech, and was well-received, by and large, by the crowd.   (And it was actually a lot of good, clean fun quoting Hillary Clinton and Hubert Humphrey to a crowd of conservatives, and then telling them an Eleanor Roosevelt story.  When it comes to issues around rights, there are folks who get it -- and who, alas, don't -- all along the political spectra, which was one of the points that I was trying to make.  Successfully?  I'm the last person to be an expert on that.)

I don't fault the organizers of the event for billing me that way, and that's not just a reluctance to bite the hand that helped me up on to the stage.  I was invited there to talk about the Second Amendment, and it's a matter that I do have some knowledge of, and a fair amount of passion about. And when it comes to gun laws, Lorman thinks I know enough about them to do a CLE class for cops and lawyers on the subject, so maybe that's not unreasonable.

Until I put it into context.  I know real experts on the subject, and have read their writings voraciously, for, well, years.  Professor Joseph Olson, who founded Academics for the Second Amendment -- now, there's an expert.  Eugene Volokh?  Ditto.  Glenn Reynolds?  Yup.  Clayton Cramer, an amateur who has written the definitive study on the racist roots of gun control?  You betcha.  (It's called, perhaps unsurprisingly, "The Racist Roots of Gun Control," and it's worth a read.  In my expert/inexpert/whatever opinion.) 

Me?  In that context, well, not so much.  Yeah, I started studying the Heller opinion about three minutes after it was posted to the Internet -- but it wasn't me who picked up the implications of the problematic paragraph in it, but Scott (it's the last sentence on p. 54):

Although we do not undertake an exhaustive historical analysis today of the full scope of the Second Amendment, nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.

I studied it; Joe Olson, having been one of the midwives of the modern 2A acadmic movement. helped write one of the amicus briefs, and helped Gura prep for oral argument.  That's an expert.  In that context, if I held myself out as a "Second Amendment Expert," I'm not sure I could do it with a straight face.

But . . . there is that other thing, and I think -- and hope -- it differentiates me in a useful way from the Six Months to Google Expert types:  I know a fair amount about my subject, and can -- at times -- explain stuff* about the issues around the Second Amendment to folks who want to have stuff* about the issues around it explained to them.

Does that make me an "expert"?  I dunno.

Does remind me of an old joke:

A very successful young bowling ball salesmen brings his parents to the marina, one bright Saturday morning, and takes them aboard his new yacht.  The only time he's been to sea was on a Carnival Cruise, but he's bought himself a boat:  it's fifty feet long, and tricked out with all the nautical gear necessary to sail across the Atlantic, and back.  He excuses himself for a moment, and ducks down the companionway, coming back with dressed out with a neat blue blazer, and ascot, and a nifty captain's cap, complete with gold braid and such, on his head.

"Look, Mom and Dad -- I'm a captain!"

The father shakes his head.  "By me, sure, you're a captain.  By your mother, okay, you're a captain, but by a real captain, you're no captain."

I don't mind if others want to call me an expert, not really.  But I'm pretty sure I'm not going to be getting business cards that say, "Joel Rosenberg, Second Amendment Expert."

Or, for that matter, a captain's cap.
 

_______________________
* Technical term.  

On September 11, 1944 the first US soldiers crossed into Germany. The 80th Infantry Division under Major General Horace L. McBride -- part of the Third Army, commanded by George Patton -- secured the bridgehead at Dieulouard. Within a few days, the 4th Armored, under John Wood, would cross at the bridgehead.

See update, below.  Timmy Dolan isn't taking the disgrace of his deparment lying down; he's issued a stern memo decrying . . .

. . . the criticism.  Sigh.

 

The Minnesota Metro Gang Strike Force scandal continues to unravel; hopefully some of the various coverups will, as well, sooner than later.  Among the latest developments:  Chief Tim Dolan of MPD announces that 

his department was informed by Luger and Campion that seven of his officers assigned to the Strike Force were involved in several allegations of misconduct. Dolan also said in an interview that some officers who were involved in allegations were supervisors.

Hmm... according to the Heimerl report, there were, at last report, three supervisor-grade (Sergeant or up) MPD cops on the MGSF. "Some" officers, according to Dolan, involved in "allegations" were supervisors.

But Dolan isn't going to take that sitting down.  He and his cops are fed up.  (I think he misspelled "lawyered up.")  Let's take a look at just some of the recent of their greatest hits:

Fresh upon being returned to the MPD after the dissolution of the Strike Force Gang, Heimerl is now, according to the MPD, a sector commander.  Ghu knows what the others of the supervisors from the MGSF are up to.  But if any of MPD's MGSF cops have been taken off the street and assigned counting the plastic spoons in the break room, it's been a closely-held secret.  But it isn't just the cops involved in the MGSF who have disgraced Dolan's department.

The Jenkins video of  at least one MPD cop mistaking a possibly drunk driver for a soccer ball? No prosecution of the kicker; the FBI is looking into it.

Then there was the $495,000 settlement after one of Dolan's badged boys punched an innocent bystander -- resulting in two brain surgeries.  That not enough? 

There's the "antics" at the end of last month, when a bunch of drunk MPD cops -- these guys apparently can't even play a game of softball without disgracing themselves after -- "picked a couple of fights and told patrons no one could stop them because they were all cops," according to witnesses.  (The gentle term, "antics" is that of the badgelickers at Fox9 -- I'd find a less gentle term.)  This after being too drunk to get into a strip club, and before the shooting started . . . which the MPD carefully didn't report.

And that's just the recent news. 

The opening paragraph of Rochelle Olson's story is chilling:

Minneapolis Police Chief Tim Dolan said today that he and his 900 officers are "fed up" with bad publicity about the department when he says they are performing better than ever in crime fighting and officer behavior.

Yeah, the poor dears are just underappreciated by the public.  I guess they need to go get themselves a new public.

"I believe the Minneapolis Police Department is better than ever," Dolan said.

Shit, Timmy -- you mean it's always been worse than this?  Maybe it Olson quoted him wrong, or mistranslated; it probably sounded more credible in the original German.    

 

Update:

 

And this just in from Dolan, who is shocked, shocked at . . . the criticism of his department.

 

Let's take a read:

 

The recent cases that have come to light in the media make me and other employees of the Department mad. 

... at the cops who have stunk up their badges?  Nah.

The alleged actions of a few are being used to discredit all the great work that my 1100 employees do everyday.  In reality, I believe that, in this region and possibly the country, the Minneapolis PD does the most and expects the most from our officers - and holds them to the highest degree of professionalism.

Who are you going to believe?  Dolan or your lying eyes?

Let's talk about some realities of the MPD:
We have well over a million contacts per year with citizens.
A few less than 900 officers handle about 400,000 calls for service a year; that is about 1100 calls per day.
My officers make over 30,000 arrests a year; that comes to about a 100 arrests per day.
My officers conduct around 1,500 traffic stops in a busy week.

Although my officers have over a million contacts with citizens each year we still only see about 200 complaints a year against our officers.  And that number has decreased in each of the three years of my administration.  That percentage of complaints is actually lower than the percentage seen by the LAPD which is currently being praised for a low level of complaints.  Of the 200 cases that are filed about 90 result in open Internal Affairs cases.  Of those 90 cases we had about a dozen sustained excessive force cases last year.

There are, basically, only a few reasons why complaints might be low.

• There really isn't much to complain about.  That's Dolan's position, but him vouching for his department is kinda self-serving.  That doesn't mean he's lying or wrong, but it is the sort of thing where you'd want to count the change.
• People who have legitimate complaints think that filing one with the MPD is just a waste of time.  That's certainly my feeling -- and given how Dolan himself, in a previous job, waved away a minor complaint I had, some years ago (it was just an arrogance and stupid public relations thing -- a couple of his detectives decided to run my plates because they didn't like my "Criminals [heart] Unarmed Victims" bumper sticker.  I happened to be in the coffee shop while they were giggling over the possibility of having the car towed if there was some outstanding traffic ticket, which is the only reason I know that).
• People who have legitimate complaints fear retaliation.  By design, the complaint process makes an anonymous complaint impossible -- and, to be fair, the MPD warns erstwhile complainants on their website that their complaint will not be anonymous, and that's true.  (They also say that a complainant will be contacted by IA within five days; that's simply not true.)

I take investigations of complaints against my officers seriously.  In my last three years in office 16 officers have either resigned or been terminated due to our investigations of: theft, domestic assault, misuse of force, DUI, lying, and other misconduct.  And I am likely not done this year.

Ya think?

That number of terminations exceeds any previous administration.  Let me make it clear - I don't like firing police officers.  I wish I never had to fire an officer.  However, I must hold all my employees accountable for their conduct.

What we have also done is implemented internal technology and practices that make us the most transparent agency in the Midwest.  These are our videos being played on TV.   We take complaints against officers in many forms including on-line.  We publish our complaint statistics every year in our Annual Internal Affairs Unit report.

Yes, you do.  And you constantly aver that a low complaint rate means that you're doing a peachy-keen job, rather than that it's pointless.  Did the guy who got stopped for a DWB and arrested and booked into jail on a fictional crime (possession of hollowpoints) ever file a complaint?  Last time I heard, he hadn't -- and your sergeant apparently felt that "unarresting" him was all the apology he needed.  The guy who did get a gun pointed at him by one of your off-duty cops -- like many MPD cops, he was of the ignorant opinion that permit holders must conceal their carried handguns to the satisfaction of MPD cops -- had his complaint dismissed without any review at all.

So rest assured I take these recent allegations seriously. 

Gotta say, I'm not resting all that assured, Tim.

In looking at the recent allegations I can say that we were already aware of most of them and had already begun internal investigations before they became public.  The most recent video shown was sent to IAD for review the day after the incident.  At our request it was reviewed by an outside agency and declined for criminal prosecution, and it came back for our standard review process.  Our system worked for that incident.

Again, let's go to the video, with particular attention to events starting at around 4:05 into it -- on what planet is the kicking okay?

I view each incident as an opportunity to better our processes and review what we expect of our officers and how they are trained.  In light of recent incidents I have enhanced our force review process and I am changing our use of force training.

Sincerely,

Timothy J. Dolan
Chief of Police

I fail to see the sincerity.  The anger, sure.  Sincerity?  Nah.  You start encouraging complaints about bad service, figure out why that "Shots Fired" I mentioned some months ago never got a response, put an end to "arrest the gun" and treat rousting as a policy violation, and then let's talk.

I won't hold my breath.  

Let's go to the tape. Do watch the whole thing, from beginning to end, but after you do that, let's start watching it, again, starting at 3:40 into it.

3:50 MPD squad, lights and sirens on, screams to a stop, and two cops leap out and join the struggle. The one furthest from the camera brings his fist -- it's not clear if he's holding a small weapon in it -- up and down seven times, apparently striking Jenkins repeatedly.

4:05 a third and fourth squad car scream to a stop, and a cop in a wool cap runs over, and at 4:06 shoves one of the cops out of the way, and begins kicking Jenkins.  While Jenkins is being kicked and punched by several cops, one voice can be heard to shout, "Put your hands behind your fucking back."

4:25 One of the cops screams about "something sharp," and the cops take a break from the beating long enough for Jenkins to roll to a sitting position. He's then dragged out of view of the closest squad camera, and the beating continues, with one of the cops taking what appears to be a cigarette break, looking back from time to time to the camera, then for whatever reason, positioning himself so that he blocks the view of Jenkins.

Over on the forums at officer.com, Buck Eight and Squad51 sum it up thusly:

I watched the video and didn't really have a problem with it. Things always look worse on video. Now that Dolan has the FBI getting involved and the story is ALL over the news, the guy is in for a big payday. I hope nobody loses their job over this.

Tasing, spraying and joint locks/pain compliance all look a hell of a lot better to someone watching a video (ie: a jury) than punches and kicks raining down.

http://www.startribune.com/local/534...tml?page=3&c=y

...I doubt that any of the officers will be in serious trouble over this. Kicks our part of our use of force training when dealing with combative suspects. This will be ruled a policy failure and kicking will disappear. The reason that the other officers will not get into huge touble or worse is that they where responding to an officer need help call and when they arrived saw that one officer was fighting with one and they responded to that with force to take one that they had reason to believe had assaulted an officer and he was dealt with. we have a good relationship with the county prosecuters I doubt that they would get much milage out of this. Not only that but I bet you money that if he does sue it is settled out of court for basically lawyers fees....if you watch the video in its entireity..yeah this is a no brainer the cops are in the clear...

Happy to be here proud to serve.

Minneapolis is in Hennepin County; the County Attorney -- the guy whose office prosecutes felonies in HennCo -- is Mike Freeman.  squad51 and his friends have a "good relationship" with county prosecutors.

The quote?  That's from Officer Richard Walker, early on in the stop.  Tim Dolan, the Minneapolis Police Chief, has ordered all of his officers to watch the video. The kicking it seems, was too much even for him.  "Dolan said the actions of Officer Richard Walker, the initial officer involved, 'all appear to be very appropriate.'"  He just doesn't like the kicking. Walker not stopping the thumping?  Doesn't bother Dolan.  Nor does the thumping bother squad51 and his friends at officer.com.  After all, they have a "good relationship" with the county prosecutors.

What will they learn from this?  A skeptic might think that they'll learn to station cops in front of the cameras to block recordings of the kicking in the future.

Either that, or there'll be an in-service on the use of the erase button.

But I'm sure they'll all watch the tape. Hell, maybe they'll even use some CI money to buy doughnuts for Movie Night.  Been done before, after all.

Nah. Updating doesn't go quite far enough; I really should eat a little more crow. But just a little.

Let's try that again -- and I'm going to leave the original up, for historical purposes. Bloggers -- well, ones who care to do it right -- don't throw errors down the memory hole. Hence, Version 1.1.

Let's start off by reviewing the key paragraph in our last episode:

On April 16 of 2008, Sheriff Bob Fletcher and Ramsey County Attorney Susan Gaertner filed a hundred-page petition (here's Part 1; here's Part 2) with District Judge Joanne Smith, requesting that the judge revoke what they called Wilson's "conceal and carry permit", and documenting, in great detail, each and every one of the incidents above. In detail. The petition had been written and researched by David Rossman -- then a deputy assigned to Sheriff Fletcher's gun permit unit.

Which, combined with all the other strangenesses, was more than strange enough.

This morning it got stranger. The following was posted in the comments -- go look for yourself.

I represent Ms. Wilson. You are wrong on many of your facts.

In addition, the incidents of 2004 and 2007, did not involve Michelle Rae Wilson. Those incidents involved another "Michelle Wilson". Ms. Wilson has no son named Terrance. She was not the perpetrator in those situations. I guess you should print at retraction.

All of this is wrong:

"In 2004, two neighbors accused Wilson and another son of pouring sugar in their car's gas tank; according to police records, one said that, "Michelle Wilson threatened to blow up her house and kill her. She taunted her to go outside." She owed Wilson $60, and couldn't pay. Vandalism is a crime; terroristic threats are a felony.

"But Wilson was never prosecuted -- SPPD Officer Kong just left a card at the house -- and it all went away.

"In 2007, Nakeshia Britton, a high school classmate of Wilson's son Terrence, got another restraining order, claiming that Wilson, her son and others had followed Britton's school bus home, after which Wilson and her son Terrence, "came up on the porch with broken beer bottles and a bat trying to hit me... and told Edna, my foster mom, to let me come out so they can kick my retarded ass." She said that they tried to force their way in."

Michelle has a clean record. Her friends and neighbors love her. You wrote a very unfair and factually false piece as it pertains to her.

Thanks,

Gary Wolf
Attorney for Michelle Rae Wilson

I'm always up for correcting any facts, of course, and I have good reason to credit Mr. Wolf's claims of this morning that the 2004 and 2007 incidents were another Michelle Wilson.

But, let's be clear: they're not my facts. The source for the story wasn't my imagination -- I'm just a fiction writer, by trade, and I couldn't have made this stuff up; it's far too weird for fiction.

The 1996 incidents, which Mr. Wolf doesn't dispute was his client, is from sections #6 and #7 in Sheriff Fletcher's and County Attorney Susan Gaertner's revocation petition, and their Exhibit K and and Exhibit L, both of which were submitted to the court in support of that petition.

Somebody accused of hounding an ex for four years (and that's what the accusation is in Exhibit K and L; I don't know if the accusers were lying) being issued a carry permit in Ramsey County? Let's not be silly. That wouldn't happen unless the applicant was connected -- say, by being the aunt of a Saint Paul cop.

But let's turn to the two incidents that Mr. Wolf does -- and with good reason -- dispute.

The 2004 incident, which Mr. Wolf does say was some other Michelle Wilson (and he appears to be right) is also from Sheriff Fletcher's revocation petition, in which he claims that Respondent -- that's Mr. Wolf's client -- was named as a criminal suspect, and which Sheriff Fletcher supports with his Exhibit J.

The 2007 incident, which Mr. Wolf also says was some other Michelle Wilson, is, yet again, from Sheriff Fletcher's revocation petition, in which Sheriff Fletcher claims that Respondent -- that's still Mr. Wolf's client -- was hit by a restraining order, and which he supports by his Exhibit I.

Let's assume -- he does seem credible to me; you decide for yourself -- that Mr. Wolf is right. Why -- when trying to revoke (instead of to suspend, with a one-page petition citing the pending charges) a carry permit of a woman who was sitting in jail, accused of murder -- did Sheriff Fletcher throw accusations about another Michelle (or Michele; and without the "Rae") Wilson into the mix?

The reason I credit what Mr. Wolf says is that it appears that "Michelle Rae Wilson" has lived at the Iglehart address since 1996, whereas the "Michelle (or Michele) Wilson" in the 2004 and 2007 incidents lived at a Dale Street or Magnolia Avenue address. It is highly improbable Michelle Rae Wilson maintained two or three separate residences simultaneously.

Also, Mr. Wolf's client apparently always uses her middle name in official matters. I suspect that the other Michelle (or Michele) Wilson doesn't have a middle name. This is expressly identified as a fact on the West side of the river with a "NMN," for "No Middle Name." It aids in correct identification.

I can easily imagine the conversation between client and attorney concerning the background: "That's not me; it's someone else with most of my name," Michelle Rae Wilson probably said.

I, and others with whom I researched this article, are humbled by the revelation from Mr. Wolf. We should have caught it in our fact-checking and it appears so obvious with 20-20 hindsight. No; we are chastened. Thank you, Mr. Wolf; no excuses; we will make sure that it doesn't happen again.

No excuses, but here's the explanation: we all were overwhelmed with the outrageousness of the overkill of Sheriff Fletcher's petition to revoke, when a petition to suspend would have sufficed.

"Methinks she [don't visualize Sheriff Fletcher in a dress; you'll burn your retinas. JR] doth protest too much." We, too, took the lengthy petition at face value and neglected to double-check the citations, simply because the Sheriff and the County claimed the asserted facts as true and adopted them. That's our explanation, such as it is. Why didn't County Attorney Susan Gaertner, Assistant County Attorney Karen A. Kugler, or the judge who signed off on Sheriff Fletcher's petition didn't check his homework?

I guess you'll have to ask them; I'll not draw any conclusions.  Yet.

And I'll refrain from drawing any conclusion as to the Ramsey County Sheriff's Office malice, at least at this point, when simple, bumbling incompetence provides an entirely sufficient answer, and yet another argument that somebody should always be checking out Sheriff Fletcher's allegations, and not believing them until they've been reliably confirmed.

There are other good questions which still remain. Why wasn't the 1996 restraining order enough reason for Sheriff Fletcher to deny Michelle Rae Wilson's permit application in the first place? He's certainly denied other applicants for less.

Why, when she was sitting in jail, did he apparently throw every accusation he could find up against the wall and see what would stick? Wasn't the murder charge enough?

And why, after years in the Ramsey County Sheriffs Office gun unit, was David Rossman transferred to patrol after researching and writing that petition -- apparently to the best of his demonstrably limited abilities?

Apparently, one of the possibilities I raised in the last episode has not panned out: the transfer was apparently not a reward for the accuracy and thoroughness of the research he did in the revocation petition. What did happen with the bumbling Deputy Rossman -- and why? Is it possible that, after deciding that Rossman was too incompetent to properly shuffle paper around, Fletcher put him in a squad car with a handgun and a shotgun to do things requiring far better and sharper immediate judgment than he'd already demonstrated was lacking in his leisurely, carefully-considered one during his time in the gun permit unit?

I'd love to know the answers to these questions.

And there's more. Me, I think it would also have been news to many of us, back in 2008, after the murder, that the accused murderer was a Saint Paul PD dog cop's aunt, using supposedly, the gun that that same cop had given her.

Doesn't that sound like news to you?

Ah, if only there were some enterprise locally, that hired people to look into interesting questions about public figures and public officials, then reviewed and edited their reports, and printed them daily upon some inexpensive medium for public distribution.

Instead, what we've got is the Pioneer Press and the Star Tribune.

Let's start off by reviewing the key paragraph in our last episode:

On April 16 of 2008, Sheriff Bob Fletcher and Ramsey County Attorney Susan Gaertner filed a hundred-page petition (here's Part 1; here's Part 2) with District Judge Joanne Smith, requesting that the judge revoke what they called Wilson's "conceal and carry permit", and documenting, in great detail, each and every one of the incidents above. In detail. The petition had been written and researched by David Rossman -- then a deputy assigned to Sheriff Fletcher's gun permit unit.

Which, combined with all the other strangenesses, was more than strange enough.

This morning it got stranger.  The following was posted in the comments -- go look for yourself.

I represent Ms. Wilson. You are wrong on many of your facts.

In addition, the incidents of 2004 and 2007, did not involve Michelle Rae Wilson. Those incidents involved another "Michelle Wilson". Ms. Wilson has no son named Terrance. She was not the perpetrator in those situations. I guess you should print at retraction.

All of this is wrong:

"In 2004, two neighbors accused Wilson and another son of pouring sugar in their car's gas tank; according to police records, one said that, "Michelle Wilson threatened to blow up her house and kill her. She taunted her to go outside." She owed Wilson $60, and couldn't pay. Vandalism is a crime; terroristic threats are a felony.

"But Wilson was never prosecuted -- SPPD Officer Kong just left a card at the house -- and it all went away.

"In 2007, Nakeshia Britton, a high school classmate of Wilson's son Terrence, got another restraining order, claiming that Wilson, her son and others had followed Britton's school bus home, after which Wilson and her son Terrence, "came up on the porch with broken beer bottles and a bat trying to hit me... and told Edna, my foster mom, to let me come out so they can kick my retarded ass." She said that they tried to force their way in."

Michelle has a clean record. Her friends and neighbors love her. You wrote a very unfair and factually false piece as it pertains to her.

Thanks,

Gary Wolf
Attorney for Michelle Rae Wilson

I'm always up for correcting any facts, of course, and I have no particular reason to doubt Mr. Wolf's claims of this morning that the 2004 and 2007 incidents were another Michelle Wilson.

In fact, I think he's right. Hence:

Addendum and digression:

Let me put that more strongly:  Oops.  I missed something.  After getting Mr. Wolf's email this morning, and reading his comment, as reprinted above, I went back and looked again at the voluminous documentation that Sheriff Fletcher filed with the court, and went over it with my friend, David Gross, who had reviewed both the piece and the revocation petition before.

While it's clear that the 1996 incident is Mr. Wolf's client, Michelle Rae Wilson, it's also clear, upon review, that the 2004 and 2007 incidents are, as he says, another Michelle Wilson, who lived at another address.  We missed that, when reviewing Sheriff Fletcher's petition.

End of Addendum.

But, let's be clear:  they're not my facts.  The source for the story wasn't my imagination -- I'm just a fiction writer, by trade, and I couldn't have made this stuff up; it's far too weird for fiction. 

The 1996 incidents, which Mr. Wolf doesn't dispute was his client (and, to be fair, he doesn't admit it, either) is from sections #6 and #7 in Sheriff Fletcher's and County Attorney Susan Gaertner's revocation petition, and their Exhibit K and and Exhibit L, both of which were submitted to the court in support of that petition.

Somebody accused of hounding an ex for four years (and that's what the accusation is in Exhibit K and L; I don't know if the accusers were lying) being issued a carry permit in Ramsey County?  Let's not be silly.  That wouldn't happen unless the applicant was connected -- say, by being the aunt of a Saint Paul cop.

But let's turn to the two incidents that Mr. Wolf does [addendum:  accurately] dispute. 

The 2004 incident, which Mr. Wolf does say was some other Michelle Wilson (and why would he lie?  I can't imagine a reason, and don't think he is) is also from Sheriff Fletcher's revocation petition, in which he claims that Respondent -- that's Mr. Wolf's client -- was named as a criminal suspect, and which Sheriff Fletcher supports with his Exhibit J.

The 2007 incident, which Mr. Wolf also says was some other Michele Wilson, is, yet again, from Sheriff Fletcher's revocation petition, in which Sheriff Fletcher claims that Respondent -- that's still Mr. Wolf's client -- was hit by a restraining order, and which he supports by his Exhibit I.

Let's assume -- he does seem credible to me; you decide for yourself -- that Mr. Wolf is right.  Why -- when trying to revoke a carry permit of a woman who was sitting in jail, accused of murder -- did Sheriff Fletcher throw accusations about another Michelle Wilson into the mix?

I wish I knew.  I think it's a fascinating question.

There are others.  Why wasn't the 1996 restraining order enough reason for Sheriff Fletcher to deny Michelle Rae Wilson's permit application in the first place?  He's certainly denied other applicants for less.  Why, when she was sitting in jail, did he apparently throw every accusation he could find up against the wall and see what would stick?  Wasn't the murder charge enough?  And why, after years in the Ramsey County Sheriffs Office gun unit, was David Rossman transferred to patrol after researching and writing that petition?

Apparently, one of the possibilities I raised in the last episode has not panned out:  it was apparently not a reward for the accuracy and thoroughness of the research he did in the revocation petition.  What did happen with the bumbling Deputy Rossman, and why?  Is it possible that, after deciding that Rossman is too incompetent to properly shuffle paper around, Fletcher put him in a squad car with a handgun and a shotgun to do things requiring far better and sharper judgment than he'd already demonstrated was lacking during his time in the gun permit unit?

I'd love to know the answers to all of these questions.

And there's more. Me, I think it would also have been news to many of us, back in 2008, after the murder, that the accused murderer was a Saint Paul PD dog cop's aunt, using supposedly, the gun that that same cop had given her.  Doesn't that sound like news to you?

Ah, if only there were some enterprise locally, that hired people to look into interesting questions about public figures and public officials, then reviewed and edited their reports, and printed them daily upon some inexpensive medium for public distribution.

Instead, what we've got is the Pioneer Press and the Star Tribune.

Really.

For those of you who think I'm going all Rush Limbaugh with this "feminazi" stuff: chill.  I'm talking about Elisha Strom, the now ex-wife of convicted kiddie porn felon, the loathesome Neonazi Kevin Alfred Strom. (The two of them had a falling out of some sort.  Nazis, like other people, find breaking up hard to do at times.)

That's her, at right, in a photo from around 2003.  She is apparently as uncharming as she looks, and calling her a Feminazi is only fair, because she's the closest thing the neonazis have to a feminist, okay? 

Okay.  Fine.  If she happens to be out walking someday and a cow falls out of a clear blue sky to squash her flat, that would be a sad thing only because it would be a waste of a good cow.  Got it.

But, alas, what she's apparently been charged with an is, basically, blogging and photograpy. The scumbag neonazi bitch has a blog; she makes comments hostile to, and posts snapshots of some local cops. 

Well, blogging and photography aren't a crime, and it would really be a shame -- really -- if all of our civil rights were further degraded because people wouldn't support the rights of this feminazi scumbag to write and to take pictures.

So:  please support the rights of this feminazi scumbag.  It's important that her case get coverage, and that she be acquitted of the absurd chages. 

Damn.  Well, you don't always get the good poster boys and girls on this civil rights stuff.  Yeah, sometimes you luck out and get a real hero like Rosa Parks, or Savana Redding.

But most of the time it's scumbags like Ernesto Miranda or Elisha Strom.

Live with it.

(h/t Scott over at SJ) <

You've been hearing about it:  Democratic representatives, home on the August recess, are -- at least some of them -- holding the traditional "town hall" meetings to hear from voters in their districts.

And some of them are hearing yelling.  Lots of yelling.

The folks on the left have a simple explanation:  this is a well-funded conspiracy, powered by gazillion dollars in donations from the health insurance gnomes who are having their most profitable year ever (even though they're, well, not); it's a Rovian conspiracy run by Republicans who want the poor to be sick and die.  Preferably painfully. 

The folks on the right have a simple explanation:  the peasants are revolting against an attempt by their new Insect Democrat overlords to impose a government health plan on just about everybody -- sooner or later; even they admit that you get to keep your present health plan as long as you stay in your current job -- except for the insect overlords themselves.

I've got a more nuanced explanation: Obama's getting Alinskied. I had a brief (for me) posting on the subject a while ago; I won't repeat it here. 

So, you want another view:  go take a look at the Rules for Radicals, and every time you see a news story on the town hall protests, watch for the rules being implemented.

Calling it Obamacare?  The bill is being written and rewritten by committees -- formal and informal -- in the House and Senate.  But . . .  "Rule 11: Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, polarize it. Don't try to attack abstract corporations or bureaucracies. Identify a responsible individual. Ignore attempts to shift or spread the blame."  Rachel Maddow and Keith Olbermann rant, night after night, that it's abstract corporations and Republican bureaucracies, sorta, that are behind this. They're not with the Alinsky playbook; the protesters are.

"If this government health plan is such a great idea, Senator, why doesn't the law require you to give up your gilt-edged health plan and go with it?"  It's actually a fair question -- but it's Rule Four:  Make opponents live up to their own book of rules.

You see a whole crowd of loud people showing up at a town hall meeting?  The Democrats aren't used to being the recipients of mass, noisy demonstrations.  "Rule 3: Whenever possible, go outside the experience of an opponent. Here you want to cause confusion, fear, and retreat."  And lots of them are retreating -- refusing to hold town hall meetings, or packing them with supporters.

Here's a prediction:  you won't see many, if any, of these town hall protesters hauled out of meetings that they're disrupting, even though they are supposedly (and actually, in at least some cases) engaging in the sort of "disorderly conduct" that is prohibited by law.

Why?  Because it isn't going to be some health care corporation exec or Republican operative who is going to be hauled out in handcuffs.  Nah.  It'll be Bob and Alice from the neighborhood. and the narrative that it's all an evil Rovian scheme will be just that much harder to sell when they're the poster children for suppression of dissent.

Obama, the Alinskyite community organizer, is being Alinskied.  And that's gotta hurt.

[update, 8/19/2009 -- and if you thought this was weird before, you ain't seen nothing, yet.  Check out the comments, and watch for the update, later today.  JR]

The End of Carl Jackson

Maybe the 911 call was not Carl Jackson's worst mistake.

But it was his last one; it got him killed. He would have been smarter to run, instead.

It would have been smarter not getting involved with Michelle Rae Wilson in the first place; she had a history of not playing well with others, and getting away with it.

In 1996, Wilson was hit with two restraining orders when an ex-boyfriend's wife accused her of repeated hangup calls to her home and workplace -- over a four year period; it had been going on since 1992 -- and the ex-boyfriend himself asked the court to have her told to stay away. She had been, he said, leaving harassing messages, over years, demanding "closure." The court said yes, and the orders were issued.

Two orders -- the ex-boyfriend asked for one, too. Harassment is a gross misdemeanor -- up to a year in prison -- and the second strike is a felony.

But Wilson was never prosecuted, and it all went away.

In 2004, two neighbors accused Wilson and another son of pouring sugar in their car's gas tank; according to police records, one said that, "Michelle Wilson threatened to blow up her house and kill her. She taunted her to go outside." She owed Wilson $60, and couldn't pay. Vandalism is a crime; terroristic threats are a felony.

But Wilson was never prosecuted -- SPPD Officer Kong just left a card at the house -- and it all went away.

In 2007, Nakeshia Britton, a high school classmate of Wilson's son Terrence, got another restraining order, claiming that Wilson, her son and others had followed Britton's school bus home, after which Wilson and her son Terrence, "came up on the porch with broken beer bottles and a bat trying to hit me... and told Edna, my foster mom, to let me come out so they can kick my retarded ass." She said that they tried to force their way in.

Assault is a crime -- anywhere from a misdemeanor to a multi-year felony -- but Wilson was never prosecuted, and it all went away.

Just as well she didn't use the gun that time. For Nakeshia Britton and her baby, at least.

Whatever else you can say about Michelle Rae Wilson, she didn't let go easy. No particular reason why she should, maybe. While accusations seemed to follow her, they were never -- not ever -- accompanied by criminal charges, much less convictions.

Michelle Rae Wilson seemed untouchable.

When she and Jackson broke up after a brief relationship, that hadn't changed. Jackson's new fiancee, Chillnail Hollingsworth, wasn't the only person who Jackson had complained to about Wilson; he'd also told a mutual friend, Fred Reman, that Wilson was harassing him at work, and leaving numerous harassing messages on his cell phone.

So it's perhaps understandable that, on a cold, dark January day in 2008, Jackson found himself inside her home at 690 Iglehart Avenue, on a quiet block in St. Paul.

What else could he do? Complain to the authorities? Others had been here and done that, and all that had happened was a few restraining orders, and a cop's business card left on a porch.

Maybe he didn't have a lot of faith in paper.

She wouldn't let go, and he wanted her to let go. And he had good reason to try to get her to leave him alone, and maybe he could talk her out of it. Or maybe he could do more? Who knows?

Maybe he hit her, maybe not; maybe she hit him. When she went to the bedroom, he shouldn't have stayed in the living room. He didn't even have his winter coat off; he should have headed out the door and escaped into the night.

Instead, he got on the phone with 911. He hadn't thought it through; he didn't open the conversation with a cry for help, but with, "How you doing this evening?" like he was getting ready to go on a date.

"My ex-girlfriend is here beating me upside the head," he said, "and I'm trying not to hit her. I'm trying to get out of the house."

He asked for help. He explained that she had guns in the house, and that she had threatened to kill herself, and --

Then there was shouting, and six gunshots.

And it all went quiet. The only person in the conversation was the 911 operator.

Jackson had been shot at from a distance, six times, leaving shell cases scattered between the bedroom and the living room.

He had been hit three times. One bullet had entered the right side of his chest at a thirty-degree downward angle, breaking a rib, puncturing a lung, grazing the liver to end up under the skin of his back. Another downward shot, this one at a 45 degree angle, had entered his left shoulder and ended up in his right lower back.

He might, possibly, have survived those two, despite the legendary -- meaning "largely fictional" -- special lethality of the no-longer-manufactured "Black Talon" bullets that had pierced his flesh.

But the other distant gunshot, the one to the forehead, also fired downward at 45 degrees, had gone far enough through his brain and was traveling fast enough to break his spine, and that would killed him all by itself.

No, it wouldn't have taken one of those quarter-century old "Black Talon" bullets to kill him, not with a shot through the brain.

Any bullet streaking through his brain would have done it.

Jackson was dead before the Saint Paul police secured the scene, and long before SPPD K-9 Officer Robert Edwards managed to talk Wilson into coming outside and surrendering peacefully to Officers Breci and Rhoades.

It was the doggie cop who talked her out. While it's not usual for K9 cops to talk perps out of a building, perhaps it's understandable, in this case:

Officer Robert Edwards of the St. Paul Police Department, the man who talked Wilson out of the building, is the nephew of Michelle Rae Wilson.

He is also, by his own admission, the man who had provided her with the Glock pistol that killed Jackson, the one that he had given her when -- despite her colorful history -- she had applied for and had been issued a Minnesota Permit to Carry a Handgun by Bob Fletcher, Sheriff of Ramsey County, a permit she had held for around two years, even after the 2007 incident on Nakeshia Britton's porch.

Michele Rae Wilson was a carry permit holder on the night that somebody in her home fired that Glock, putting three Black Talons into Carl Jackson.

She has been charged with Murder in the Second Degree in that case; she's scheduled to go on trial this November.

And while there's no need to have any sort of permit to keep a gun in the home, she won't have her carry permit when she goes to court; it's been taken away from her.

On April 16 of 2008, Sheriff Bob Fletcher and Ramsey County Attorney Susan Gaertner filed a hundred-page petition (here's Part 1; here's Part 2)with District Judge Joanne Smith, requesting that the judge revoke what they called Wilson's "conceal and carry permit", and documenting, in great detail, each and every one of the incidents above. In detail. The petition had been written and researched by David Rossman -- then a deputy assigned to Sheriff Fletcher's gun permit unit.

Yes. The Ramsey County Sheriff's office had access to Wilson's documented history of restraining orders and the accusations of death threats, attempted assaults, and stalking that, even before the killing, argued that she was a danger to others.

But until she allegedly killed one ex-boyfriend with the gun that her cop nephew had provided to her, there's no evidence whatsoever that they raised a finger other than to punch the keys on their computer to print out her permit.

It was three months and three days after she allegedly shot and murdered Carl Jackson that Sheriff Fletcher's office applied to have the St. Paul cop's aunt's permit revoked.

It probably wouldn't have mattered much; she was sitting in jail, unable to raise the $250,000 bond that the court had set.

And Carl Jackson was dead.

Part Two: Permits, Numbers and Other Games

In 2003, Minnesota changed its law as to how handgun carry permits -- sometimes erroneously called "Conceal and Carry" permits -- are issued.

Between 1974 and 2003, permit issuance was at the almost entirely unfettered discretion of police chiefs and sheriffs.

In 2003, that changed, with the passage of the Minnesota Citizens Personal Protection Act.

Since then, with a short interregnum when the law was overturned and passed again, permits are issued to any law-abiding US citizen or permanent legal US resident who takes a certified carry class, and then passes a background check. Right now, around 65,000 Minnesotans hold such permits, issued by their local sheriffs, which enables them to carry guns -- openly or concealed -- in most public places, although it didn't change much about laws involving gun possession in the home.

But the sheriffs have been left with a serious responsibility, and that's embedded in Minnesota Statute 624.714, which spells out that a sheriff can "deny the application on the grounds that there exists a substantial likelihood that the applicant is a danger to self or the public if authorized to carry a pistol under a permit."

And they do.

Not often -- the vast majority of people who apply have perfectly fine records -- but it happens, about 1% of the time, statewide.

Given Michelle Rae Wilson's history and the fact that Sheriff Fletcher issued her a carry permit, you might think that the Ramsey County Sheriff's office is reluctant to deny a permit application.

You would be wrong. When it comes to carry permit applications, Bob Fletcher is the Prince of Denial.

In 2006, the year that Wilson applied for and got her permit, more than 9,500 people applied across the state of Minnesota, 690 of them in her own Ramsey County.

Of those close to ten thousand applications statewide, only 177 applicants were denied.

79 of those denials were in Ramsey County -- almost half of the denials in Minnesota that year, and almost all of them based on the conclusion by Sheriff Fletcher that the applicant was "dangerous to self or others."

While the rest of the state has a denial rate very close to 1%, the 2006 Bureau of Criminal Apprehension report on the sheriffs shows that the denial rate in Sheriff Fletcher's Ramsey county was more than ten times that of the rest of the state, and his office spent more money per application on their permit issuance/denial program than any other department -- $100,000 on personnel costs alone, that year.

Their expenditures were topped only by the much larger Hennepin County, where the HCSO processed almost three times as many permits for about the same total cost.

Whatever else can be said about the RCSO permit program, it doesn't skimp on spending money, or devoting staff to it. At least one deputy, David Rossman, was assigned fulltime to permit investigation and processing -- and the RCSO takes a very hard line in permit applicants, and spends whatever it has to check them out. Most of the time. It doesn't take much to get denied in Ramsey County.

One happily married couple was turned down by the sheriff because police had been called to their home by a neighbor, years before, over a noise complaint, and while that call had resulted in no arrest nor any prosecution -- not even a citation for noise -- Sheriff Fletcher decided that that one, long-ago incident made them both "a danger to self or others."

Another was denied for being the subject of a restraining order -- just like Michelle Wilson. But unlike Michelle Wilson, he had gone to court and successfully fought the restraining order, demonstrated to the judge that he was the victim of harassment, and then successfully sued his harasser for filing a false complaint. Still, Sheriff Fletcher thought that single, disproven allegation made him dangerous.

Many have been denied for a single DUI conviction, often years and years past, despite having a squeaky-clean record ever since. Sheriff Fletcher thinks that a single, ancient DUI is clear and convincing evidence that that somebody is a danger to self or others, and has denied many applicants on that basis.

He says the applicants are still a danger; courts disagree.

Attorney Marc Berris has received "at least fifteen calls" from people who have been declared by Sheriff Fletcher to be a "danger to self or others" because of a single DUI, despite having had clean records both before and ever since. He's been retained by many denied applicants and taken at least three such single-DUI cases to court and had those denials overturned, and prevailed in other excessively-aggressive permit denial appeals, so much so that he half-seriously says that the Ramsey County Sheriffs Office has become his single best-paying client. Why? Because Minnesota Statute 624.714 provides that when a permit denial is overturned, the court must issue a judgment against the denying sheriff for "reasonable costs, including attorneys fees," and the RCSO has been paying a lot of Marc Berris' fees, of late. Come Christmas, he might send them a t-shirt as a thank you.

It's not just the single-DUI cases.

Others have been denied on the basis of a single arrest where no charges were ever brought. In one of Berris' present cases, his thirty-year-old client was labeled as dangerous by Sheriff Fletcher for having been arrested as a fourteen-year old, after having gotten into a fight in his neighborhood. Sheriff Fletcher also doesn't like his boyhood tattoo.

In the carry permit instructor community, the perhaps exaggerated story is that in Ramsey County, people get denied for a couple of speeding tickets.

Not Michelle Rae Wilson, the aunt of Saint Paul Police Department K9 officer Robert Edwards, the man who gave her the Glock pistol that she is accused of using to murder Carl Jackson.

She got hers.

And, according to the indictment, with the gun that her nephew had given her, on January 13, 2008, she shot Carl Jackson dead in her home.

Part Three: Questions, Questions, Questions, and Some Answers

The Wilson story raises a lot of questions; others it answers.

One is easy: her carry permit didn't have anything to do with her ability to shoot and kill Carl Jackson, if in fact she did that. You don't need a carry permit to possess a gun in your home, or to accept it as a gift from a relative, whether or not he's a cop.

That's easy. It's as easy to figure out what would have happened if she had been, in any of her previous incidents, charged with and convicted of a violent felony: she would have been legally barred from so much as possessing a gun, anywhere, even in her own home.

But that didn't happen. You can't be convicted without being tried, after all, and she was apparently never even arrested. There's a saying, "you may beat the charge, but you won't beat the ride." Michelle Wilson, it seems, up until January 2008, beat several rides.

Here's another easy one: the whole notion of equal treatment under the law -- as embodied in the Minnesota Citizens Personal Protection Act -- appears not to operate in Bob Fletcher's Ramsey County Sheriff's Office. Have a shouting match with your spouse, and both of you will be denied carry permits as dangerous ten years later. Be the aunt of a Saint Paul cop and you apparently have to be indicted for murder before it will be revoked.

Equal protection under the law? Not in Ramsey County.

Still, while I freely admit to being other than Bob Fletcher's biggest fan, but it's simply not true that by issuing her a carry permit when he had denied people with much less compelling histories that he put the murder weapon in her hand.

No, the gun -- a Glock Model 17 -- was given to her by her nephew, the Saint Paul police officer. And he almost certainly didn't put it in her hand; a new Glock is sold in a nice plastic box -- maybe he gift-wrapped it, too.

Whether or not it was a murder weapon will be decided by a jury of Michelle Rae Wilson's peers.

It's still not completely clear to me how this aunt of a Saint Paul police officer managed to escape any criminal record until being charged with murder. Murder is almost never a beginner's crime, and what there is on the record about Wilson's behavior is suggestive of previous criminal behavior, of stalking and harassment, of at least one death threat and in the 2007 case, of an assault.

But it's important to remember that the public record does not contain the whole story -- the multiple requests for orders of protection and the 2004 police report contain only statements of the complainants, not Wilson's responses or explanations. All stories have at least two sides, and it's possible that all of the people, over the years, who complained to the police and the courts about Michelle Rae Wilson were lying, or leaving out important facts.

And it's also possible that those could be the only troubling incidents in Wilson's history -- before the death of Carl Jackson, that is.

And despite the lack of any criminal arrest, prosecution, or conviction record in Deputy Rossman's detailed dossier, it's not impossible that each and every one of them was fully investigated by St. Paul law enforcement, despite her status as the aunt of a Saint Paul cop, and properly determined to be of a noncriminal nature, or that the St. Paul City Attorney and the Ramsey County Attorney made a good faith decision -- well, several good faith decisions, actually -- not to prosecute after those investigations.

After all, such investigations are not part of the public record. Yet.

Perhaps the Saint Paul Police Department, the Saint Paul City Attorney's office, and the Ramsey County Attorney's office will produce statements on these matters, clarifying what is, at best, a very puzzling situation.

Other things still puzzle me. I hadn't before thought of David Rossman, Fletcher's deputy, as being awfully thorough, or service-oriented. Yet, when he wrote up the application for revocation of Wilson's permit, he didn't just document the facts around the alleged murder, and her arrest and being held in jail in lieu of a quarter million dollar's bond. No, he went to the trouble to point out the history of the restraining order against her, in excruciating detail, complete with exhibits, of episodes reaching back years before she had applied for her carry permit, and of the 2007 incident on Nakeshia Britton's porch.

Why throw all that in? Was it just out of a sense of completeness, or was David Rossman quietly trying to put Wilson's history into the public domain, knowing that the revocation application would become available to anyone who asked?

I wouldn't want to guess. I do know that some time after he filed that application, he was transferred from Sheriff Fletcher's gun permit unit to the Ramsey County Sheriff's patrol unit. Was that a promotion in reward for thorough police work? Just a random rotation to a new set of duties? Or something else? I don't know.

There's a lot that I don't know or understand about this. For more than a year, the Wilson revocation application has been available for the asking -- when my friend Mark Okern asked for it, he was promptly given it, without any fuss whatsoever.

You can look at it, too, if you'd like.

Did nobody else bother to look? That's another mystery. There were only three local press reports on the murder -- all were brief and fragmentary. Not one mentions that Officer Edwards of the Saint Paul Police Department had given Wilson the Glock she allegedly used to kill Jackson, nor the previous restraining orders; the WCCO report says simply that she was charged with murder in connection with Jackson's death, and only a couple of dozen words more.

The metro area has two major newspapers, with national reputations, as well as several weekly ones. It has more television stations than that, each with a news department, staffed with fulltime professional journalists.

But you haven't heard this story from any of them, but from a balding, middle-aged science fiction writer, part time carry permit trainer, and Second Amendment activist -- you know: just a guy who believes in all that stuff about truth, justice, and the American Way -- aided by a few friends who have been willing to run some errands, make a few phone calls, and talk and think some things out.

Why are you only hearing it from us, and only reading about this here, and now?

There's a lot of puzzlements in this.

I've got another one. The Ramsey County narrative appears to be that while or after beating Jackson, Wilson went to her bedroom to retrieve her Glock, and shot Jackson from a distance. How much distance? The medical examiner's report characterizes them as "distant," as opposed to, I suppose, "contact" or "close range." Deputy Rossman's report doesn't go into that kind of detail.

Yet all three rounds entered Jackson's body in a sharply downward direction -- one at thirty degrees, the other two at a 45 degree angle. How did this 5'7" woman supposedly manage that?

Maybe we'll find out on November 2. Maybe sooner. Maybe never.

Because, in Ramsey County, there is special treatment for special people.

Part Four: Special Treatment for Special People at the RCSO

Give the devil his due: Sheriff Fletcher did the right thing in moving to revoke Wilson's permit to carry according to the explicit procedures and substance of the Minnesota Citizens Personal Protection Act of 2003; he followed the law in enforcing it. In this case.

Finally.

After the shooting, and while she was in jail.

Before then, she got a pass. It seems more than likely that the "pass" was based on "Who You Know." And that's corruption -- a denial of equal treatment by the law to everyone else, and "special," favorable treatment for a few.

It is also appears that Wilson received this "special person," favorable treatment, long before she applied for the permit, and which may have affected her legal status to possess the firearm with which she shot Jackson.

Was it because the community in which she lived and acted that received less attention, care, and protection from law enforcement? Was it that her nephew is a cop? Both? Something else, as well? I don't know.

I do know that there are special rules for special people in Ramsey County. That shouldn't be news to you, either, with this coming on the heels of the Metropolitan Gang Strike Force debacle, whose problems were apparently centered in that same Ramsey County, under the nose of that same Sheriff Bob Fletcher, who not only turned a blind eye to them, but also helped create and perpetuate the culture that led to the Gang Strike Force disgrace, through the development of the personnel, through his Saint Paul cop buddy who he had put in charge, and kept in charge.

Let's remember: Fletcher defended the Strike Force and his people -- and, official table of organization aside, they were his people -- vehemently and vociferously, and did his level best to keep that misbegotten unit going . . . and succeeded until the Hennepin County Sheriff, Richard Stanek, withdrew his people from the Strike Force.  Because, it seems another Sheriffs Office had developed and allocated the personnel to the Gang Strike Force whose culture -- call them "ethics," if you will -- would not only not allow them to participate, but also required them to attempt to expose the apparent corruption and not cover it up.

If it weren't for Sheriff Stanek and Chris Omodt of his department -- among others -- the gang strike force would probably still be up to their old tricks, under the uncaring gaze of their defender, Sheriff Bob Fletcher. Same old wine; it would just be in a new package, but still the same thing.

That's wrong.  And surely you don't think the last disgraceful episode of the Gang Strike Force has been played out in public, anymore than you'd think that Michelle Rae Wilson was the only cop's relative getting special treatment from the RCSO.

 Why would you think that it's anything but special rules for special people there?

That's not equal protection under the law. That's not, as the saying goes, truth, justice and the American Way.

It's wrong. And it gets people hurt, and maybe killed.

And it really must be put to a stop.








Author's note: I'm grateful for the great help I've gotten in researching and writing this from Joseph Olson, David M. Gross, Marc Berris, Andrew Rothman, and Mark Okern. And from the staff at Ellegon, Inc.: Felicia G. Herman, and Judy Rosenberg. (I'm married to the former, and the latter is our older daughter.)

When Truth, Justice, and the American Way happens, it's a team effort.

You could look it up.

I'm thinking, more and more, that the whole Henry Louis Gates thing is a racial Rorschach test.  It's a misshapen blob of an incident that, regardless of what can and should be learned from it, everybody with a strong opinion about The Important Issue of Race in America learns, once again, what they already believed.

I don't think that's necessary to explain what happened.  I'm not, at this point, interested in discussing the actual racial aspects of their encounter, or the aftermath. 

Because there is a much simpler explanation -- one that might even be true -- which quite fully explains the unpleasantness, the deception, and the bombastic behavior on both of their parts.

Let's review the facts.  Well, no, we can't; we don't have the facts.  We have some of the facts, and, far as I can tell, they're summarized pretty well here. My short version:

Guy comes home from a trip, with a driver. Front door is jammed, so he goes in through the back door, and then comes back around to try to force the front door open. Neighbor, seeing two guys apparently (and, in fact) trying to force a door open, calls 911 to report it, adding that maybe it's not a burglary because they've got suitcases and might be returning from a trip or something.

Cops are dispatched, and arrive more or less promptly, but after the driver is gone, and the resident is home alone.

So far, everybody agrees on that, more or less.

The next part is unclear, to me, and not just because there's two stories.

According to the police report, the cop -- Crowley -- asks Gates to step outside.  This means to me that, at least according to the police, Gates was inside the house, and suggests that Crowley was outside when he was doing the asking.  Okay.

According to Gates, Wikipedia says that "when the officer asked for ID, Gates replied he had to get it inside, and then officer Crowley followed him into his home without permission."  Which suggests that Gates was outside his house when asked for the ID.

I'm sensing some idiocy here.  (I think both the cops and Gates are lying, actually, and each is doing so against their own best interests.)  But let's, for the sake of argument, go with this:  Gates is inside his house when there's a knock on the door, and there's a cop there, asking him for ID.  He agrees to provide it, and leaves the door open as he goes to get it; he does, and it makes clear to the cop that this is the guy who lives there, and that there's no reason for any further investigation.

Up to this point -- assuming that all that's just what happened, and nothing more is -- nobody's done anything wrong, although at least arguably Gates has been stupid by not locking the door.

Let's try that again, this time with a bit more sense.  There's a knock on the door, and Gates answers it -- why not? -- to find a cop there, demanding ID from the person inside the house.  Now, he's in his home (provided to him by the U, but it's his home), and he's got every right to say, "No, thank you; go away, please," and, leaving the door locked behind him, go to bed, but he doesn't. 

Let's let him be reasonably cooperative.  "Sure.  I'll get my ID."  He does, holds it up to the door; the cop reads it, and we're at about the same place.

Except, of course, that didn't happen. Both men tried to pull rank, and I'm guessing that both of them did it for precisely the wrong reason -- as they're both members of classes of people who often both see themselves as beleaguered and oppressed, while both live a life of almost preposterous privilege, often seeing it as their due.

Gates is a tenured professor, and Crowley's a cop.  Both are surrounded by colleagues and sycophants -- fellow tenured types and students in one case; other badged types, badge bunnies, and badgelickers in the other -- who will, even without request, leap to the unfounded and often utterly preposterous conclusion that they did the right thing simply because of who they are, and both have been inculcated to believe that they have earned special respect from all they encounter because of the status that they have achieved.  Both are used to having their word taken as holy writ, no matter whether or not they happen to be full of it -- and, in the case of both tenured professor types and badged types, they often are full of it, and rarely called to account.

Why would it surprise anybody that when two such archtypical examples of puffed egos and manifest privilege would bump heads -- regardless of their relative status as a man in his own home and a cop investigating a report of a possible break-in -- it would be anything but ugly?

So, yeah, it is possible to discuss their encounter, and explain it fully, even without reference to race.

Why the racial explanation utterly dominates the discourse about this is, alas, yet another sign that this society is just too obsessed with the whole subject.
 

"A lie gets halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on." -- Winston Churchill

For those of you who didn't follow it, an amendment to a bill in the US Senate was defeated this week, on a 58-aye, 39 nay vote.  (Yeah, I know that sound strange; another time, okay?)  You'll find a remarkably typical MSM take on it here, and, honest, I'd love to discuss all the issues involved, but let's save that for another time; that's not this story. 

Part of the fight against passing this was the notoriously anti-gun advocacy group, the "Violence Policy Center," headed by Josh "Sugar Daddy" Sugarman*, and, as you'd expect, they were slaughtering trees, right and left, to turn out their agitprop, foremost among it, a "study" (actually, a collection of unreliable anecdotes, including at least one just plain lie) that purports to show that shouts that "Concealed Handgun Permit Holders Kill 7 Police, 44 Private Citizens Over Two-Year Period", which is, presumably, a bad thing and, putatively, some sort of reason that a law-abiding citizen who has been issued a carry permit in Minnesota can't be trusted to, say, carry a handgun in New York. 

(Pinky swear, since right about now I know that a bunch of you are reaching for your keyboards:  yes, there's a whole lot of other issues, around Federalism, states rights, carry permit laws, full faith and credit and all that stuff.  Not now, okay?)

Enter John Lott. Dr. Lott first came to public attention with the Lott/Mustard study that shows -- pretty clearly, I think; others disagree -- that among the effects of modern, mainstream, "shall issue" permit laws are to drive violent crime down slightly (when controlling for other factors), drive property crime up, also slightly.  By profession an economist, he's kind of been dragged, kicking and screaming only a little, into the national gun debate, and like anybody else who has been around for awhile, noticed that the antigun folks need to spend a whole lot of money on Nomex undies, what with their pants bursting into flame from lying a lot.

He noticed an unlikely anecdote on page 17:

Minnesota
# Concealed Handgun Permit Holder: Michael C. Iheme
Date: July 24, 2008
People Killed: 1
Circumstances: On July 24, 2008, Michael C. Iheme shot and killed his wife after she left
her job at an assisted living center. Court records show that she had an active harassment
restraining order against him and suggest a history of domestic abuse, including threats to kill her. After the shooting, Iheme called 911 and said, "I have killed the woman that mess my life up...." Iheme, who had a concealed handgun permit, was found guilty of second degree murder.

Source: "911 call: 'I have killed the woman that mess my life up," Minneapolis Star-Tribune, July 26, 2008;
"Man found guilty of killing estranged wife in St. Louis Park," Minneapolis Star-Tribune, February 6, 2009.

Yeah.  That does look strange, and unlikely, if you know anything about the subject.  The subject of a domestic OFP having a carry permit?  Unlikely.  Somebody with a history of domestic abuse being issued one?  It's not impossible, but it's not the way to bet.  Know a bit more, and it gets more unlikely -- Sheriff Stanek's office screwing up by issuing a permit to a domestic abuser with an OFP out on him?  Nah. 

But "nah" isn't a debunking.

Lott dropped an email to Andrew Rothman, a local Minnesota activist -- he's a friend of mine, and also the Executive Director of MADFI -- asking him to check it out, and Andrew got busy, sending one flunky off to see if there was some wisdom on the subject (check, but the flunky knew that) and interest in helping out on the part of David Gross (one of the few essential people in Minnesota Second Amendment activism, David's also an attorney, who knows the laws around this stuff backwards and forwards, having been involved in the writing of some and the practice of a lot of them for decades), and dispatching another -- John Pierce, second year law student at Hamline -- to the courthouse to look for the documentation that would have existed if Iheme had been a carry permit holder arrested on suspicion of murder.

Gross struck paydirt -- Hennepin County Sheriff Rich Stanek, who would have been the issuing sheriff, took a quick look at both the relevant laws, regulations, and facts, and went on the record that Iheme not only had not had a carry permit, but had never even applied for one.

Yup. Stanek didn't say it -- I am -- but the VPC was lying.  What they said just ain't so.

And Pierce, looking for the nonexistent orders around the carry permit, stumbled across the smoking gun:  the police report that showed that what had been seized was Iheme's purchase permit.  Iheme had a permit to purchase a firearm, not one to carry.  But that fact had been carefully left out of the Star Tribune's reporting with the Strib's reckless disregard for the truth, and picked up and repeated by the folks at the VPC, who -- having endlessly picked at all of the states' carry laws -- had every reason to believe that the Strib had gotten it wrong, but just passed off the lie to their easily-gulled audience.

How easy?  Well, the next morning, on the Senate floor, Robert Menendez of New Jersey quoted the VPC "study", as though it proved something -- only to be shot down (metaphorically, honest) by the sponsor of the amendment, John Thune, who had been informed that there were provable lies in it, this among them.

What can we learn from this?

Well, we can't learn, alas, that 58 yes votes is enough to get something through the Senate; it wasn't, the other day.  We can't learn that the Star Tribune, in knowing and reckless disregard for the truth, will carefully leave out the word "purchase", when talking about a "gun purchase permit" held by a murderer -- we already knew that.  That's just how they roll.

We can't learn that the anti-gun folks like the VPC simply don't care about truth -- we already knew that, too.

We can learn, though, that networked grassroots activism can do things that the highly-paid lobbyists -- from the VPC or anywhere else -- just plain can't do.

That's worth learning, again.

____
* Okay, okay:  I don't have the slightest idea if Josh Sugarman has a nickname, and, if so, what it is. 

There's actually some lessons to be learned from this; I'm figuring that Kevin Ecker will be first to point them out . . . after all, he's got a head start.  He's heard the story.

Maybe you can, too, but I gotta tell you the story, first.

I was running over to meet a guy to buy a gun. Private sale. Since he's not an idiot, he wanted a copy of my DL and permit, just to adhere to the forms.

Perfectly reasonable.

So I had a xerox of both in my front shirt pocket, wrapped around $400 in cash. I got a call from my younger daughter's school about some... issues that are going on.  Some other time.

I was so distracted by that phone call that I didn't notice that I'd let my speed creep up to a tad over the legal limit, until I noticed the flashing lights.

Shit.

So I promptly found a safe place to pull over, and did just that. T

he cop -- never mind quite which agency; I've got my reasons -- comes up to the window, and asks for my D/L, proof of insurance and... "...do you have any firearms on you?"

I answered, as I read somewhere that a guy should, "My carry permit and drivers license are in my left hip pocket, Officer; and, yes, I'm carrying today." Oh.

"And where is the firearm?"

This is embarrassing, but I do have an excuse. Some other time. "Shoulder holster."

"Do me a favor, sir, and step out of the car." He didn't sound like it was really a favor, so I did, and pocketed the keys, closing and locking the door behind me quite appropriately.

He didn't ask about that.

Instead. "I need to see your license and carry permit." Which was just as well, for reasons I'm not going to go into, about where some people put their insurance cards. 

What I should have said: "Sure. It's in my left hip pocket. Would you like me to take it out?"

What I said. "Sure. I've got a copy of both in my shirt pocket. Would you like to see that?"

I think he liked the idea that I wasn't going to be reaching anywhere, so he said that that would do, and I took out the piece of paper, and started to hand to him.

You see where this is going?

Well, so did I.

I was just about to hand a cop a piece of paper wrapped around twenty twenty-dollar bills, and it was a bit too late to withdraw the offer.

So I explained, with a fair amount of stuttering, I think, that, yes, there was some money in there, but I wasn't offering him either a bribe or a tip, just so there wasn't going to be any misunderstanding.

"And where were you going with a copy of your permit wrapped around $400?"

The gun store, I said, more or less accurately.

Well, when he took the piece of paper either I let go too soon or he grabbed at it too late, and the money started flying all over the place . . .

So, with the money flying all around, he dashes for it, and after a couple of seconds, I figure that it's okay if I help -- if he was worried I was going to, like shoot him in the back or go all stabbity, he probably wouldn't have turned his back to me -- and since it's not all that windy, he and I (mainly him; he's younger and moves faster) quickly gather it up and hands what he's got to me, and no guns, knives, tasers, nor clubs come out.

"Better count it, and make sure we didn't miss any." He glances down at the piece of paper, and frowns. "...Mr. Rosenberg. I wouldn't want you, of all people, to think that some money's missing."

Just as I'm thinking this is about to get bad, he smiles, and it's a friendly smile.

So we both count out the money -- and it's all there, and we're in front of his cruiser, so if there's a camera running, it's all on the record, and we both announce the amount, and it's the same $400 that it should be-- and he hands it back to me and suggests that I tuck it away, which I do.

"Just wait here a minute, while I run this," he says, waving the paper. He sort of glances at me, as though he was going to ask me to produce the DL --  they can swipe them, rather than type stuff in -- but then he goes back to his car, and I just wait over to the side of the road, smoking a cigarette.

Very intently.

A couple of minutes (which didn't feel like minutes, but the cigarette timed them), he comes back, and we move around to the side of the car.

"You're fine, Mr. Rosenberg," he says, and then smiles. "Guess if you had any warrants on you, the Gang Strike Force would have kicked in your door yesterday, after all."

Oh, goodie.  I think that was a figure of speech.  Really.

"I'm just going to give you an 'advisory', Mr. Rosenberg. Watch the phone stuff when you're speeding."

Yes, he said, watch the phone stuff when you're speeding.

And he sort of cocked his head to one side, and was clearly making a decision, and then he made it, and he said, "you know, there's some of us jackbooted thugs," this is a phrase I use, but to describe a certain kind of bad cop, not as a generic, "who believe in all ten of the Amendments -- "

I did not correct him and point out that there's more; that's just the Bill of Rights. Didn't even think of it until later, and I'm not always a stickler for details.

" -- to the US Constitution. You seem to," he said, handing the paper back to me, "work the First and Second pretty hard, and that's just fine."  There are ways to say it that mean and there's nothing I can do about it, but I'd like to.  He said it the other way.

I didn't quite know what to say, but I think something like thank you came out of my mouth.

"You drive safe, Joel," he said. 

And he stuck out a hand, and I shook it, and he went his way, and I went mine. Afterthought:  I guess it's possible that he knew who I was when he pulled me over, but I was driving SWMBO's car; the War Wagon was getting its a/c worked on that day.

As a friend pointed out to me, a bit later, when we were discussing this, the reason that I didn't find it offensive for him to first-name me is that he was doing it as a human sort of thing -- he'd already been formal, and was saying that as one guy to another, not a cop talking down to a "civilian," as he wasn't.

Yeah, I like cops. Some cops. I like this guy.

Not vouching for him on other stuff, but, hey, yeah, I've got a soft spot in my heart and head for cops who cut a guy a break when they don't have to. 

He could have written me, and he didn't, and I'm not about to don tactical kneepads, and all, but, hey, I like the guy.  And if the story ends a bit anticlimactically, hey, I didn't write the script, and don't mind that at all.

What can we learn from this? 

A lot, I think.  Over to you.

Yes, You Do Have Staff, But You've Got to Be Staff, First Too Both First and Too

Twitter, the Favor Economy, and the Power of Crowds

You've seen the ad:  some bozo, trying to project competence and connections, tells a potential customer:  "I've got people to handle that."  By which he means he can look up folks in the Yellow Pages, hire some, and take his chances that they can deliver.  After all, they bought an ad in the Yellow Pages, and that takes, competence, commitment, and a checkbook.  Well, a checkbook. Credit card, maybe.

You can do better.  Hell, I do better, and I'm, well, just a guy.  Look it up.

Before I get to twitter, let me tell you about a friend of mine, who I'll call Bob.  (That's not his name; that is his face.) We met something like fifteen years ago, when he was dating another friend of mine, and we've hung out a fair amount, since. 

There are folks who call me a Renaissance Man, but well, Bob's downright Heinleinian:  he can (and does) pilot airplanes, maintain cars, fix stuff, build houses from the foundation up (he's done that, and can do any of the tasks required in all of that), sail a small boat (although it did tip over, that time I went with him, throwing us into the icy cold waters of Lake Minnetonka; then again, I was at the helm), load his own ammunition, and Ghu knows what else.

Some years ago (long past the statute of limitations; chill), he decided that the house he owned then was eighteen and a half inches too short -- he had a cool stove that wouldn't quite fit -- so late on a Friday evening, he and his brother, Al (also not his name) tore off one side of it, put in all the framing and other stuff, including the additional flooring, and put the side back up and had it all painted and sealed up, better than what code requires, by Monday morning.

I could tell you a lot of Bob stories, but let's leave it that he can do damn near anything that can be done with one's hands, and that, from time to time, I've asked a favor or two of him.  The one thing that he can't do is maintain his own computers, and -- very rarely -- I get a call asking just how one farbles a glimrod under Vista, or whatever, and for two reasons, I get to farbling his computer's glimrod.

Yes:  I'm making out a like a bandit, and if I told you more of the stories --

"Yes?"
"Hey, Bob?  It's Joel.  I know it's 2:30 in the morning, but there's water pouring out of the ceiling in my kitchen, and -- "
"I got it. Put on a pot of coffee."
"That'll stop it?"
"Nah.  But I'm on my way, and a cup of coffee would be nice.  Don't worry.  We'll get it done."

-- you'd get it, even more.  (Yes, we do have fun; there was the time that we tracked a stolen car through city streets... yes, "tracked," not "followed." )

I also do some other stuff that Bob thinks is a good thing to be doing -- some of the political stuff -- and while he always makes himself available to help out in that when he can, he's of the opinion that, say, the writing and blogging is something that I can do pretty well, and that he can't do it near as well, and would rather folks like me who enjoy it spend time on.  Works for me.

I don't want to overanalyze this -- well, more than I already did -- but it's a pretty common thing: friends do favors for friends, and it all makes the world a better place.  Other than the fact that we enjoy hanging out together, both Bob and I do pretty well -- not just by the favors that we do for each other, but by those we do for others. 

Not a big deal, but a friend of Bob's once needed a quick carry class; he called me and asked me, and yeah, she got a quick carry class.  I'm not asking for a medal, which is just as well -- nobody offered me one, after all.  I just want to make the point that this doing stuff for folks stuff won't go only in one direction.  For long; you know the kind of person who acts as though they think a favor is something that you do for them, because they're too busy with their own lives, and all.  How well does that work out for them? 

Which brings me to twitter.

A few months ago, I followed the lead of some friends-who-I've-never-met-in-the-flesh, and -- while I thought it was silly -- took out a twitter account.  Mainly, I use it as an ongoing party line, a way to play with other kids while I'm doing something else, and that's fun.

But . . .

You'll see it now and then.  A tweet something like, say:

Request: anybody got a link to a good javabuttons generator? I'm thinking something like http://twurl.nl/vcpzki , but Open Source.

Which was quickly followed by:

Check this site out. Tons of great java ideas if you have never been here: http://www.dynamicdrive.com/

Which is how I ended up with javabuttons and a neat nav bar over here, over the weekend. I like it. 

Here's another one of mine.  I'd been looking into a lawsuit in another state (never mind quite why) and tweeted:

Anybody got a shortcut to information about case C 05-04532 JW in US District Court Northern District of California, San Jose Division?

A few minutes later, an attorney (I'm grateful, but I'm not going to name him without permission, lest other folks think that they get to importune him for legal research -- and I'll get back to that in a minute, I promise), tweeted:

Ask, and ye shall receive. http://is.gd/B7NB

And, if you go to the link, you'll find -- as I did -- that it was just the document I wanted, and would have looked for myself, if I'd known where to.  (I don't know exactly where he got it, or how -- but it's public information, and if I had access to the sort of tools he has at his fingertips and the knowledge of where to find that sort of stuff that he's developed, I could have found it, too.  And if my zayda had breasts, he would have -- but I digress.)

But I don't, and I didn't. I just relied on whoever was a: listening on the party line that is twitter, b: had, in the past, found what I contributed interesting or valuable (in his individual opinion; nobody else gets a vote, and that particularly goes for me) enough to take some time out of his day to look something up for me, and c: -- and this is one of the keys -- wasn't being importuned by me for "yet another favor," without me doing anything for anybody else in return, because, at least among some of the folks I meta-hang-out-with, I've contributed enough (in their opinion; mine doesn't count) putting a few work credits into the favor economy is worth the trouble, to them, even though, smart folks they are, they're probably thinking the same thing that I am when a neat query comes across:

Cool.  I can find that.

So, yeah:  the world in general -- and twitter, in particular -- is full of folks who know stuff, many of whom  will be happy to lend a hand, from time to time, and all you have to do to tap in on it is, well, obvious: Go out and do stuff.  Have fun.  Talk to folks; solve interesting problems.  Get your own work credits in, but have fun with it. Help folks, and put a call out there for assistance.

It'll be fine.  Trust me.
 

 

[No, this isn't a repeat of this episode of "Mike and Me," from a couple of years ago. More on that at the end. This article, slightly tweaked, is crossposted on TrueNorth, my LiveJournal and on the Forum, as well as here, where comments are welcome.]

*ring*
*ring*
*ring*

"Joel Rosenberg."

"Will you hold for Commissioner Campion?"

"No." *click*

*ring*
*ring*
*ring*

"Joel Rosenberg."

"Will you hold for Commissioner Campion?"

"No.* *click*

*ring*
*ring*
*ring*

"Joel Rosenberg."

"Mike Campion here. Got a minute for me?"

"Sure, Mike. Happy to talk to you. Not happy to get a call to be put on hold by His Most Puissant Excellency Herr Commissioner Campion's secretary."

[long pause; deep breath]

"Fair enough. I see you've been having a bit of fun with that Metro Gang Strike Force story."

"Yup. I laugh so that I will not cry. Been following the popup cartoon stuff?"

"Constantly."

"I haven't had so much fun since I walked out of your office that time you summoned John, Professor Olson and me to hear your sermon. It's dreadful, and I guess it's better to laugh than to -- "

"You walked out a scant fifty-eight minutes into a one-hour meeting, Joel."

"True. Wish I'd had a camera. Loved your expression. I did thank you for the coffee, though."

"Yeah."

"So, what can I do for you, Mike?"

"I take it you think I really stepped in it."

"Well, yeah. Piles of cash and thirteen cars disappear -- on your watch -- and first thing you do is carefully not order the perps' offices sealed?"

"I didn't think -- "

"Correct. You didn't think that, after the announcement that there was going to be an investigation, things might disappear there. When you're going to raid the Rolling 60's Crips, you usually hold a press conference in advance? Not exactly sure I agree with your police work, there, Commissioner."

"I guess that looks bad."

"Yeah.  Mike, didn't I read somewhere about people going to prison for tipping off the target of a raid?"

"Well, I --

"Looks like you announced that there was going to be an opportunity to steal the horses before the barn got locked."

"I know. I didn't mean to, but -- "

"Whatever."

"So what do I do now? I mean, these guys do a lot of good work, and -- "

"I guess you could issue another statement assuring the public that you don't think any evidence of criminality will now be found, what with that head start you gave the perps, and all. Wonder where all that cash and those cars got to."

"It's probably just bookkeeping errors."

"Sure. Cars often disappear in bookkeeping errors. Happens all the time. In Narnia."

"Do you have any constructive suggestions? I mean, we gotta do something to win back the public trust, and -- "

"Nah. You're not going to do the obvious, so -- "

"I don't see what's so obvious."

"Yeah. At least thousands of dollars and more than a dozen cars disappear while in the possession of the Gang Strike Force, and you don't see what's so obvious. But you've got a nice little, slow investigation that won't show anything as long as it doesn't go deep, and the perps had time not only to lawyer up, but to flush the evidence, unless you -- "

"I'm going to hang up if you don't give me one constructive suggestion."

"Hang up if you want, but I'll give you one way anyway. Not the only possibility, but I'll make it easy for you: Get on the horn to Susan Gartner. County Attorney, Ramsey, where some of this money appears to have disa -- "

"I know who she is."

"Good. Tell her you think it's in her interest to bring on a special prosecutor, give him a staff, and convene a grand jury. And tell your you've already talked to a few people, and you've got some suggest -- "

"Special prosecutor?"

"Yeah. You don't want somebody who needs these cops to make cases to be the one investigating -- and maybe prosecuting -- them. Even if he looks real, real hard, and doesn't find anything -- and, shit, there's got to be some clean cops on the Gang Strike Force, after all, no? -- it won't clear their names, and it won't nail the crooks who 'lost' all that money and all those cars. And let's not get to their splendid Hawaiian vacation.

"So instead of getting up in front of the press and announcing that you're maybe going to eventually hire some unnamed guy who has scored a lot of points in slam-dunk Federal prosecutions and some ex-FBI guy who may or may not be able to find his ass with both hands, and do that before the evidence has been secured, now that you've screwed up --

"And screwing up by saying in advance that they probably wouldn't find any evidence of criminal wrongdoing, like I did -- "

"Stop interrupting. Just get somebody with real prosecuting experience in Minnesota, who isn't in the game anymore, and let him hire on some staff who know how to look. I know one guy; you know more, and Gartner knows more than you do. Tell him to hire some clean, retired cops, who still have their current POST licenses, and swear 'em in. Kaplan* is about to retire out of EPD, and, hell, Lex Kent* used to work for you, even though he's got that new gig. I know some; you know more. A forensic accountant or two -- have him follow the money. See where it leads.

"And I'm sure you know who should be leading this, or on the task force, right?"

"Hell, no. I mean, were it me, I'd pick up the phone to Ya'acov Smalls* and see if he'd do the the lawyer part. Smalls is tough and honest, and he's prosecuted enough guys, after all. Both of the Turk* brothers are retired, but they've still got their licenses, and you know they're straight arrows. Don't know what they'd say if you asked them, but how much stink do you think they like on the badge? Billy Mitchell* would probably love to run the financial and bookeeping side of it -- he likes to keep his hand in -- and, hell, you've already got Wong* at the BCA to run the computer forensics side of it.

"But what do I know? I don't have the connections you do; you're the state's top cop, and I'm just a balding, middle-aged Jew writer who knows a few people. Finding one honest former prosecutor and six honest guys who used to carry badges and do keep their word and would say yes to this should take you about ten phone calls. If I have to guess -- "

"You don't."

"You called me, Mike. Don't interrupt so. As I was saying . . . if I had to guess, a real thorough investigation would exonerate a bunch of guys, and might just convict a few. I dunno. But, either way, it would do something to persuade people that you really want to get to the bottom of this, and not apply a slow-rolled coat of youknowwhat."

"Yeah. I see your point. Get to the bottom of it, even though we screwed up by announcing the investigation before we preserved the evidence."

"Yup. Admit the screwup, do your best, clear the innocent and arrest the folks you've got reason to think are guilty . . . and let the system handle it while you move on. Glad you called?"

"Not really."

"Didn't think so."

"Hey, I'm just trying to help, Mike. Really."

*click*

[Author's note: the previous episode of "Mike and Me" wasn't fictional. This one is fictional. Yes, published reports indicate that the real Campion did everything that the fictional Campion admits to in this fictional dialog -- he says he's appointing some former Fed prosecutor and some former FBI guy to look into things; he didn't arrange to have the Gang Strike Force HQ sealed and guarded -- that only happened after Chris Omodt was informed, according to the Star Tribune's Randy Furst, that "some Strike Force investigators turned up at the agency's New Brighton headquarters after hours on Wednesday to remove items from the offices." Maybe those items were just keepsakes of the leis that they'd gotten on their Most Excellent Taxpayer-Funded Hawaiian Vacation. Yes, there really are real people behind those names I gave the fictional Campion; I know them all, and have talked to none about whether or not they'd be willing to look into this, but they're all honest guys -- they'd either pass, or they'd do it.

[And, no, Campion didn't call me. I told you this was a story, didn't I?]

________________________
* Not the real name.

 

Give me a moment; I'll get to it. Trust me.  And, since I'm a fiction writer, I'll even make it all turn out well in the end, with lessons learned, a bond between police and citizens strengthened, and all that cool stuff.  Hell, I'll even tease a friend who will find this sooner or later, maybe embarrass the badgelickers who don't see the difference between service-oriented policing and Bad Cop Stuff, and all that, although that would be a lot to ask.

It'll be fun.

Start here, with Shane Becker getting rousted by a couple of Loomis ATM Ninjas (mainly the shaved-headed idiot, below) for the crime of photography, with some help from Officers Fife and Fife II of the much (and deservedly) maligned Seattle PD.  I'll wait.

You back?  Good.

Since then, he says that he's gotten all sorts of attention -- fine -- and been called a douchebag by badgelickers all across the globe for, apparently, not respecting the authoritah of various folks with badges and guns.

Yeah, he's a douchebag, but not for that.  Respect, after all, has to be earned, and none of the folks with badges in this earned any.

Let's back up and start with a few basic principles of life:  be polite by default -- I'm not saying that you have to put up with a lot of bumptiousness from officious jerks without doing anything about it, honest; just do useful stuff, if you're going to do anything, and we'll get to that -- and (I can't believe I have to spell this out, but . . . ) if you're threatened with bodily violence by a jerk with a gun, call the cops and let them -- you can't make them, but you can give them the opportunity -- arrest him and introduce him to the more structured environment suitable to his special needs.

Anybody who doesn't get both of those is a douchebag.  So, yes, Shane Becker demonstrated that he doesn't get the latter, and maybe -- with some provocation -- he missed out on the politeness stuff.

Okay.  Now, let's roll back the tape, a bit, and make the assumption that Shane Becker's got both of those basics down, and -- what the heck -- let's cut the Seattle PD just a bit of slack, for fun, and assume that Officers Debra Pelich, GE Abed, and Sergeant William Robertson are merely ignorant and mildly abusive, and not out to buy themselves all sorts of bad press and maybe worse if given an easy, obvious alternative from the very start.  I'm not going to palm a card and make them great, mind you, but just decent, ordinary, service-oriented cops who got started off on the wrong path, and led themselves down it, so let's make it easy for the poor dears to do it right, from the start, and see where it might go.

To review the bidding:  Becker's been minding his own business, standing in line at REI, after taking a few perfectly lawful photographs in a public place of something going on in said public place, and a shaved-head, bullet-headed uniformed ATM Ninja in a Loomis uniform with a big Glock on his hip in a fast-draw Serpa holster walks over and starts making impertinent demands.

ATM Ninja:  When you're done over here --

Hi there. My name's Joel, and I'll be your occasional Second Amendment issues blogger here. This particular essay is posted both at True North and at Windypundit, the latter of which is set up to handle comments.

Why a Minnesota radical moderate is posting a blog entry about conservatives and liberals on a Chicago area blog is one of those little mysteries of life, kinda like why flammable and inflammable mean the same thing.

But I digress.

I'm always a bit cautious about mentioning who has taken their carry class with me.  It's not a legal thing -- actual permit data is protected by the Data Practices Act, and isn't for public consumption, anymore than your 1040 is, but that's a different matter -- but more of a propriety thing:  getting a carry permit is a personal decision, and whether or not that's to be kept private is, well, not my call*.

I did a private class, not too long ago, for, well, somebody who has a: some statewide prominence in Minnesota, and b: a stalker.  He or she asked me not to mention his or her name publicly, so that made it easy.  (I think it was probably the right call in that case, but, heck, I'm utterly sure that it's not my call, so . . . )

So I've been thinking a bit about how to discuss this last weekend's class.  Which was, well, a blast. 

A bunch of the MOB folks asked if I was willing to put on a private class for them a while back, and we made it happen this last weekend, and it was even more fun than usual, for a lot of reasons. 

Over at Eckernet, Kevin, who sat in on the class -- and helped out; it was great to have him around -- had some comments on it.  Other than the nice things he said about me -- like I'm going to disagree? -- I think he had a good spin on one part of the class, but I was thinking about another matter.

Normally, when I do a carry class, I go to some trouble to try to keep my own politics out of it, most of the time.  Seems only fair; after all, people aren't signing up to spend a day being lectured to me on who they should vote for or what political positions to take. And, besides, politically speaking, I'm a radical moderate; nobody agrees with me.  

There's a couple things I feel very strongly about where I take off those restraints, though; I'm strongly of the opinion that the Second Amendment to the US Constitution recognizes a fundamental human right -- self-defense -- and that all rights come with responsibilities.

But this time, I took all of the self-restraints off.  It wasn't just that, by and large, I find myself agreeing with conservatives -- and, like most of the MOB crowd, these folks are definitely conservatives -- on many matters, but more it's that, by and large, conservatives tend to be more tolerant of differing opinions than liberals are.  (Yes, there are intolerant conservatives and tolerant liberals -- and I know some of both -- but I'm talking about definite trends.) 


And there have been some definite political implications around the gun stuff, of late.  Like, say, this award that I'm not entirely sure Obama is thrilled with having received.

All of which, by kind of a long road, leads me to a point I do keep making:  self-defense -- and that includes carry permits -- aren't a conservative issue, or a liberal issue, but a human rights issue. 

That doesn't mean that this stuff doesn't have political implications; it does. If you can persuade your liberal (and moderate) as well as your conservative friends to consider getting a carry permit and carrying a handgun as part of their personal safety strategy, you won't might be doing something with political implications.

Right now, we've got just over 60,000 Minnesotans with carry permits.  While the heavy lifting in getting the law passed that made that possible was done almost entirely by conservative Republicans, it would not passed without votes from a (small, granted) number of liberal DFLers. 

And it's not just conservatives who have gotten carry permits, either.  My admittedly liberal, tree-hugging wife was the first woman in line in Hennepin County to apply for her carry permit back in 2003, just to pick one example.

So, here's the pitch:  if you're a conservative, try to get your liberal friends -- and I don't know a conservative who doesn't have liberal friends -- to get their permits.  Sure, I'd love to have them in one of my classes, but that's not the point -- there's more than a hundred certified organizations, and hundreds upon hundreds of instructors, all across Minnesota, who can put them through a class.

How many people with carry permits do you know who would be real eager to vote for a politician who wants to take their rights away?

Yeah.  I didn't think so, either.

Yup.  From one perspective, a right-wing gun nut can be just a liberal who got a carry permit, just like a conservative is a liberal who got mugged, and a Sixth Amendment radical is just a conservative who got thumped by a cop.

But I digress.



__________________________________________

* Except, of course, for me.  Then again, ever since I testified in front of the MN House and Senate Committees, some years ago, on the necessity of reforming our (now-formerly) antiquated, bureaucrats-know-best carry laws, I've been more than a little out of the gun closet.

Today is Virginia Heinlein's birthday.  That's her, with her husband.  You may have heard of him. 

If the world was a fairer place, Mrs. Heinlein would be 93, today, and in good health.  A very nice woman.

Which reminds me of a story. 

So, there I was, pounding away at the keyboard, when the phone rang.  It was my daughter Judy's science teacher.

"Uh-oh," I said, and "hold one."  I knew I was going to need at least one cigarette, and probably a drink.  "What did she do now?"

"You're not going to believe this one."

It hadn't been a great year.  Homework hadn't been done, or had been 'lost'.  Classes skipped, authority constantly challenged -- well, that was okay, by and large, but . . . -- and then there was the series of excuses with my name signed to them, written in my style, and which I had nothing to do with.  Catch Me If You Can wasn't supposed to be a training film, you know.

"Okay.  Issue?"

"The usual.  Her homework is not in.  You're not going to believe her excuse this time."

I sighed.  "Okay."  Missed another connection at JFK?  Fifth grandmother died?  What?

"She claimed that she couldn't get to it this morning because she was too busy chatting online with Mrs. Heinlein.  Virginia Heinlein.  Robert Heinlein's widow."

"Well, she does have to do her homework, but, yeah, she was.  They do that pretty much every morning.  Mrs. Heinlein looks forward to it, she says.  I know Judy does; first thing in the morning, she gets to Instant Messenger and they talk for awhile." 

Long pause.  "Really?"

"Yeah.  She still has to get her homework done, but, yeah."

"What do they talk about?"

Asshole.  "Would you eavesdrop on Mrs. Heinlein's private conversations with a young friend of hers?"

"No, of course -- "

"Me, neither."

"I mean, I, err, well, but, sheesh, and . . . "

"I know."

He managed to get off the phone, not completing a sentence.  Understandable.  I got on Instant Messenger.  Mrs. Heinlein was on, and I ratted Judy out.

There was a long pause, and then . . .

May I still chat with her in the mornings?  I so enjoy our conversations.

Of course, Ginny.  (She had long before told Felicia and me -- among many others -- to call her "Ginny," and it was all I could do not to answer, "I'd be honored to call you Ginny, Mrs. Heinlein."  She was like that.)

Thank you so much, Joel.

My pleasure, Ginny.

Talk turned to other things. I think that was the day I told her my Pournelle story, and she told me about how she's made Jerry's jaw drop by opening her pocketbook.  (Other stories, for other days.  Remind me.)


Every morning after, when Judy would sign on to Instant Messenger, a message would pop up.

Judy, is your homework up to date?

Yes, Mrs. Heinlein.

Every morning.


Agnostic that I am, I don't have any strong opinion about life after death and such, but it would be kind of nice to think that maybe, somewhere, she's reading this and thinking fondly of me and my kid.

We surely are thinking fondly of her, and not just once a year, either.

So:  Happy Birthday, Ginny.  Please pass along my respects to the Man Who Traveled in Elephants. 

. . . which this reminded me of.


It was about seven in the evening, the end of a nice spring day, and my older kid, then a junior at Washburn High in Minneapolis (a school so badly run that they had to fire all the staff, including some of the best teachers, and start over, but I digress...)  hadn't returned home. 

Not a big deal; she often went over to a friend's house after school, and had been known to stay for dinner, and the nice thing about cell phones is that it makes it easy to check up on things.

So I called her cell.

"Hi, Dad."

"Hey, kiddo.  About time to be heading home, no?"

"Sure.  I'm on my way right now."

"Oh?  Where are you?" 

A suspicious pause. "In a car."

"[Julie] giving you a ride?"

"No.  I'm getting a ride from a nice Minneapolis police officer."

I opened my mouth, closed it, and opened it again. "Put him on."

"I'm not in trouble."

"Good.  Put him on."

"I can't; I'm in the back, and there's that -- "

"It's called 'the cage.'  Slide the phone through.  Now."

She did.

The cop -- I'll call him Deputy Mike Williams, 'cause I got a strange sense of humor -- got on the phone. 

Nice guy.  He started off by explaining that no, my kid wasn't in trouble, and in fact, she and her friends had done a good thing.  He couldn't go into detail, he said, as there was another minor involved, but a friend of Judy's had disappeared from school, and Judy and her other friends had helped the police locate her, after which, well, he couldn't say more.

"You know my kid's going to tell me all about it."

"Sure.  But I gotta follow the rules; I can't."

Which was fair enough. 

I met him and Judy at the curb, and we chatted for awhile*.  Officer Williams couldn't go into detail, but Judy could, and she explained that a friend of hers -- I'm going to arbitrarily say it was a girl, and call her Granola Oatmeal-Smythe, which isn't her name, honest -- had was going through some not atypical teen drama, involving a boy having dumped her, and making noises about maybe doing some harm to herself, and disappeared from school in the middle of the day. 

After the school administration had turned a deaf ear to the concerns of the kids -- the administrators at Washburn High in Minneapolis were not exactly reknowned for having working clueservers -- the kids had ditched school to find Granola in Minnehaha Park, and enlisted the aid of a bunch of the boys and girls with guns and badges, and Granola had been located, unharmed, but still making those sorts of noises. 

She was taken to the nearest hospital for the appropriate sort of observation, with very little protest.  (My own guess is that the kid might, but probably wouldn't, have hurt herself if she'd been dared into it, but the badged adults and kids involved had all taken a sensible approach, and it probably didn't come as close to being tragic as it sounded to me, then, so I'm trying to downplay it a little.)

I could go more into detail, but if I do, that might identify Granola, so I won't. 

With the kid safe, it was starting to get late, and the cops involved all decided that they weren't all that comfortable with just leaving the kids alone at the park to make their various ways home, so various squads had gone off in different directions with kids in the back, and if it turned out that that wasn't exactly according to MPD policy, maybe I wouldn't have any trouble with that? 

I allowed as to how I wasn't in the business of enforcing even sensible MPD policy, much less stupid policy, and we parted with a handshake, and a mental note to myself that if I ever blogged about this to fudge a few details to hide Williams' identity, which I just did.

I was actually proud of Judy -- although fairly irritated that she hadn't informed her father (that would be me) as to what was going on, until it was all over.  Minnehaha Park is not the safest place in town -- there had recently been some remarkably unpleasant events there --

And she did agree that she should have, but pointed out that the kids actually were being driven around there by cops, and were probably pretty safe, under the circumstances. 

Which is where I thought things ended. 

But I was wrong.

Turns out that there were at least two people irritated by the whole thing -- one of the vice principals, and the school mall ninja security guard; I'll call him Ken Jones, even though that's not his name. Seems that their decision that there was nothing to worry about had turned out to be demonstrably wrong, and, let's face it, tinpot dictator types don't like to be proven wrong.

So, the next day, when Jones was searching through Granola's locker, what he was really doing was trying to find some way to get the kids who had embarrassed him in trouble. 

Which he kinda sorta found -- Granola's diary, in which she talked about all sorts of stuff, including some musing about how she might take an overdose of drugs.  His keen quasi-cop mind leaped to a stupid conclusion, and he summoned all the kids who had embarrassed him into the school security office, to engage in a little amateur interrogation.

I think his theory, such as it percolated through Ken Jones' pointy little head, is that if a kid is talking about taking drugs, other kids must be dealing drugs, and maybe that could be used to punish them for embarrassing him.

Which didn't work, which irritated the mall ninja.   So he called in the school "liaison officer", a cop who I'm going to call "Dan Grout" -- the name is pronounced like that stuff between tiles -- because that's the guy's name.

"I know you kids were dealing drugs to her," he opened with.  "And if you don't confess to me now, when she kills herself, I'll see you all charged with first degree murder."

At which point the kids started freaking out, just a little.

Including, on the inside, my kid.  But only on the inside.  "I want my father and I want my lawyer, now."

Daddy's girl did Daddy proud.

Grout snorted.  "Like you got a lawyer."  (Not sure I exactly agree with your police work, there, Danny.) 

"I have a lawyer, and I want my father and my lawyer, now." 

. . .

Which is kinda where I come in, a few minutes later, with the Vice Principal of the school calling me, out of irritation.  He gave me a rather abbreviated and not entirely accurate version of the events -- "We have to do these sorts of things for the children, of course" -- and asked what I planned to do about it . . .

"Well, I guess I better get in the car and head over there.  David on his way?"

"David?"

"My daughter's attorney.  He's on his way, right?  I'm kind of surprised that I haven't heard from him."  Then again, if he's representing Judy in this, I'm just the guy paying the bill, not the client, and he's got to at least talk to the client before he --

I think this is the moment where I realized that I was talking to an idiot:  "Why would a child need an attorney?" he asked.

"Because of jackbooted thugs with delusions that the Constitutions' been repealed for their fucking convenience," I said, about as gently as I could. 

"I don't think I like your tone."

"Well, good.  Let me ask you a question -- do you own your own home?  Got a lot of equity in it?"

"Are you threatening me, sir?"

"Play the tape back, if you've got any questions.  And, in case I'm not clear, nobody at your school -- not you, not your mall ninja, not anybody -- is to interrogate my kid on anything without either her attorney or me being present.  You can talk to her about her homework, but anything else, David or I are to be there.  On a good day, you might get us both.  You got that?"

Long pause.  "I want to hear a yes on that right about now."

"Yes."

That was the last time the Vice Principal of that school and I had a chat about anything. 

What we can learn from this is left as an exercise for the reader. 


_____________
* Since I know somebody's going to ask:  yes, yes, there was a gun visible on my right hip when I met them outside, no, that didn't enter into the conversation on either Williams part or mine.  Wasn't relevant. 

Life does drift, and the discussion over at SJ that Mark links to led to a digression into tactical pens, tactical pants, tactical shirts, and tactical underwear.  (For those of you who have never tried to pronounce the phrase, "tactical pants," please do try it; it's almost impossible to say without giggling.)

Which reminds me of a story.

But I gotta back up for a moment.  Despite the impression that the opening of D'Shai has given some people, anybody who has met me will have quickly figured out that whatever I am, it's not a runner.

Being "vaguely pear-shaped" mixes poorly with marathons.

That said, during the summer, I do tend to spend a fair amount of time in a t-shirt and running shorts, just for the comfort.  Which does lead to a problem in how to carry the handgun.  Running shorts, after all, generally have an elastic waistband rather than loops for a good belt, and my usual pocket holster carry doesn't work well with those, even without worrying about the possibility of the shorts suddenly dropping to the ground with a loud thunk that might not go over real well.

Which is how I found myself at the party carrying in Thunderwear.  (I was also wearing conventional underwear, not wanting to give a whole new meaning to the term "going commando," honest.)  For those folks not willing to click on the link, please reconsider -- but the short form is that the gun is carried, remarkably discreetly, just in front of the, err, crotchal area...

There's lots of things that are useful about Thunderwear, honest, although it's not possible to holster the gun without doing violence to one of the basic safety rules:  never point the handgun at something that you're not willing to destroy.  (Short further digression:  Thunderwear is a great reminder that it's never, ever necessary to quickly holster the gun.) 

Well, it was all going very well until a woman friend of mine plunked down on my lap.  We're friendly sorts in my social circle.

Understandably, she gave me a look. 

"Well," I said, "I am happy to see you, but . . . "

"Yeah, I know:  you have a gun in your pocket."

She did have the courtesy to sound disappointed.

Well, I'm lazy, and don't want to replow the ground that others have already plowed; I'm more inclined to do a little freelance gleaning at the corners.  And since somebody asked, and I was writing on it anyway . . .

So let's start here, with the reporting on how Jason Vassell stabbed Bowes and Bosse. 

Sounds pretty simple, no? 

Well, no.   Quick jump to here, where prosecutor and former criminal defense attorney Ken Lammers asks a bunch of good albeit not dispositive questions. And then to here, where Scott Greenfield posts about it.  And skip to here, for a very partisan account, and do let's remember that "partisan" and "liar" are two different words, and also different from "Fair Witness". 

Now, as a guy who spends a fair amount of time conducting training classes for people who want to carry guns in Minnesota (and elsewhere), this one hits kind of close to home; the only way it could hit much closer, without me being the guest of honor in the proceedings, is if it were a Minnesota thing.  (The fact that the tool used either in proper self-defense and/or excessive force happened to be a knife rather than a gun may make a difference to some, but I don't much care.)

The specifics of this case are going to be governed by Massachusetts law, and a quick glance at the MA equivalent to Minnesota's defense of dwelling statute raises more questions than it answers. So let's forget about that. The folks in the People's Republic of Massachusetts are stuck with MA law, whatever it may be, and good luck to them with it.

Me, I'm not trying to decide not whether or not Vassel did everything right -- that's easy:  reading between the lines at the "Justice for Jason" site, it's clear to me that he didn't -- but whether or not he did enough wrong that he ought to be in trouble, with a very real risk of a criminal conviction.

Again, let's back up for a second -- and I promise to stop doing that, as I'm going to start tripping over the furniture.

When we point at a thing we call "self defense", we're sometimes talking past each other.  In a criminal proceeding, it's what the lawyer types call an "affirmative defense."  To simplify (and the lawyers reading this are, as always, invited to tell me how wrong I am, and how my simplification is misleading) when a guy claims self defense, he's saying, in effect, "yeah, I shot/beat/stabbed/hacked the guy, and I meant to do it, but I had three good reasons for it:  I didn't want to be involved in the fight, I had a damn good reason to think that he would have killed or crippled me, and I really had no other choice, except for getting killed or crippled."  (In some places, add . .  ". . . and among the reasons that I had no other choice is that I couldn't run away.")

Here's the thing:  if the prosecutor can show that any one of those is missing, the guy goes to prison.  Just one; he's dangling over a prison cell, clinging to a chain that has three (or four, depending) links, and since he's in court, you can visualize the prosecutor sawing at one or more of those links, knowing that if he breaks any one -- two would be fine, but one will do every bit as well -- the guy falls in.

The standard for self-defense isn't, as Justice Holmes long ago told us, whether or not detached reflection can properly be demanded in the presence of an upraised knife (or, although he didn't say it, a couple of thugs)  after all.

And for once, the law as I understand it and what seems reasonable to me -- I got my freelance philosopher's license some years ago; it's issued at birth with human DNA -- really do agree, at least mostly.  It's not okay to go around starting fights and beating the crap out  or killing or crippling people to take their dignity, health, or stuff; people under stress not of their making can't be expected to sort things out perfectly, or benefit from hindsight, but can be required -- under penalty of law, to not be very unreasonable when they find themselves in a mess not of their own making.

Now, back to the partisan account . . . and let's assume that it's spun, at least a little bit, but not horribly inaccurate as to the series of events.  I'll indent their stuff, and undent mine. 

At approximately 4am on Sunday February 3rd two young women students visited Jason Vassell a fellow resident of MacKimmie in his dormitory room.

A bunch of college kids are still up partying after a late Saturday night.  It would not shock my conscience were some alcohol and a bit of courting behavior going on.

Upon entering and finding the room "stuffy" one of the young women crossed to the window and raised the shades. She was astonished to find the face of "a large white man" pressed against the window and staring back at her.

And were it the face of "a small Asian woman", would she have been unastonished?  Nah.  The attempt to -- quite possibly legitimately; it's not always a forgery, you know -- play the race card aside, it's not usual to find anybody outside anybody else's window at four in the morning, although -- the face pressing aside -- there likely could be an innocent explanation.

I'm guessing that there wasn't.

 Asked by Jason to explain his presence outside his window

Please.  "What the fuck are you doing?  Get the fuck away from there," or stronger language would be entirely appropriate under the circumstances.  

the man (John Bowes) launched into a loud tirade of racial invectives and violent threats directed at Jason. Another man was observed

Who did this observing?  I'm not sure it mattered, but when people use the passive voice, I want to frisk them to see what else they're hiding.  

outside the room and he joined in the abuse. Told to go away, the man became more enraged and kicked in the window.

See above. There's nothing wrong with telling somebody to get away from your window at 4AM, even if they've responded to your inquiry as to the reason for their presence without saying bad words or summoning jerks.

Understandably frightened, the two young women then left the room, and the police were called.

Good so far, although I'm still unhappy about the passive voice.  (Hey, partisans?  It's okay if one of the young women called the cops, rather than Vassell.)  I sense a pattern.  The safe thing to do -- in a lot of ways -- is to call the cops.  Whether or not to announce that to the folks outside is a judgment call; either would be okay with me.  (At my home, I would, but I do have specialized tools available in the event that that announcement persuaded them that entering the home and beating me to death in advance of the arrival of the badged folks was a wise decision, and such tools would be in hand, as whatever kind of idiot I am, I'm not that kind.) 

While awaiting the arrival of the police, Jason, feeling outnumbered and at risk, called a friend from a neighboring dorm for support.

The attackers have kicked in a window (either that, or the partisans are lying; I'm betting that the window was broken inward, and by the jerks), a guy could reasonably feel that he wasn't safe where he was, and wouldn't want to be alone.  How long until the cops get there?  I dunno, either, but "when seconds count, the police are only minutes away."  Phone a friend?  Sure.

When his friend arrived Jason went to the lobby and not seeing his tormenters, opened the outside door.

Excuse me, folks.  You forgot about the knife.  I'm not irritated with your guy for getting it, and I'm very much not irritated with him and/or his lawyer for not discussing that with you, but, sheesh:  yeah, he grabbed something that he might be able to use for self-defense, if things continued to go pear-shaped.  This proves one thing: he's not an idiot. 

As his friend was entering the two intruders appeared from the side and entered the lobby. The big intruder assaulted Jason and broke his nose. In the ensuing skirmish both intruders were stabbed.

A guy's in his dorm room, quite possibly intending to put some moves on some friendly young women (there's not anything wrong with that, you know), only to find some creep trying to peek in through the window. 

Epithets are exchanged; a window is broken.  The guy grabs a knife (and I don't care whether it's a steak knife that he keeps to cut his food or a P'Kal identical to the one in my right front pocket at the moment; it's a fargin' tool) and retreats from his room, to go down to the front door to let in a friend who he's asked to come over while he's waiting for the police to show up (and, remembering that he's not an idiot, probably to take possession of the knife and fade slowly into the woodwork when the cops do, just so there won't be a misunderstanding), and the two jerks rush in.  (Both the news report and the partisan site are clear that the confrontation happened in the dorm lobby; Amherst dorms are locked at night -- I just checked -- and they couldn't have gotten in without the door being opened for them; while it's a safe guess that Bosse is or was an Amherst student, Bowes never was.)

He gets a broken nose in the fracas that they instigated, and then they get themselves cut up some. 

How much?  Well, remembering that even  an out-of-shape overweight fifty-four year-old can stab something (or, conceivably, somebody) more than ten times in two seconds, maybe we can cut a bit of slack to a kid whose nose has just been broken, in a fight that, in this version, he didn't start, and which he wasn't outside trying to continue? 

Sheesh. 

Let me give you another version of what happened . . .

A couple of relatively harmless -- so far; yeah, maybe, there was the trouble that there were in in high school for racially motivated attacks, possibly -- but more than a little obnoxious white kids are partying at at night at Amherst, and haven't left, as they haven't managed to score with any of the cute Amherst girls (and/or cute Amherst guys) by four in the morning; as is often the case, the booze that they're drinking just makes everybody else more attractive. They're lounging about outside a dorm, maybe having a cigarette -- near the one where they've been partying (it's February, and it got just a little below freezing there that night; they're not going to be partying outside), and some guy leans out a nearby window and shouts, not in a friendly way, to get away. 

Words are exchanged.  Everybody uses bad words.  They use worse words, maybe, and one of them starts pounding on the window with his closed fist.  Bad choice; the window breaks.  The guy inside announces that he's calling some friends to come and beat them, and they're on their way.  (They don't hear that the cops have been called.)  

And then . . .

And then the whole story that they're the imperfect victims breaks down.  Because the imperfect victims might not be scared off -- they'll stand their ground, even though it's not their ground -- or they might run, but the one thing that they don't do is figure out a way to get into a locked dorm building to confront the guy whose window they've just broken in the lobby.  Wait for the cops so that they can get their story in first?  Sure.  Outside.  Run away, and kind of hope that ends it?  Possibly.

Shove their way into a locked dorm to continue the confrontation, break a guy's nose.  Sure:  if they're looking for more trouble, not happy with what they've found.

Something stinks, and it's not just the food at the dining hall, either.

So, why would a prosecutor push this?  I dunno.  If you want to assume that the prosecutor is being reasonable, about the only thing that makes sense is that, after defending himself with the knife -- it's not reasonable to require a guy to be able to push away his attacker without tools, unless he's some sort of martial artist, and probably not then -- he kept going and going, or at least the prosecutor thinks that. 

Which, of course, leaves us with the problem that both of the imperfect victims are not only still alive, but were out of the hospital in fairly short order.

I'll try to keep an open mind, but, gee, this sounds like it can't be a lot better than, well, it sounds like.   

Provably some, probably many prosecutors really hate self-defense.  Some feel that if you let people protect themselves, that's a long step down the slide to vigilantism.  (There's a technical term that we self-defense activists use about people who think that way; we call them "morons."  Strong language to follow.)

One local-to-me city attorney has been known to say that any time that somebody takes out a gun, he should be prosecuted, regardless of the facts -- let the jury sort it out.  And if that means he has to bankrupt himself to pay a lawyer, well, that's his problem.

After we passed the our carry reform law in 2003, word went out in my county that the County Attorney herself had passed the word that at least the first permit holder to use a gun in self-defense would be prosecuted, period, pour encouragez les autres, and was prepared to, at a moment's notice, slide down the firepole she had installed between her office and the press room at the HCGC to announce the indictment.  (She is, I'm happy to say, no longer my County Attorney; alas, Amy the Klo is my US Senator, so that story doesn't end happily.)

So, yeah; I'm willing to be open-minded, but this does look pretty awful, and I'm hearing the sounds of the choo-choo; Vassell is, by first approximation, the victim of a railroading.

Which makes him better off than crippled or dead, but that's about the only good thing that can be said about it.

Not the only time that the prosecutors have gone after the victim, mind you; google for "Martin Treptow" sometime.   
 

The blogosphere -- and blawgosphere -- is abuzz today over the partial conviction of Ryan Frederick yesterday.  That is, I guess, a bit like partial conception, or only being a little screwed, but let's get back to that.  Rather than recap -- I'm lazy, and not getting paid by the word here -- let me just refer you to the pre-conviction roundup over at Balko's place, and the insider-baseball criticism of the (apparently quite good, but "good" and "perfect" are different words; look 'em up) defense lawyer from Scott.

It could have happened here in Minnesota.  After all, it's not like we don't have idiot kick-in-the-door raids here where folks with badges and guns get shot at because they don't have the brains or decency to make even a token effort to figure out the difference between Rolling 60's Crips and small Hmong children until they're tripping over the little kids while shooting up the place.

Some aren't as funny; sometimes, people get killed, like that nice elderly couple that Mike Sauro's MPD squad fried to death after throwing a grenade in during a wrong house raid, some years ago. 

And sometimes people get shot, and not necessarily folks who deserve it.  You could ask Bob Skomra, I guess; he's still alive, and around. 

But before we get to that, let's take a quick look at this story.  I'll tie it all together, more or less, I promise:  Carrie "RockNRoll" Rindall (I'm just making up the nickname; I know her boss, Mary Frandrup, slightly, and have reason to think highly of her, but the only thing I know about Rindall comes from this video and report.  Short form: Rindall shouldn't be trusted with a can of cooking spray and a rubber gun) for whatever reason -- probably a perfectly reasonable one; I won't quibble with that -- decides to pull over a guy on New Year's Eve.  Instead of pulling right over by the side of the icy highway, he promptly makes his way over to the exit, and slows down, pulling over on the shoulder . . . .

. . . after which RockNRoll Rindall, determined to show all the guys back at the barracks that she's got a larger penis than any of them do, decides to smash up his car some, then hauls him off to jail for a couple of days on the grounds of "you'll beat the charge, but you won't beat the ride" subprofessionally and ineptly executes the "PIT maneuver", and is only partly to blame for the subpar execution, as it's a technique intended to make a rapidly fleeing car spin out, and relies on the great amount of kinetic energy of the rapidly fleeing car, and just plain can't work when a van is already only going five MPH and slowing down.

Much jailarity ensues.  All in all, I'm sure it was a good lesson for the professor's three young children on what is not, alas, quite the low end of police professionalism, but definitely toward the shallow end of the pool.  (Generally, by the way, I'm pretty fond of the State Patrol folks, but that may be because I've dealt mainly with the ones who do security over at the Capitol, who are awfully good, and know how to do things low-key.  Captain Frandrup used to head that bunch.) 

Now, I'm not going to get into a long digression, here and now, on chase-don't-chase policies and PIT maneuvers, other than to say that a good rationale -- maybe the only good rationale -- for a cop ramming a squad into a fleeing car is that there is a huge chance that the fleeing car is going to ram into something, or somebody, and if there is going to be a collison it's a lot better of an idea if that happens at the time and place of the professional law enforcer's choosing, in as controlled manner as possible, than of the fleeing perp's random choice.  I mean, it may be okay for the MPD SWAT team to shoot up a house filled with little Hmong kids, but it wouldn't be okay for a fleeing car thief to run over a playground filled with them, would it?

That's the rationale for it, after all.  The idea isn't to inflict damage and punishment on the guy -- or his kids -- for him making an unwise decision to pull off the highway rather than pull over immediately.  The idea is that, as dramatic and dangerous as one car ramming another from behind is, it's safer for everybody concerned -- even the fleeing driver -- than the alternative, when employed in the proper situation.

A badged cowboy or cowgirl who rams a slowing car by the side of the road, even if -- as seems likely -- she gets away with it, is remembering the rubric and forgetting the rationale.

The rationale isn't yippie, we get to smash up a guy's car and then jail him because we've got our tactical panties in a twist, honest.

Which brings us back to rationale and rubric on shooting somebody. Sorry, before we get to it, I've got to give you a bit of homework.  This.  That's Minnesota's killing-a-guy-lawfully statute. Stick a pin there, and let's think about the day that Housley shot Skomra and Mack.

Me, I don't know if Riley Housley III was an undocumented pharmacist.  My thinking is that a guy who actually made a living selling narcotics wouldn't hold down a job as a construction worker, too, but, hey, there are such things as part-time gigs . . .

On the other hand, while the cops thought he was a drug dealer, they didn't get a warrant for that; they got one that allowed them to recover some supposedly stolen property, and it's that warrant for the stolen property that they were supposedly after rather than the drug charges that they really wanted to bring that brought Dave Mack and Bob Skomra and a whole bunch of other narcotics cops to 2807 Pillsbury Ave that day in 1979, and got Mack and Skomra shot up. 

Knocking on the door didn't work, and neither did trying to kick the door in, and it's not hard to understand why by the time that they actually got out the sledgehammer and bashed the door in, they were pretty sure that nobody was home.  The noise would have woken any normal person.

Actually, as it turned out, Housley was home that afternoon, and a heavy sleeper.  It was the smashing and crunching glass that brought him out of a sound sleep on the couch, and had him retrieving the handgun that he'd bought after being robbed at gunpoint a few months before, by a guy who insisted that he was a cop but almost certainly wasn't. 

And then there was the crashing in part; which is how Mack and Skomra got themselves shot up.  (Mack was, basically, killed by his injuries, although it took a few years; Skomra's retiring as an Inspector, after a successful career.  I don't know the guy; we've got at least one mutual acquaintance who thinks well of him; further, deponent knoweth not.) 

But enough of that digression.  We were back at the kicking in and shooting stuff, remember?  Skomra and Mack were bleeding on the floor, and at the same time that the other cops were on the radio shouting that a cop (they weren't sure of the number, until a bit later) had been shot, Housley was on the phone telling MPD to "Get the police to 2807 Pillsbury, I just shot someone breaking into my house."  Yup; the drug dealer was calling for police to rescue him, just in case the guys he shot were still up and moving.

Skomra and Mack got hauled off to the hospital; Housley to jail.   

Housley was convicted of first degree assault, but the Minnesota Supreme Court said, basically, in legalese:  nah; what were you idiots on the jury thinking, you morons?; see State v. Housley, 322 N.W.2d 746, 751 (Minn. 1982).

Which is where we get back from the rubric -- the statute, above -- to the rationale and the rational.

Housley isn't, popular (local) myth aside, a defense of dwelling case.  It's a self-defense case, that just happened to take place in the home.

Don't believe me: the MN Supreme Court was explicit:

The defendant was awakened by the sound of a thud or a crash and then heard someone walking on broken glass in his kitchen. There had been a violent entry into his home through a door that was securely locked and never used. The house was dark except for the light entering the kitchen area through the broken door. The defendant had been beaten and robbed at gunpoint, in the same house, only six months before. Housley, who is extremely nearsighted, could not find his glasses, but located his gun. Seconds later he was confronted by the silhouette of an unknown man standing 6' 3" and weighing between 220 and 225 pounds. Housley testified that the intruder appeared to have a gun in his left hand and made a jerking motion. Housley testified that he thought he was about to be fired upon, so he fired several shots in rapid succession and then grabbed the telephone and ran into his bathroom to call the police. The state posits several actions which, in retrospect, Housley should have taken when confronted by the unknown intruder in his home. Our primary concern, however, is not with what Housley might have done, but with the reasonableness of what he did do. Our statutes authorize the use of deadly force when the defendant reasonably believes he is in imminent danger of serious bodily harm or death. In light of the testimony in this case, we find the prosecution failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that defendant Housley's concern for his safety was unreasonable.

Yup.  This case was so clear, that our Supreme Court overturned a jury.  They don't like to do that, hereabouts, and they didn't do it because Housley was (or is; he's still around, and was just in court, again, last year) a sympathetic guy.  They didn't do it because he could claim a "technicality" of defense of dwelling.  They did it because they remembered the rubric -- the statute -- and the rationale.

So, let's get beyond the rubrics -- whether it's when a carefully-trained law enforcement professional can get away with doing a PIT maneuver, to whether or not there's this thing called "defense of dwelling" to the rationale and the rational . . .

What we, as a society, can and can't expect of a person is what's supposed to be encompassed by the law.  Detached reflection in the wake of an upraised knife?  The sounds of shattering wood and glass bringing you out of a sound sleep?  Nah. 

But you're asleep in your home -- and whether it's been recently burglarized (at police direction in Frederick's case) or you've not so recently been robbed there at shotgun point (Housley) -- and somebody kicks the door in and shouting something that you're not going to be able to decode as you come awake, what do we, as a society, have a right to demand that a guy do? 

In the cases we're looking at, it's pretty clear:  two juries got it wrong.  And one Supreme Court got it right.  A guy, sleeping in his home, hears the crashing sounds, what is he to think?  Must be some cops with a warrant, because, after all, home invaders without badges don't break stuff and shout? 

Huh?

So, yeah, the conventional wisdom on the libertarian side of the blogosphere got it right:  the rationale is that it's your frakking home, folks, and when the state sends somebody crashing in through the door without a damn good reason -- and a compliant judge signing a warrant because a cop has had a compliant burgler burgle the place isn't one -- is begging for somebody who doesn't deserve to get shot to get shot. 

Ryan Frederick?  He's just the poor schlump who showed the bad taste to survive a home invasion that never should have happened in the first place.  

Got an email from Bob (not his real name.  His real name is Karl Keller*) earlier today, and it's worth sharing:

I went on a date with Kristy last night and we ended up in the emergency room. Well, that's the short version.

It's not as bad as I make it sound. A close friend of Kristy's (on blood thinners, I believe, for other conditions) called her while we were making supper. He'd been bleeding from a cut on his shin for a couple hours without clotting and needed to get to the emergency room.

We picked him up, got him there, and stood by while he told us jokes and funny stories for an hour or so as the doctor and nurses patched him, cleaned him up, and started in on some tests. All in all, this was a very successful trip to the emergency room. I made some mistakes, but no one died. For your benefit, here are a few mistakes not to make.

1. When removing items from the back seat to make room for the patient, don't remove the bag containing your major first-aid kit.

2. Find out how badly the patient is bleeding and how much blood he's lost before putting him in the car.

3. Even though you left the major first-aid kit behind, don't forget about the QuickClot bandage in your carry-bag. Sure, you might carry it to deal with knife, bullet, shrapnel, or other accident related trauma type injuries, but it'll probably help the patient with a popped vericose vein structure and thin blood just as well--but only if you remember you have it. Remember, review your kits often or they will be of little use when you are under pressure.

The idea is not to be looking out for opportunities to play doctor, but that, if you have only a little bit of knowledge, a clear understanding of where that knowledge begins and ends, and a fair amount of humility, you might end up being able to make a bad situation less bad.  Then again, maybe not; you pays your money, and you takes your chances.  But there are a fair number of times in life where doing something constructive right now is a lot better than doing the perfect thing days later. 
   
__________________
* Yes, I have permission to post this, and name him, silly. 

The White Knight got up this morning, and got ready to go out for the day.

He took some time threading his belt through the dual magazine carrier that he carries on his left hip -- never can have too much ammo, you know, and, besides, if you have to clear a stoppage with a semiauto, you probably will need to do a mag change -- and then through the CTAC holster that his Wilson Combat CQB Tactical LE rides in. A quick finger-check to make sure that a round was still chambered -- it was -- and he was, well, not ready yet. Still had to clip the Surefire KROMA flashlight to his belt. Great flashlight; $299, and worth every penny. If you're going to carry a gun, lots of the gunwriters say, you've got to carry pepper spray and a baton -- wouldn't want some prosecutor to argue that you didn't even have a lesser-force option available -- so he clipped the can of pepper foam behind the gun on his right side, and the ASP 16" baton to his belt on the left side. Oops. He had almost forgotten the knife -- the Masters of Defense Dieter CQD went into his right pocket. And, suitcoat concealing everything, he was ready to go to work. Hoped he didn't clank too much if he bumped into a doorframe at the office; wouldn't want to scare the other accountants.

That was him.  Me? 

I just opened the gun box, took out the snubby still in its pocket holster -- checked to make sure it was loaded; best to keep up the good habits -- closed and locked the gunbox, made sure that my pocket knife was, well, in my pocket, grabbed my car keys and headed for the door. 

Greenfield sighed.  He had been reading the discussion over at Simple Justice about the attorney's ethical role in discussing taking a plea, mainly as a way to avoid getting back to thinking about what he was going to say to his own client about the plea offer; the guy was due in the office at the top of the hour.

Damn.  Double damn. 

Damn.  It didn't look good, mind you, but, then again, how often did it?  He flipped through the file again, as though he hadn't committed it to memory.  He hated this.

He sat back in his chair and took another sip of coffee, hoping that it would clarify things for him.  It didn't. 

He had about two hours to figure it out; his guy was not exactly a demon for punctuality.  If he had been, well, he wouldn't have been in this trouble, in the first place -- he would have caught the train on time, and not just missed and, and while he was waiting for the next one, struck up a conversation with what he'd thought was a hooker, but turned out to be an undercover cop.  Turns out the difference was kind of important.  

Trying to arrange a commerical quickie while carrying a backpack containing three pounds of barely-stepped-on cocaine wasn't a bright thing to do in the first place, of course, but as a wise man once said, the prisons weren't exactly filled with Lex Luthors.

Not that it mattered much. Oh, if it went to trial, he'd give it all he had, but it didn't look --

That's when the genie appeared, in a puff of smoke.

As usual.  The nosmoking ordinances didn't apply to genies, apparently; he was, again as usual, puffing on a preposterously large Monte Cristo.

"Hello, Scott," the genie said, as usual.

"Mark."  You'd think a genie could at least remember first names.  "I'm Mark Greenfield. Scott Greenfield's a different guy. You could look it up."

The genie shrugged.  "Sorry; I always get the Jewish lawyers confused.  You get yourself locked in a lamp for a couple of thousand years, and if you come out only having a little trouble with names, consider yourself lucky."

"Fair enough."  Greenfield tapped at the file folder in front of him.  "I guess I know what this is about."

"Yup."  The genie nodded.  "It's the usual thing, just like the last five times.  I'm going to tell you how it all turns out."

"Okay," Greenfield said.  "How bad?  Or how good?"

"Bad?  You've got the plea offer in front of you.  Five years isn't anything to sneeze at, given the weight.  Good?  If your guy goes to trial, you win.  Turns out that between now and the trial, some crooked cop is going to substitute corn starch for the coke.  Which gets your guy off of everything except the solicitation charge.  Time served."

He could suck that up.

"So to speak," the genie said, his annoying habit of mindreading still intact.  "Possession of a condiment isn't a felony, and -- "

"And my guy wasn't even trying to sell it."

"Yeah."  His mind was already racing.  All he had to do --

"Not so fast, Mark."  The genie shook his head.  "The coke's still in the evidence locker; it hasn't gotten substituted yet.  It happens, well, just in time.  But you know the rules."

Yeah.  He knew the rules.  Not that it mattered much.  What was he going to tell the client?  That a genie had appeared in a puff of smoke and told him that if they went to trial, the guy would get off?  That this had happened five times before, and that of that, the two times that he had gone to trial, the genie had been right?  And that the three times that he hadn't, he'd later learned that they would have won? 

Didn't matter.  He couldn't say it.  He couldn't write it down; he couldn't sing it.

The genie grinned.  "Nope.  That's part of the deal.  You can tell him whatever you want, except the truth:  that a genie came and told you that if he goes to trial a minor miracle happens, and he walks."

Shit. 

There were times when it would have been easy to throw ethics out the window.  Too bad today wasn't the day he'd decided to do it.  As a practical matter, it would have been child's play to persuade the client to go for the trial. 

Hell, he wouldn't even have to lie.  Just tell the truth, or any of a number of truths:  that the prosecution never, ever got a nasty surprise at trial -- one that could shatter their entire case -- if the defendant pleaded out; that witnesses had been known to screw up on the stand, that cops about to testify had been indicted on other matters just before a trial opened, destroying their credibility; that evidence had been lost or --

"Easy there," the genie said.  "You can't go much further than that."

"Shh."

There were times when ethics sucked, and this was one of them.  Dammit, he didn't have the right to make the decision for the guy, even though he knew what decision his client would make, if he knew everything that Greenfield did, and that was the problem now, every bit as much as it would have been if the damn genie --

"Hey!"

"Sorry, but not much."

The genie sniffed. "Well, I guess that's my own fault.  Take care, Scott."

"Mark."

"Whatever.  See you next time around."  The genie disappeared in a puff of smoke.  Monte Cristo smoke.

Greenfield sat back and thought about it.  His own interests didn't matter, but that didn't mean that he could pretend he wasn't aware of them.  Winning cases in court not only felt better than getting a good plea, it was better for him than getting a good plea, and not just because of the trial fee.  Best thing for a practice was winning, after all; word got around.

Okay; he'd come clean with himself, so now he could put that aside.  The clear benefit, in this case, was for the client to go to trial.  Walking out of the court was better for him than five years in prison, after all.

But . . . but, dammit, it was still the client's decision, not his, and he had little more right to push him this time than he usually did. 

After all, dammit, some of the time -- much of the time -- he was close to this sure how it would all turn out.  Sure, you couldn't win by pleading guilty, but one hell of a lot of the time, you couldn't win at trial.  A lot of the time -- hell, most of it -- the evidence didn't fall apart; and even when it did, the jury often didn't care, as all they really needed to know is that the guy was the defendant; the witnesses would lie their heads off, but they were believed anyway; a bogus ID would somehow solidify when the witness only had to point to the person sitting next to defense counsel, and there were all the other zillion ways that a trial could go inexorably to a sentence, with the finding of guilty just a stop along the way . . .

And . . .

Okay.  Screw it.  This time, he wouldn't play it down the middle.  Fair, but not down the middle.  He'd tell his guy all the way things could go wrong, but he'd let himself show some excitement when he talked about all the ways that things could go right. 

Because they could, and this time he knew that they would.

#

Greenfield was eyeing the level in the bottle of Old Grouse when the genie appeared, again in a puff of smoke.

"You son of a bitch," he said.

The genie smiled.  "You mean, that the coke turned out to be, well, coke?  Not like all the other times, when I didn't mislead you?"

"Yeah.  Fucker."

The genie just smiled.  "Aren't you a little old to be believing in genies?"

Sarah Brady just sent me this.  Other than deleting the recipient's name -- I don't want to let out the pseudonym I give Sarah so she can dun me (unsuccessfully, I'll add) for contributions -- I haven't added or deleted anything, except a little bit of emphasis.  (Okay, okay; I also added the picture.) 

Let me give you a little bit of background, first.  Early in the month, the Department of Interior announced new rules around carrying of firearms in National Parks. 

Not a big deal, although poor Lloyd Garver got his LA knickers in a twist over at the HuffPo, almost as much as the time he visited Minnesota and didn't get shot.

Basically, the Interior Department aligned the rules for the national parks with those of the state in which they're located.  In Minnesota, for example, where I live, people with valid carry permits can carry their handguns in state parks; now, when they're up at Voyageuers National Park, the same rule will apply.  Similarly for Utah, Montana, both Dakotas -- and the vast majority of states; handgun carry permits are easily available in more than forty of the fifty states.

No effect, of course, in Wisconsin and Illinois -- the two states that, just like the District of Columbia, only allow cops and criminals to carry handguns -- and no practical effect in states like New York and New Jersey, not just because of the paucity of National Parks -- heck, the Statue of Liberty is run by the Park Service, and while Morristown is no Yellowstone, it's kinda cool -- but because, in states like that, carry permits are as rare as honest Chicago  politicians are in Chicago.

Now, over to Sarah; I'll be back in a bit.

MORE GUNS IN NATIONAL PARKS PUT VISITORS AT RISK 

Dear [Redacted],

The Bush Administration has given the gun lobby a special last-minute gift -- a very expensive one, ... one that puts public safety at risk.

The Brady Center is taking action to stop it.  We need your help.

The Brady Center has filed a suit asking a federal court to strike down the Administration's last-minute rule change to allow concealed, loaded guns in national parks and wildlife refuges. 

Please give a tax-deductible gift now to help us stop this unnecessary and dangerous ruling.  It will allow guns in rural and urban national park areas around the country ...

     ... from Wyoming's Yellowstone and California's Yosemite to Philadelphia's Independence National Historical Park, home of the Liberty Bell.

The Brady Center filed the suit on behalf of our Brady Campaign members, including school teachers in the New York  and Washington, D.C. areas who are canceling or curtailing school trips to Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty and the National Mall in Washington, D.C. now that the Bush Administration will allow guns in these national parks.

Click here to give today to support our efforts to keep our parks and wildlife refuges safe, to stop the gun lobby and the Bush Administration from enacting this last-minute ruling.

Sincerely,

Sarah Brady, Chair

Forward this email to everyone you know.

Yup.  Sarah's scaring teachers into avoiding the National Mall and the Statue of Liberty out of her panic that when some of us are visiting, say, Rushmore we might have lawfully-carried handgun on us, just like we'd have down the road at Custer State Park.

Sheesh, Sarah.  And I've been complaining about some folks on my side worrying about the sky falling.

Honest, I really wanted to like these guys.  After all, in a little corner of their blog they proudly proclaim (albeit in small letters):

When seconds count, the Police are only minutes away. (SCC supports Concealed Carry)

Warms me boyish heart, it does. Then again, it would.

But, well . . . take a look for yourself; lots of the posts are, well, problematical, although some are kind of interesting -- see if you can find the very, very clever link where the blog author explains to his fellow badged set how to do as little work as possible without technically engaging in the sort of job action that is one of the very few things that can actually get a Chicago cop fired.

But, largely, it's a pretty good illustration of how bad a badged culture of corruption, cronyism, and entitlement can get.

One of the things that has the little guys' tactical knickers in a twist of late is this, and it's pretty typical.   

Before we go all Rashomon, let's cover what happened:  back in 2002, when a black guy named Crispus Booker was sitting on his porch in Chicago, he laughed at a couple of white cops who were at the time unsuccessfully chasing a suspect.  When they, naturally, went to arrest him for that lese majeste --

Yeah.  We'll get to that.

-- he shoved one and ran.  While his partner scooted around the corner to block the laugher's escape route, the shovee, George Livergood, chased Booker -- apparently the original guest of honor of the chase was of less interest, after the laughing -- and shot him in the hand. 

Yeah.  He laughed, and shoved a cop, and got shot in the hand while trying to escape.  It's Chinatown Chicago.

But the day wasn't over, for either of them.

Now, there's some argument about what happened after. 

Booker's claim is that he was lying on the ground with his hands raised when Livergood shot him again; CPD spokesman Tommy Flanagan later explained that Booker was trying to grab Livergood's gun when Livergood shot him, and that Flanagan's wife, Morgan Fairchild, yeah, that's the ticket, was a witness. (Okay, okay, yeah, I'm making part of that up.  But the Chicago PD did rule that he was trying to grab Livergood's gun when Livergood shot him.  After all, Livergood said so.)

Livergood and his partner also claim to have found two-count-'em-two guns that Booker supposedly tossed as he ran.

But there's really no question that the second bullet, "traveled through Booker's lungs and liver and lodged near his spine, nor that he "lost about 40 percent of his blood and spent a month in the hospital." 

Nor, for that matter, is there any question that both Livergood and his partner were, at the time of the shooting, members of the CPD's "Special Operations Section", a unit that was -- even for the scandal-plagued Chicago PD -- so notoriously corrupt that it eventually had to be disbanded.  (We're not talking about just a little testilying, mind you, or the occasional flaking of a known drug dealer to avoid the occasional hard work of actually catching the drug dealer "dirty" while the cops obey the law, but routine "creative writing" and a nasty habit of conducting searches that turned up nothing except the savings that disappeared into badged thugs' pockets.) 

Getting back to what's not in dispute:  on one hand, Booker -- who has a record for some pretty serious naughtinesses -- was awarded $720,000 in damages. 

And the commentators over at Second City Cop are furious. 

At the SOS cops who tried to arrest a guy for laughing at them?

Let's not be silly.  Of course not.   

At the SOS cop who shot a guy who he'd try to arrest for laughing at him for running away?

Well, no.

At the possibility that the ADA in charge of the case might have been worried that two cops from the notoriously corrupt SOS might have planted a couple of "drop guns", which might have explained to them why Booker was only charged with the shove, not with the gun charges? 

Nah. 

At the SOS cops for trying to sell a pretty strange story -- a guy, sitting on his porch watching two cops wheeze after somebody they're chasing, draws attention to himself, attention from cops in a famously thuggish department, while he's got a couple of guns hidden on his person -- and expecting everybody to buy it?  

Nah.

But they are mad:  at everybody else, particularly Chicago Police Superintendent Jody Weis, largely because he wasn't "from around here".  (He's an ex-FBI, guy, known to the denizens of SCC as "J-Fed.") 

Read the comments; I don't have the heart to quote most of them.

Although one of the SCC crowd makes it clear what he thought the only mistake Livergood made was.  No, it wasn't trying to arrest a guy for laughing at him; no, not maybe planting a couple of guns or shooting a guy on the ground with his hands up. 

Nah. 

Rule #1:

Shoot to kill. Once it is determined that you are lawfully allowed to shoot somebody, it doesn't matter if you shoot him once or 60 times. Dead man tells no bullshit tales.

Rule #2:

Make sure you follow rule #1!

None of my kills ever collect a nickle from this city or lived to testify against me in a civil trial.

I will now print, in total, the number of responses of horror and shame that somebody suggesting he is a Chicago cop would post such a thing:

*sound of crickets*

Like I say, Second City Cop is the Mos Eisley of the blogosphere; a more wretched hive of scum and villainy will be hard to find. 

And it's everybody else's fault.

These eight days ain't about candles performing beyond their published specs.

I don't make this stuff up, you know.  So, here we go again.

For those who came in late, let's go back to the Assault Weapons Ban.  Passed in 1994, the feature of it that drew most attention from people who don't own guns was the ban on the importation, and manufacture of some scary-looking (to some) kinda sorta military-looking rifles, like this one. 
Understandable, really, given all the mass killings by pretty Wiccan girl -- oh, nevermind.

Less remarked upon, outside the gun community, was the ban on the sale of new standard capacity magazines -- that's the black, boxlike thingee that the cartridges go into. The theory was that since nobody -- other than a cop -- needs a magazine with more than ten rounds, and since magazines with more than ten rounds are bad if you don't need them, much -- or, at least some -- goodness would ensue. Now, yeah, I know that's silly.  Granted few people can switch mags as fast as this guy, but realistically, it wasn't much of a muchness to most people.  A bad guy who wanted to murder a bunch of people with his Glock would, instead of carrying a couple of spare 15-round mags, would carry three ten-round mags. 

A good -- or, at least, okay -- guy, who thought that he might need more than ten rounds would just carry a spare mag, or buy one of the "pre-ban" mags which were still available, to those who had the cash.

But something did happen.  Since manufacturers could no long make guns for the noncop market that were designed around, say, fifteen-round magazines, they started designing more guns around ten-round or lower-capacity mags. 

The Assault Weapons Ban inspired a new class of smaller guns -- pocket pistols with ten rounds in fairly large calibers, like, say, these: (Two of the above are in 9mm; one's in .45.  Perfectly reasonable self-defense calibers.)

Which, naturally, made the folks in the anti-gun industry happy?  Nah.  They decided that the relatively new, smaller guns -- largely a response to their own sponsored legislation -- were evil:  "Pocket Rockets". 

Well, the Assault Weapons Ban has been dead for four years, and people can, if and when they want to, buy new, standard-capacity magazines, even if the mags happen to hold fifteen or sixteen rounds, but the "pocket rockets" remain.  (And for good reason; pocket carry, while not a cop thing, is often a very useful way for somebody who doesn't want to draw attention to himself to keep a self-defense tool handy.)

Now, it would be untrue to say that the gun manufacturers are terribly sympathetic to the hysterical shouts from the antigun industry, but they do listen.  Smith and Wesson, after some years of development, came up with a brand new handgun, developed around a brand-new round:  the .500 Magnum: As a carry gun -- for either good or bad purposes -- it would be pretty hard to imagine a worse choice.  For one thing, it's a great, big, heavy sucker -- even empty, the lightest variant weighs three and a half pounds.  It's hideously expensive to practice with -- each trigger pull is going to throw almost three bucks downrange.

Basically, it's designed for folks for whom dealing with humongous recoil is a lot of fun, who are maybe going to be hunting something like grizzly bears with a handgun, and who have definitely have lots of money -- forgetting ammo, the gun itself is going to run around a grand.

Surely, it's something that even the hysterics at the Brady Center and the VPC couldn't complain about.  Heck, if Plaxico Burress had been trying to hide .500 Magnum in his shorts --

No, I'm not going to go there.  Never mind.  Back to the antgun folks.  Having nothing real to complain about, they decide that the .500 is a "big boomer" (yeah, it is; I've been around one going off, once; it is kind of loud) and a "vest buster".

There's just no pleasing some people.

... which is what the name sounded like to me.  Lots of those bigname law firms have what are, to my eyes and ears, funny names.

Apparently, I'm about the only person in the country not to have previously heard about the famous football player, Plaxico Burress, who achieved even greater fame the other day when he managed to:

1. Clumsily shoot himself in the right thigh with a Glock, in a bar/restaurant, and simultaneously and not coincidentally arrange to
   
2. Get himself charged with carrying a handgun without a license, in New York, where they're fairly serious about that sort of thing.
   

The second is kind of a big deal.  Where I live, carrying without a permit is a crime, sure, but it's a gross misdemeanor -- for a first offense; with a clean record, we're talking a fine and some community service, maybe. 

In New York, upon conviction, it's three and a half years enjoying state hospitality, with no probation. Ouch.

Different folks have weighed in on different aspects of it.

Over at Simple Justice, in the comments, Scott Greenfield's taking another shot at Scalia's Uriah Heep-like judicial modesty in one part of the Heller decision.  (Alas, Scalia followed universal SCOTUS precedent of not running an opinion by me; I'd have suggested taking the bad paragraph out, honest.)  Scott was also one of the bunches of folks pointing to Kopel's piece (here, by way of Doug Berman), arguing strongly (if perhaps a bit prematurely) that New York's law is unconstitutional.

I'll leave the unconstitutional part, for the moment, to the lawyers.  Philosophically, I'm enough of a legal deconstructionist to say that what's unconstitutional is what a bunch of folks wearing the right robes are willing to say is unconstitutional and frighten other folks into not doing.

Forget the legal issue -- what's more important is that it's fucked up, from the start.

For those not familiar with New York's fairly restrictive handgun permit law, Scott sums it up nicely at the link above. (Orthogonally: the Sullivan act was originally an artifact of Tammany Hall, passed to make it easy to for "Big Tim" Sullivan to make sure that he and his bodyguards were armed, their political opponents both unarmed, and easy to frame by the simple expedient of slipping a gun into their pocket and arresting them. Which is why some Tammany opponents took to sewing their pockets shut.)  

Less nicely -- if you want a carry permit in New York:  first have tons of money, and then spend lots of it carefully, and remember that if it's delivered in a paper bag to the local precinct, if somebody gets mad it you, it's a "bribe", and not a "political contribution".  Political contributions are safer, but prepare to make yourself very popular with at least a lot of politicians, even if you're unpopular with some -- think Donald Trump, Barry Slotnick, Raoul Felder, and Robert DiNiro.

Now, there's something more than a little strange about that, in lots of ways. Let's back up a moment.

When you're out and about, keep an eye for armed security guards. You'll find them, pretty much any time large amounts of cash are being moved around, no matter where you are.  New York, Minnesota, Texas, California, Illinois even in Winnipeg (yeah, the one in Manitoba, Canada), where possession of handguns in public by folks who aren't cops is otherwise unknown.  Bags of money?  Guys with guns hanging around it.

Why?  Well, the idea is that if these people didn't carry guns and hang with the bags of money, other people with guns -- or knives or clubs or pointed sticks or whatever -- would take the money, incidentally hurting or killing the folks who were carrying it.

Money's important; got that.  Money's worth protecting.  Got that.

But what about things that aren't bags of money? 

Hence the New York carry law:  if you're rich enough, and maybe famous enough, you get to protect yourself, if you want to. Maybe.   One columnist finds a racial barrier, and I'm not sure he had to look very hard:

I couldn't find a record of one black person being licensed to carry a concealed firearm in New York City. Despite the large amount of black athletes, businessmen and entertainers who live in and frequent New York. Why don't black athletes and entertainers have permits to carry concealed weapons in New York? Don't they face the same threats as Stern and Imus? Is is that black people don't apply for gun permits or that the board who issues them is racist and doesn't give them to black people?

Which is probably true, but misses the point:  what's worth protecting?

If we were to accept that in addition to "bags of money" and then add "white rich and famous people" I'm fine that we also ought to add "black athletes, businessmen and entertainers." If we do, I guess we're a step toward solving the horrible oppression that wealthy and successful black athletes, businessmen (and, presumably, businesswomen) and entertainers face, but aren't we leaving a lot of people out?

In fact, I'll argue, as Kopel does, implicitly, that we're privileging precisely the wrong kind of people.  Rich athletes, businessmen, entertainers -- regardless of their skin's melanin content -- can, in practice, do the same thing that the bags o' money do:  hire guys with guns to stand around and protect them, which is what Burress, with his six-year, $25 million contract (plus endorsements, presumably not including for Glock) could have done.

But how about other folks?  Here's the thing:  if we accept the notion that the reason we let some people carry guns in public is to protect bags of money or the ability of wealthy people to continue to breathe, the problem isn't that rich black guys like Plaxico Burress might have had difficulty getting a permit and should have hired a guy to pretend he was a bag of money. 

It's that folks who neither are nor have big bags of money get to hope that they're not yet another pointed reminder to the world that when seconds count, the police are only minutes away.

And that's what's screwed up there. And, for that matter, in the Windy city, as well.

Here in Minnesota?  Down in Texas?  The Dakotas, the Carolinas, Pennsylvania, Vermont, New Hampshire and -- literally -- more than two dozen more states where you don't have to be a bag of money or rich and famous to be able to protect yourself? 

Not so much.  By which, I really mean not so much.  It's still screwed up, in most places -- just not so much.

More on that another time.

Step one: Walk into any gun shop, and take a look at the empty spaces on the shelves where EBRs/Evil Black Rifles/Semiauto Assault Weapons/Scary-looking long guns used to be.  Watch the remaining ones fly off the shelves, and people place backorders.  Or just read reports by folks who have done just that.  There's plenty; here's one.

Step two:  browse over the the Joyce-funded "the gun guys" antigun website to see the latest reprint of an editorial by another Joyce-funded astroturf antigun group telling you that there's no boom in gun sales going on in the wake of the Obamalection.

Step three:  browse over the the Joyce-funded "the gun guys" antigun website to see the previous reprint of a remarakably similar editorial by yet another Joyce-funded astroturf antigun group telling you that there's no boom in gun sales going on in the wake of the Obamalection.

Step three:  decide for yourself -- who are you going to believe?  The Joyce Foundation, or your lying eyes?

Step four:  Nothing to see; move along now.

This is hard to watch, as there's stupidity all around, but I do think it's instructive.

I'm not a big fan of open carry, mind you, but I know that some folks are.  While, on balance, I prefer to be discreet, as I think there's real disadvantages to open carry, most times, most places, there are some arguments in favor of it.

1.  Bad people -- well, bad people without badges -- tend to avoid hassling people with guns visible.  When was the last time you heard about a cop with a gun visible on his hip getting mugged or being picked out for a carjacking?

2.  A right not seen to be exercised tends to go away, whether it's protesting at city hall or keeping and bearing arms.  In MN and PA -- and many, many other states -- we don't have a concealment requirement. 

3.  It's a good thing, on balance, for folks who aren't into the whole carrying guns in public thing to see, say, an African American educator, like the woman at right, or a web designer in his mid-thirties out grocery shopping with his cute little kids while carrying; helps to dispel the notion that it's just soft, middle-aged lonely guys who get carry permits.

Not my thing, mind you, but there are folks who are into it.  Like, say, Meleanie Hain.

She's a thirtyish Soccer Mom in Lebanon PA who, at her young kid's soccer games -- and everywhere she goes -- she openly carries a Glock in a good security holster on her hip.

Other folks freak. But there's nothing much they can -- or, for that matter, should -- do about it, as she has a carry permit, which in PA allows her to carry either openly or concealed; without it, she'd have to carry openly.

The sheriff, deciding that her carrying openly shows that she's dangerous, yanks her carry permit, which prohibits her from carrying discreetly, which she doesn't want to, anyway; she can carry openly without the permit. 
 
Yup.  To punish her for carrying her gun openly, he took away the permit that allows her to carry it discreetly, forcing her to carry openly, if she chooses to carry. 

I don't make this stuff up, you know. 

She heads to court; judge gives her the permit back, along with a lecture about how what she's doing is legal, it's also wrong, wrong, wrong; she can now carry openly, or concealed.

Much hysteria continues to ensue.

Hence the show, where a whole variety of people with strong opinions and little information on the issues around this assemble to argue about them. I'm glad it locks up with nine minutes to go; I don't think I could have taken any more.

Largely, it's folks arguing about hypotheticals.  In terms of what's actually happened, well, not much; there's not all that much to discuss.  She hasn't taken the gun out in public, because, well, she hasn't had to; she also hasn't rested her hand on the butt of the gun while asking a ref to reconsider a call, or the coach to put her kid in more, or anything like that, either, which isn't surprising. Some local soccer moms apparently feel that they'll be safe if they insist she stand across the field from them; they think she'll shoot them, but don't know that bullets can easily travel a couple of dozen feet.

But the best stupid hypothetical is put forward by one Sean Burke, a Massachusetts cop, Steve Rogers, a New Jersey cop.  (Yes, there's a correction there; I copied the name from the web page, not the video.  I'm very sad; I was always a great admirer of Captain America...)

Now, since Massachusetts has one of the most restrictive carry permit laws in the country -- only IL and WI are worse; NJ and NY are just about as bad -- naturally, Burke Rogers knows everything to know there is about how things work in states, like PA, which have modern, mainstream, commonsense shall issue carry permit laws.

Not because he has any experience with it, or has thought much or read anything about it, but because, well, he's got a badge and good hair.

He explains the problem: in a situation where, say, she'd taken her gun out to stop from being murdered or something, she runs a great danger of being shot by twelve -- he's sure it's twelve -- well-armed SWAT cops, who won't know who the bad guy is, but will blast away at the soccer Mom.

Yup.  Let's explore that.  It's not likely that she'll need to take her handgun out at her kid's soccer game, of course; it it was likely, she'd just not take the kid to the soccer game. 

But let's create a hypothetical, and think it through:  some machete-wielding ax murderer shows up, and after quickly chopping up another soccer mom and kid or two, starts to move toward her.  He's running faster than she can, so out comes the Glock, and instead of her having to shoot him -- honest; I'm stacking the cards against her; trust me -- he puts the machete down and lies down at the ground, where she covers him with her Glock while waiting for the local SWAT team to arrive.

Now, I don't know much about the Lebanon PA SWAT team, but let's make them a hell-for-leather bunch, who manage to get there in ten, fifteen minutes. And when they see the vaguely chubby soccer mom holding a gun on the guy lying on the ground near the machete -- perhaps fairly close to the chopped up parts of his previous victims -- they'll shoot her.

That's Officer Burke's worry.  I don't make this stuff up, you know.  Yes, that's his objection.  In a situation where she's used her gun to prevent being killed, she might get shot by a bunch of cops. 

He's just looking out for her.

Well, that didn't take long.  Among other folks queuing up for the Obamagoodies are our friends in the gun grabbing commonsense gun law movement. 

Here's a test -- and, like most tests, folks who already know the answer really shouldn't shout it out for the rest of the class.

Let's start before the beginning.

Over at Simple Justice, Scott's been known to suggest that when somebody urges a "common sense" analysis when it comes to how to treat criminals people accused, and perhaps convicted, of crimes, it's time to get skeptical. I think he's right, but I also think that it's warning sign more generally. It's not just that "common sense" is uncommon, but mainly it's that it's usually a sign that somebody's palming a card. Or a whole bloody deck.

Me, I reach for my . . . wallet. Or, in this case, some blogging software.

Let's take a look at the first of one set of these common sense proposals.

#1 Mandatory criminal background checks for all gun sales

This is what they call "closing the gun show loophole." Honest.

Now, there's no evidence -- at all; the CDC looked hard to find some, some years ago; if there is any, it's hiding better than Osama is -- that criminal background checks (or other gun control laws) actually do anything to lower violent crime, or suicide, just as there's no evidence that a course of leeches actually draws vile humours from the body, lowering mortality.

I'm not going to say that criminal background checks don't do anything useful. By encouraging felon gangbangers to get adult, non-felon girlfriends to go into a store and buy their guns for them, they do work to improve the social skills of that crowd, and is probably only a few dozen times more expensive, overall, than some sort of Federal Pickup Artist for Crips Program.

Let's back up a bit. In every state, when a federally licensed dealer sells a handgun to anybody, there's a background check through the Federal NICS system. The purchaser fills out a form, provides ID, and the dealer runs the background check through the system. Most of the time, an approval comes back in a very few minutes -- I don't think I've ever waited as many as five. Sometimes, though -- like when a convicted felon walks into the store, provides his real ID, and signs a form, subject to a five-year Federal felony conviction if he's lying -- it comes back denied. It also comes back denied -- or delayed -- if the system can't figure out if, say, it's Al Jones the convicted felon or Al Jones, the guy who has never been in trouble in his life. Most denials are in the latter category, which is one reason that the phone doesn't start ringing at the local FBI branch, and agents are not immediately (or, basically, ever) dispatched to pick up the guy who has just committed a crime and conveniently signed the confession as part of the act of committing it.

The other reason, I guess, is that'd be kind of like shooting a fish in a barrel, and the FBI likes to give 'em a chance. Or maybe not.

Back when the background check was put in, its proponents promised that it would keep lots of guns out of the hands of criminals; as I understand it, the theory was that the clever ruses of having the girlfriend buy the gun or using phony ID wouldn't occur to criminals.

Not so much, as it turns out.

In most states, though, these rules don't apply to private sales, and, sure enough, you'll find some small number of folks doing those at gun shows, in such states. Anybody who doesn't have a Federal dealer's license, and who is willing to risk the cruising BATFE agents deciding that they're actually in the business of selling guns without said license -- a naughtiness that's punishable by years in the Federal pen for each gun sold (ouch!) -- is free to rent a table and winnow their collection a bit. And some folks do.

In about a dozen and a half states, though, state law prevents that. Al wants to sell Bob his revolver, or Joel wants to give Judy a gun for her birthday? No problem -- just hustle on down to a licensed dealer -- whether that dealer is on the next table over at the gun show, or halfway across town -- and then hand over some money and the gun, and then have the dealer run the background check. Unsurprisingly, these states don't show any difference in violent crime, or suicide; equally unsurprisingly, when Alice has gone into the gun store to buy a gun for Bob, her felon boyfriend, she and Bob skip that step.

Not a big deal, either way. Criminals will still steal guns, and/or get girlfriends; law-abiding folks simply have to pay a little money, and go to a little more trouble -- not much -- to acquire guns from family, friends, and acquaintances.

I told you there'd be a test question. Here it is: So, what's the big deal?

I mean, this is a big deal. It's the first item on John Rosenthal's wishlist (and not far, if at all, behind on Sarah Brady's or Josh Sugarman's), and both major players and flickering candles like me in the RKBA movement are going to the mat on this.

So why do all of us care? Why do the gun grabbers common sense gun law folks think this is important enough to make this the first number on their hit parade? And why do folks who believe that "the right of the people to keep and bear arms" is important hate this little tweak to the law so much?

No peeking at your neighbor's homework; over to you.

There's an old Chinese curse that goes, roughly, "may you live in interesting times." The Obama years are clearly going to be interesting times, in many ways -- perhaps some good; certainly many bad.

Let's take a look at how . . . interesting they're probably going to be, at least in terms of issues around the Second Amendment and the right to keep and bear arms. I'd rather talk about Heller, but let's save something fun for the future.

This won't be fun. Except for right now, for some.

The election returns are in: the coming Presidency of Barack Obama has been a boost to the firearms industry the likes of which has never been seen before. Cheaper Than Dirt, the online purveyor of ammo and accessories, had their biggest sales day ever, the day after the election. Here in Minneapolis, as elsewhere, guns -- particularly Evil Black Rifles -- are not so much moving as flying off the shelves. A salesmen at the Rogers MN Cabellas who might, in a good month, sell as many as half a dozen such reported that he sold seven in the week after -- and would have sold more, if they hadn't run out.

In Minnesota -- and all over the country -- carry permit classes, including mine, are filling up, fueled by both panic ("Get grandfathered in now!") and by folks more sensibly wanting to combine getting around to something that they really intended to do anyway with a bit of fear.

Which is understandable. Whatever else can be said about Barack Obama, he's the first President-elect to have served on the board of a major funder of astroturf anti-gun groups.

While there's issues much, much nearer and dearer to my heart, I'm going to focus, this time around, on the one I personally care least about.

And am going to fight like hell for. It's the ugly guns.

It's right in the Obamanifesto, right here, and that's not a bad place to start, stripping out the vaguenesses and weaselry, and leaving what Obama says he wants to do:

.... mak[e] the expired federal Assault Weapons Ban permanent.

Probably the most iconic representation of "gun violence" are those guns that look kind of like the ones that soldiers carry. EBRs -- Evil Black Rifles -- or "assault weapons" or "semi-automatic military-style rifles" were one of the whipping boys of the Clinton Era "Assault Weapons Ban". The notion was, as I understand it, that since nobody has a need for a firearm that looks sorta militaryish, there's no real problem in banning them, and some benefits to be gained.

Except, of course, there aren't -- except as an argument for more gun control. It seems that somebody intent on Doing Bad Stuff With Guns is vanishingly unlikely to give up the idea if they find it more difficult to do said Bad Stuff with a gun that they probably weren't going to use anyway; an almost preposterously small proportion of crimes are committed with large, kind of military-looking semiautomatic rifles.

After ten years, the ban expired with, as even Josh Sugarman, one of the honchos de tutti honchi of the gun control movement observed, not much impact; large, military-looking weapons aren't often terribly appealing to criminals, as walking into a stop-n-rob with one tends to draw a lot of attention, as does walking out.

So, who would want one?

Which one? you ask. An "assault weapon" or an "assault weapon" ban?

Well,manifestly: lots of people, for both. The .223 caliber AR15 (the single-shot-per-trigger-pull, civilianized version of the military's M16) and its clones dominate certain kinds of target-shooting competitions, and while they're not my cuppa tea, particularly, are useful for some hunting; in the variants that shoot the .308 round, instead, they are reliable, relatively low-recoil big-game guns. The Chinese and Soviet SKS makes a terrific, low-recoil deer rifle at a terrific price -- my hunting partner's daughter got her first deer with an SKS. And for plinking -- recreational shooting at things like targets and tin cans and such -- they're a whole lot of fun.

But they are, well, scary-looking, and the first few steps along the path from "gun control" commonsense gun safety laws to UK/Chicago/DC type bans start with prohibiting scary-looking things, and cries of, "Why would anybody need . . . ?" Obama will, as he's promised, push a toward reinstituting of the Clinton-era gun ban . . . except, of course, it'll go further.

And it's going to be a tough fight. EBRs just aren't particularly useful poster children for the RKBA, despite the efforts of folks like Oleg Volk.

This will be at least among first major antigun initiative to come from the Obama White House; it won't be the last.

Beyond that, we can expect the institution of a stealth, nationwide gun registration scheme via combination of the repeal of the Tiahrt amendment and the closing of the "gun show loophole" , followed by an an assault on the right of the people, in at least forty states, to keep and bear arms for their own protection. You can't blame Obama for that; he comes from Chicago, where only the police, the criminals, and the political fixers can have guns, and thinks that ugly situation is natural.

And if you think that's ugly, wait until you see the fight.