Joel Rosenberg's arrest is getting a bit of coverage around the blogosphere, and while folks like Scott Greenfield and Mike Cernovich are supportive, not all of the coverage is sympathetic. For example, Greg Laden at ScienceBlogs has a less-than flattering piece titled "Jew with a gun tries to make point, gets busted, is very creepy."

(I should inject here that Laden isn't making an anti-semitic remark. JewWithAGun.com is one of Joel's many web sites.)

Look, I know that Joel is a bit odd at times, but I don't get a creepy vibe from him at all. He's just eccentric. Now, I admit I've never met Joel, so I could be wrong, but neither has Greg Laden. In fact, Laden seems to creeped out by gun ownership in general, and it causes him to miss a few points.

For example, in an unsourced quote (apparently pulled from this WCCO news story), Laden chooses to emphasize one aspect in particular:

Palmer then disarmed Rosenberg, removed the loaded magazine from the gun and the live round that was in the chamber. Palmer then returned the unloaded weapon to Rosenberg and asked him to leave, police said.

[emphasis Laden's]

There's nothing wrong or unusual about carrying a semi-automatic pistol with a round in the chamber. It's called "condition one" readiness, and police departments all over the world train their officers to carry this way. All modern self-defense pistols are designed to be carried this way. They have a safety mechanism (or two) to prevent the gun from going off accidentally.

The point is to be able to draw and fire quickly, and with only one hand if necessary. If the chamber was unloaded, you'd have to take time and use both hands to ready the gun for firing by cycling the slide. In a self-defense situation, that could mean a dangerous delay, and it might not even be possible if an assailant grabbed your other hand.

In an open letter to the officer who disarmed him, Joel sarcastically presents him with a list of options for how he can handle Joel the next time they meet, including chilling out, arresting him, beating him, or killing him. I won't reproduce the whole thing, but Laden misinterprets this passage:

3. Arrest me at gunpoint. Draw your service weapon, point it at me, after announcing that you're going to arrest me. Call for backup to secure me. I won't resist -- you have my word, Bill -- them or you. Keep your finger off the fucking trigger. You don't want my blood on your hands, and I won't have yours on mine.

About which Laden comments:

The list is embedded within and includes lots of phrases that say things like "don't worry, I'll never hurt you" but also includes what I like to think of as a "rule trigger" that in this case literally involves a trigger ... in item number 3. Palmer is invited to arrest Rosenberg at gunpoint .... putting it another way, Rosenberg is giving Palmer permission to do his job ... but embeds in this permission a specific threat: If Palmer touches his own trigger finger, then ... then what? It's a little unclear, but it seems to involve some fantasy that Palmer has of grabbing a police officer's gun so that it goes off and shoots him (Rosenberg). Yeah, this threat of suicide by cop is probably enough to bring him in and have him committed.

Joel isn't threatening to do anything, and Joel isn't talking about Sgt. Palmer touching "his own trigger finger," he's talking about Palmer touching his finger to the trigger of his own service weapon--which is unsafe gun handling that could result in an accidental discharge. That's the spilled blood that Joel is referring to.

I'm not sure why Joel brings this up. I can't see whether Palmer has his finger on the trigger of Joel's gun when he takes it from Joel, but if you watch the first minute of the video, Sgt. Palmer does appear to sweep the barrel of Joel's gun across Joel and across the other two people in the room. It's not the worst gun handling mistake--I've had people sweep me on the gun range--but it is a mistake. Joel teaches firearms safety, so maybe he was chiding Palmer a bit.

Later, Laden has this to say:

If you look on the web for books, classes, and information about this, you will find web resources put together by various pro-gun organizations and individuals. Mr. Rosenberg is, it turns out, one of the main go-to guys if you want to pursue a carry permit in the Twin Cities. You can buy his book, too.

So I see this incident as proof positive that the line between gun advocates and gun safety related resources and teachers on one hand, and threatening and dangerous gun nuts on the other hand, to be either very thin or simply non existent. Assuming that Joel Rosenberg is a dangerous crazy gun nut. Which I tend to think he is.

There's not much evidence of that, especially if you understand what Joel was talking about. In fact, Joel goes out of his way to emphasize that he's not making any kind of threat, a fact which Laden acknowledged in the quote above. Besides, if Joel's so dangerous, how has he gone 56 years without ever doing anything antisocial enough to prevent the state of Minnesota from issuing him a permit to carry a concealed firearm?

Finally, this last bit has nothing to do with Laden, but one of his commenters with a handle of "Albatross" explains how dangerously crazy Joel is in a 500-word rant that also includes the tale of how he use used to like Joel's novels but threw them away after Joel insulted his wife, speculation about Joel's penis size, and this wonderful tale:

This was VERY amusing to me when I sat behind him for a play in one of the Rarig Center's theaters. I enjoyed the performance a lot more than I should have, imagining myself kicking him really hard in base of the skull, and then shouting "How's the chambered round in your goddamned handgun working for you now, asshole?!" at his twitching corpse. Likewise slitting his throat with my pocketknife.

Yeah, Joel's the crazy one alright.

As I write this, 25% of the Windypundit blogging team is in jail.

When I brought Joel Rosenberg in to Windypundit as a co-blogger, I wanted him to cover firearms issues, especially the right to keep and bear arms. And he did, rather rabidly, with some of the longest posts on the blog. Even though his last post was over a year ago, he's still on the masthead, so as far as I'm concerned, he's still on the team.

And now he's also in jail. The Minneapolis police arrested him for...go ahead see if you can guess...yeah, illegal possession of a gun. In a courthouse. Which is a felony punishable by up to five years in jail. (They also got him for contempt of court, but that's just a misdemeanor.)

It all stems from an incident a month ago in which Joel dropped by police headquarters to pick up some papers. As is his way, he was wearing his gun, for which he has a carry permit. One of the cops, Sergeant William Palmer, told him he wasn't allowed to have it in the building (apparently because it was also a courthouse) and took it away from him.

Joel filed a complaint against Palmer and then, being Joel, proceeded to post videos taunting the cops. Needless to say, when I got the news of his arrest, it wasn't a total surprise.

One of the more curious aspects of this whole mess is that, at the time of the alleged incident, the police didn't bother to arrest him, even though, if you believe the arrest warrant, they had just witnessed the commission of a felony. There could be an innocent explanation for that, but given that they only arrested him after he filed a complaint, and after he spoke to the press, it sounds a bit like retaliation.

Currently, Joel is being held on $100,000 bond, with arraignment scheduled for tomorrow afternoon. It will be interesting to see how this develops.