Across the Great Divide

Just When I Thought We Could Be Friends...

Spot sent me this precarious bike lane photo to add to my  collection [from SonnyRadio].

Can't quite tell where this canal-defying, bridge-nicking lane runs, but the water looks too clean for it to be China, where commuting has a decidedly more proletarian patina — and where bikes increasingly contend with cars without benefit of lanes.

But I'm unlikely to get confirmation one way or another from any Chinese cyclists. One of my more conservative friends reports from Shanghai:

I often review the CNN political "ticker" during all of this hot political news. However I have had trouble getting into it while in China... I keep getting timed out.  No problems with other links within CNN or other sites.  I noticed that in the site address the political ticker had the word "blog" contained within it.  So, I thought, "I wonder if this is the Chinese government blocking access to sites containing the word 'blog' or 'political' or both."

So he tried to get to this blog...

No luck. I timed out just like with CNN. Must be a huge left wing (i.e., communist)
conspiracy to...

Hard to believe commies would turn against one of their own comrades! Must be some of my free market commenters who are keeping Across the Great Divide on this side of the firewall.

The Hidden Threat to Roe v. Wade.

With the strictest laws in the nation, South Dakota has been a bellwether state for the erosion of reproductive rights. Now the court's approval of a law requiring what doctors must tell their patients gives other states hell-bent on limiting abortion another way to drive a chink into Roe v. Wade. But if you think the threat to choice is coming from the state legislatures, court rulings or who's appointed to the Supreme Court, you're missing the real battle -- which may already be lost.

—  Charlie Quimby, "Med schools: Next abortion battleground," Star Tribune

I'm not sure the "next battleground" headline entirely captures my main point in this op/ed — that rights have quietly been eroded already by overt and self-imposed pressure put on medical practitioners and training programs.

You can read it in Monday's paper. I'll post it here on Tuesday, with some links.

And maybe we'll see if expressing this opinion puts any pressure on the author.

Kersten Parades Her Pharisee Pride.

Joining an argument with someone like Katherine Kersten is like agreeing to an eating contest with a pig. Sure, a pig has a bigger appetite and capacity, but that's not what makes the contest so impossible. To stay in the contest, you will have to gulp down all manner of offal.

This is an eating contest, grunts the pig. Who said anything about food?

There is way too much for me to swallow in Kersten's lecture on the real story behind gay pride. I finally choked on this fishy passage.

The theologian C.S. Lewis called pride "the great sin" — the root of almost every other transgression. Pride, he wrote, "has been the chief cause of misery ... since the world began."

So "gay pride" is out of place in church. But so is straight pride, black pride, white pride — or any kind of pride.

And gay pride is especially bad because, well, you know, it's really just about sex:

In recent years, however, a different vision of sexuality has grown fashionable. In this view, sex of all kinds — whether straight, gay or otherwise — is best understood as a vehicle for pleasure and self-expression. Today, this vision of sex dominates our entertainment industry, is taught in our schools and inspires events such as gay pride celebrations.

Kersten wants you to demands you accept Lewis's sinful pride as the proper definition of what these movements are about and denies this meaning: "the correct level of respect for the importance and value of your personal character, life, efforts, or achievements."

Gay pride, like black pride, Irish pride and even southern pride are expressions of solidarity, not individualistic claims of superiority. They're a response to oppression, discrimination and the feelings of diminished self-worth that a dominant culture seeks to instill and that Kersten cannot see because she is a part of it.

This was the same point that made Spot stop and sniff:

But Katie is right; it's just like the blacks. First they just wanted to own themselves. Then they wanted jobs and an education. And they they wanted to vote. Can you believe that?

Next thing you know, they'll want a parade.

I'm Not Saying I Wouldn't.

Minnesota men's basketball coach Tubby Smith thinks college recruiting of middle school kids may be going too far. That doesn't mean he's ruling out getting into such commitments.

"I don't think I would," Smith said about signing a player who's too young to drive. "But I'm not saying I wouldn't, either."

Protecting their long term interests. Isn't that what the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (FLDS) "coaches" are up to?

"The church has more than a century-long tradition of marrying young," said elder Brigham Barlow of the FLDS community located in rural Silt, Colorado. "The good ones of marrying age, around 14 or 15, tend to go quick. As time goes on, well, naturally, you start looking a little younger. The competition for wives does favor early identification of matrimonial talent."

That can mean signing ceremonies as early as third grade, said Garfield County deputy sheriff Bud Rulison. "It can be hard to know which ones are really gonna prove out after puberty hits, but I guess that's a chance they're willing to take, given they can recruit more than one wife. That way, one porks out or goes lesbian on you, you're not totally out of the money."

Outsiders underestimate the pressure in small communities to find suitable mates, said Barlow. "The supply of girls who want to marry a 50 year old truck driver with three other wives and live  in a rural commune is not infinite, yet there are a lot of us guys out there. We do our best to condition them for this life, but you know it's really best for all concerned if they get married before they get corrupted by the world. Once they learn women don't all wear long dresses and put their hair up in buns, well, there's hell to pay."

 

Marriage Amendment: Farsighted Mean-spiritedness.

To some people, any bit of middle ground is a slippery slope. Exhibit A: Katherine Kersten's Strib column on a California Supreme Court ruling that says California's initiative defining marriage as one man/one woman is unconstitutional.

Kersten sets up civil unions or domestic partnerships "as a way to preserve traditional marriage while bestowing many of its government benefits on gays" and then sorrowfully concludes "the court made clear that, far from preserving traditional marriage, domestic partnerships are actually likely to hasten its demise."

Funny, I thought domestic partnerships were never about preserving traditional marriage. They were simply a compromise offered in the face of an intransigent, moralistic insistence on discriminating against gays.

Kersten sees it differently, of course. Now that the courts have usurped the right of the people to define marriage, the ruling "vindicates the approach taken by the proposed Minnesota marriage amendment, which [...] would have prohibited both same-sex marriage and civil unions. Opponents sometimes slammed this dual prohibition as mean-spirited, but the California decision now reveals it to be far-sighted."

Spot had the same reaction I did to Kersten's opening paragraphs, and he has already taken up the legal aspects of her argument, so we'll leave that to him. He also notes that this is not the first time judges have gone about, in Kersten's phrase, "disregarding the will of the people" when that will tries to deny someone else a right the majority currently enjoys.

But as Spot says, "Without a number of second class citizens, it is not nearly as much fun to be a first class citizen."

Alert readers may have noticed I refer to the woman I married 33 years ago as my "domestic partner." That's in part out of solidarity with my friends who are unable to marry, but also a truer reflection of our relationship and union that nevertheless fits Kersten's definition of marriage. That institution will not be killed by gays who want to express love, commitment and spirituality, or even by people like me who'd choose a non-sacramental version of one+one. Intolerance, hypocrisy and irrelevance are the real enemies of marriage.

Meanwhile, if American voters want to be in the business of anointing some and denying others, tonight they'll have a more appropriate outlet for expressing their will.

*****

I still agree with conservatives on occasion. At my other blog, I spell out one example, subsidies for Mall of America.

Splendid Isolation.

She's just like a Penguin in Bondage, boy
Oh yeah, Oh yeah, Oh . . .

– Frank Zappa

I may be a little too isolated out here, or else I should get a television. Until yesterday I had managed to miss the unfolding Max Mosley Nazi bondage scandal.

No links to the released video here. Not worth the trip, unless you're into unimaginative scripts, cheap costumes, unconvincing readings and poorly framed shots — surrounded by other lurid promos from Rupert Murdoch's News of the World. Less excitement than watching video of somebody else's kid fishing for sunnies on a foggy day — and not catching any.

No, what you had in mind would've been much better than this sad little episode.

Mosley was probably not thinking about reputation management when he commissioned this set piece, but had he consulted PR professionals, they might've counseled the son of notorious Nazi sympathizers to go with a Penguin theme and hope none of the hookers belonged to PETA.

Meanwhile, an honest-to-god bondage story has been playing in this country, again involving supposedly willing women. (No one has found the girl whose calls alerted authorities to abuse at the Texas ranch where sex with underage girls has been elevated to a sacrament. An expert on the church believes she's been spirited to another Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (FLDS) community, after being caught making one of the calls for help.)

Whether ritualized, tribalized, sacramentalized or simply carried out in the privacy of one's home, the practice of subjugating women to male authority follows a disturbingly similar pattern.

Well, he didn’t start out with the fundy stuff right away—I suppose you could call him a charismatic, because he believed in speaking in tongues, all that crap. It had nothing to do with religion at first; he never talked about it, then he became possessive, wanting me to be around all the time (he had no qualms about living together BTW), wanting me to quit my job, wanting me to quit school, not see friends, break off with my family, worrying about “seeing me in heaven,” etc., and he crossed a physical line, so I walked out. That cost me.

Isolation is key, because it allows the controller to distort the victim's sense of what's normal and to cut off paths of aid and escape. FLDS has been able to perpetuate these practices on a large scale, thanks to the cloaking of the First Amendment, the isolating expanses of the rural West and a mythology that feeds off persecution.

"Maybe our legislators have cunningly laid a snare to catch the innocent just because they believe in an unpopular religion," Jessop continued. "So it was on the days of Jesus Christ. So it was in the days of Joseph Smith. So it was in the Days of Warren Jeffs."

Congresswoman Michele Bachmann almost had it right when she spoke out at an EdWatch National Education Conference when she denounced:

Personal bondage, personal despair, and personal enslavement. And that's why this is so dangerous.

Of course, she was talking "the gay and lesbian lifestyle."

One Difference Between Historical and Oppo Research.

I hope the quote below is wrong. It's in a story about controversy over a developer's plan for Excelsior.

Historian Scott McGinnis received consulting fees from the developer to research the history of the downtown lakeshore being proposed for redevelopment. He was scheduled to present a talk to the local historical society before the city council votes on the plan.

When the group learned of his connection to the developer, it canceled his talk and scheduled historian Deborah Morse-Kahn instead. McGinnis will give his presentation elsewhere.

"As long as he has accepted wages, he cannot speak to the public because he is on the payroll of the developer,'' Morse-Kahn said. "The day Mr. McGinnis cashed the developer's check for services rendered was the day that Mr. McGinnis was on board for all of the developer's plans and goals.''

When the issue is settled by the city, she said, "he's free to say anything he wants -- not now.'' Morse-Kahn said her position on the project is neutral.

The historical society was within its rights to decide to avoid controversy, but to say McGinnis can't speak to the public? That's sure no way to look "neutral."

If I were invited to be in charge of suppressing free speech, I'd take a pass on the job, instead recommending people read Glenn Greewald's new book about the trivialization of our news and public discourse.

It deals with people I wish would shut up. It's not those who may have been paid to do research and actually deliver something of substance — whether or not they advocate for a certain outcome. It's those who busy themselves with destroying opponents in the name of advocacy — whether or not they are paid by campaigns.

The Surge, Insurgency and Self-Defense.

Historically, the world over, militias affiliated with political or tribal leaders rarely disarm. They are persuaded by time or inducements that there is no need to fight. They keep their weapons but are motivated not to use them. Iraq is far from that point. Sectarian tensions simmer, blood feuds are far from settled and ethnic and economic differences still lack resolution. I sense some U.S. commanders are holding their breath hoping the surge draw-down works.
— "Behind the Scenes: Surge helping, but..." Nic Robertson, CNN

Robertson writes that a key aspect of the so-called surge strategy is a reversal of the U.S. policy not to arm or work with its former adversaries. That's what we've been doing, supporting the formation of local, sectarian self-defense militias when it became clear that the Iraqi police and national security forces were not up to the job. So far, it's helping to reduce the killing because it enlists the cooperation of tribal leaders who'd seen their power drained when their people joined the al Qaeda-led insurgency.

For now, the former insurgents are part of the surge. Without a national solution to address the ethnic and economic differences, though, greater violence threatens to return.

Robertson's line about disarming militias also got me thinking about the Second Amendment back and forth in this country. Our Constitution, time, relative prosperity, and the evolving balance of power among branches and between state and federal governments have allowed America to maintain an armed populace that is motivated not to use its  weapons.

We are a long way from the militias of 230 years ago, but sectarianism still simmers, tribal leaders still seek to assert their power, and self-defense remains a potent rallying cry.

American Crosscut: Can You Take Another Round?

We continue our back and forth on gun bills, and agree on a new curriculum for America's youth...

Joel: Well, having resolved -- at least as best we can -- the issues around HF 498, the "Stand Your Ground" bill, we're on to HF 3324, the gun registration bill, authored at the behest of Heather Martens, the President of the anti-gun Joyce Foundation funded pseudo-grassroots group, hereabouts, that calls itself a whole bunch of things, among them, "Citizens for a Safer Minnesota."  (Heather was shopping this around the Capitol for a couple of months before she made the sale.) 

I'm going to try to avoid ad hominem attacks here, honest.  But, sheesh -- any gun owner who doesn't look with suspicion on a bill coming out of an antigun group is probably not smart enough to be owning a gun.  Or a fork, for that matter.

So let's start off by looking at it.  On the face of it, it doesn't say it's a gun registration bill. What it talks about are transfers of handguns and scary looking long guns. (Okay, I'm being a little unfair; it actually talks about "modifying provisions related to the transfer of pistols or semiautomatic military-style assault weapons.")

In Minnesota, there are three ways you can buy a handgun from a dealer.

1. Get a purchase permit. These are issued by police chiefs, are free, and require a yearly trip to the local PD to fill out the paperwork.  The PD performs a background check, and, in due course, mails you out your purchase permit.  You then walk into the gun store, choose a firearm, produce your purchase permit and state issued ID, pay for it and -- not so fast, Mister; you still have to fill out the federal government purchase form, be subjected to an instant background check, after which you, assuming you are not denied, walk out with your newly purchased firearm.
2. Get a carry permit. Issued by sheriffs, not free, require training, and a background check.  Roughly the same thing, after that.  Including, of course, the federally-mandated instant background check.
3. A "report of transfer."  Instead of going through either of the two processes above, you walk into the gun store, fill in a form, pay for the gun... and then go home.  The dealers send the paperwork to the local PD or sheriff, they do the background check, and if they don't come up with a reason that you're disqualified from purchasing a firearm in five business days, you head back to the store, go through the same federally-mandated instant background check, and walk out with a gun.

In none of these three cases does your purchase go into some state or federal database to be maintained indefinitely.  It's not gun registration; it's just a background check to see if you are legally able to buy a gun.

There's another way to buy a gun... in Minnesota.  (And most other states, too, but let's keep this Minnesota-specific for the moment.)  You find a guy who is not a dealer who has a gun that he's willing to part with.  You meet with him.  You show him your carry permit or purchase permit – if he doesn't know that you have one, he's putting himself in the way of all sorts of trouble if you end up doing anything illegal with that gun – you hand over some amount of money, he hands over the gun, usually (not always, but a good idea) gives you a bill of sale, and you go your separate ways.

Notice that in all of these cases you've gone through at least one background check – and in the first three, two of them.  And, again, in none of these cases are you creating a permanent, state-maintained database of who owns what.  The law just tries to prevent law-abiding people from selling guns to criminals, leaving that part of the market to other criminals.  I'm not sure what value duplicative background checks have, and I'm pretty sure that the proponents of this bill don't, either, or they would have mentioned them.

And then we get to the bill, which turns that background check system into a permanent gun registration system.  Or would, if we hadn't killed it for the session.  (Like Jason in those horror movies, these things never stay dead; you've got to kill them again and again and again.)

Which brings me to, finally, gun registration.  Let's start with what gun registration doesn't do – after decades upon decades of gun registration in various parts of the United States, even the Centers for Disease Control's review of all of the research has shown that not any gun registration scheme has demonstrated that it will do anything to lower violent crime.  Or increase the likelihood of punishing violent crime.  That works really well on Law and Order and other dramatic fiction; the real world is not obliged to live by the scriptwriters' scripts.

Probably the best-documented case of the slippery slope of gun registration leading all the way to the bottom of confiscation is that of the United Kingdom. This whole thing is worth reading, but note the short form: step by registration/limitations step England went from an effective right to keep and bear arms to almost total confiscation in less than a hundred years.

It's not unknown in the US, either. There's been lots of talk about the DC gun ban – but note that the base on which the handgun ban rested was the law requiring registration, followed by the laws prohibiting anybody from registering a handgun. Even during oral arguments, the district's lawyers had to admit that the prohibition against registration was, in fact, the mechanism for the prohibition against possession.

It's not just DC.  Chicago has done the same thing – handguns must be registered in order to be lawfully possessed; no more handguns will be registered; the result is handgun confiscation/prohibition... for law-abiding citizens. (Chicago's large number of gang bangers don't seem to find themselves terribly inhibited, but I digress.)  New York City did the same thing with the Sullivan act, although it's not slid all the way down the slippery slope.  Now, in order to so much as possess a handgun in your home, you have to apply for a "premises permit" allowing you to have a registered handgun in your home – if, of course, after hundreds of dollars in application fees, certainly months and perhaps years in waiting for a decision, and quite possibly additional thousands or tens of thousands of dollars in lawyer's fees, your permit is granted.

The sort of thing has led to moments of unusual interest, over the years. New York State passed a "assault weapons" registration bill many years ago, with promises that, of course, it would never turn into confiscation.  Years passed, it did, and those folks who had registered their scary-looking rifles were instructed to turn them in or face prosecution. California has done much of the same thing for some firearms; more are due to follow.

(In one case, the letter went to a fellow who had moved up to a more civilized state – Colorado, I believe. Not being at all interested in what confiscation rules New York state had passed that didn't affect him, he scrawled something like, "if you want my guns, molan labe," on the letter and sent it back to the New York authorities.

(He got a letter from his brother in a few months later.  "Did you hear about that SWAT raid on the house you used to own...?")

Yes, gun registration leads – not always, so far, but often – to confiscation.  And it's understandable. For the gun grabbers, registration is a necessary (albeit not sufficient) start. 

The people who push gun registration are not all gun grabber types, trying to incrementally reduce the right to keep and bear all arms, nibble by nibble.  Some of them are those who believe – as an article of faith, and who am I to mock somebody's religion? – that gun control laws actually can reduce violent crime – despite the lack of evidence – and, once the latest gun control law has not actually reduced violent crime, think that if only they pass another one, or two, or a hundred, that will do the job. (Sort of like ancient physicians figuring that if a small course of leeches didn't cure the disease, what was needed was more leeches.)

Charlie: Or more tax cuts, if I may interject from the left field bleachers.

Joel: So, here we have a situation where there are already background checks – in most cases, multiple, duplicative ones – no evidence that requiring additional background checks for private sales would do anything useful here, anymore than it has elsewhere, and the creation of a permanent database of every transaction involving any transfer other than a very short term loan of a handgun . . .

. . . all mislabeled as "closing the gun show loophole." 

If the folks behind this bill are looking to bridge any sort of divide at all, much less a great one (and I know you're not one of them) perhaps they might do well to start treating those of us watching them with entirely justifiable suspicion as though we didn't just fall off the turnip truck.   

Charlie: I'll confess, I didn't start out predisposed to this bill, based simply on my belief it would not prevent crimes and likely not solve them, either. But I was willing to consider it on the basis of consistency — that is, we do this for other gun transactions; why treat these any differently?

You make the case that such harmless, incremental steps can lead to greater perils later on. Most of the time when I've heard that, it sounds to me like Black Helicopter paranoia, and I'm not sure how much of that interpretation was due to my prejudices or the advocate's rhetoric. But we're trying to get beyond that here.

The slippery slope argument is really spelled out in the long "essay" you linked to, which details the changes in UK gun ownership controls over the past century. The intertwined history of increased restrictions and fears of immigrants, anarchists and labor agitators does seem to have a few lessons for us today. Personally, I find that example more persuasive than the usual Nazis-disarming-the-Jews images I showed here last month.
I also see how a broad rationale for justifying restrictions — in the present case, guns as a public health menace — can lead to further restrictions without new laws being enacted. As I've said before, even gun-hating liberals should be able to get that point, having witnessed enough of that behavior coming from the White House.

But seriously, 26,000 words and 293 footnotes? That won't get far in the court of "gun grabber" public opinion, now, will it?

Turnip truck full of facts and historical precedents aside, here's what I think you and your friends face in trying to persuade people like me.

• Many people living in cities — and close proximity with lots of people they don't know — are not crazy about the idea of more folks walking the streets with firearms, legally or otherwise. That may make you feel safer, but they don't see it that way. They can look to other countries with more restrictive gun laws and lower murder rates and think, yeah, like that.
• Some of your homies do not... um... take rejection well. I think I can speak for others when I say the combination of belligerent rhetoric and gun ownership does not set minds at ease with the idea of loosening restrictions. I know there are lots of reasonable gun advocates out there, but we seem mainly to see the foam-flecked.
• Glorifying or celebrating guns — as with sex, drugs or rock & roll — will turn off some people concerned with the state of our culture who have no personal experience with guns. Unfair? In some cases, sure. But mocking or belittling their fears with the gun equivalent of Gay Pride Parades won't convert any more of them to your side.
• This issue is too wrapped up in party politics. Frankly, a lot of "my" people will have a hard time looking past the candidates and causes associated with gun rights to see the merits of your arguments. I think the gun rights argument could be more compelling if it focused more on the rights and less on the minutia. And as part of that, better segment the people on the other side you are trying to persuade. Focusing on firing up your base just fires up the other side. How do you find more people predisposed to civil rights who are opposed or on the fence? What would it take to bring them along?

You haven't asked my advice, but here it is. Get the NRA, the National Safety Council and Planned Parenthood to champion a new national school curriculum that requires X hours of age-appropriate sex education and gun safety over several years. Make it part of phy ed or health and include actual time at a gun range and training in non-violent conflict resolution. Freak out liberals and conservatives together, while giving each something they want.

I think the country and our culture would be better off with that deal. 

Joel: You're preaching to the (secular) choir, Reverend, on that latter; as the saying goes, "you had me at 'hello.'" I'll address the other stuff next round – you went long; I'll need to – but if there's anybody more in favor of teaching non-violent conflict resolution, gun safety and sex ed (and, for that matter, drownproofing) in the public schools than I am, I can't imagine who it might be. 

Can I kick the next round off?  You've gone from the underlying subject matter we've been talking about to the issue of how to persuade people, and I think that's a very useful direction, but it's a new one, and I'd like to start out.

American Crosscut: Boy Scouts and Bogus Boyz.

Joel Rosenberg and I resume our discussion of the Minnesota bill HF498 [Download pdf] on the use of deadly force in self-defense.

Since we last posted, we've had some other exchanges that were useful to us, but a bit off track for posting here. You'll notice Joel is posting comments here, too. That's a good byproduct... no, the point of these discussions we're having. Opening up to the other side on one thing leads to another.
 
Charlie: Joel, I don't think we're too far apart on the right to self-defense or when there are questionable claims, they ought to be determined in the courts. Certainly, people will make mistakes in those split-second decisions, and those are a very different sort than the "mistake" of a driver who gets into a car after downing a quart of booze. I'm not personally big on punishing mistakes. I think we ought to try to prevent them as much as reasonably possible, and try to mitigate the seriousness of the consequences that do occur. It seems like this part of the discussion may belong with the other bill, so I'll table it for now.

The question for me regarding HF498 at the end of our previous post was the purpose of the presumption language. Let me remind readers where we left off last time. I wanted to understand how the presumption of innocence — which we all enjoy — relates to the bill's statement about immunity from prosecution:

(a) An individual who uses deadly force according to this section is justified in using such force and is immune from any criminal prosecution for that act.

   If we agree the place to sort these claims out is in the courts, how can that be done if the individual claiming self-defense is immune from prosecution? This language may only be intended to let someone shoot into ground in self-defense and not get hauled off to jail by the cops, but it sure sounds like he can kill someone under the defined circumstances and not even be brought to trial, where the claim could be tested if there were questions about its legitimacy.

If this language is still confusing to me after numerous readings, no wonder people who haven't even looked at it are concerned. Can you address this and straighten me out?

Joel: Utterly fair questions.  Let me give you two answers.

I'll take the easy one first.  We don't have to guess how this language will be implemented, because we know how this language is implemented.  There are quite a few other states that already have just this law -- tweaked slightly, from state to state, to make the language consistent with pre-existing state law.  While there are some Minnesota specific bits in HF498, all of the reform in the following states was based on the same model bill, lobbied for by a fairly prominent — in the view of some folks, including me, often too accommodationist — civil rights organization, the NRA.

Here's the list.

Alabama
Alaska
Arizona
Colorado
Florida
Georgia
Idaho
Indiana
Kansas
Kentucky
Michigan
Mississippi
Missouri
Oklahoma
Pennsylvania
South Carolina
South Dakota

I'm not including states like Utah — while Utah has very similar language (I have to know this; I'm certified by Utah as a Concealed Weapons Instructor, and teach this stuff), it wasn't part of this endeavor by the NRA; its self-defense language was already in place long before the NRA move for reform in all the other states.

Charlie, do you think that if such laws had the effects that you're worrying about, you wouldn't have heard about the murders in, say, Colorado that had gone unpunished because of them?  If it hasn't been a disaster in Colorado, why would it be one in Minnesota?

That's the easy part.  The more difficult one involves a close look at the text and at legal construction.

Here's what it doesn't say:  (emphasis mine, in both of the following quotes)

(a) An individual who claims to have used deadly force according to this section is justified in using such force and is immune from any criminal prosecution for that act.

Nope.  It starts off with "an individual who uses deadly force..." 

Whether or not the individual has, in fact, used deadly force as provided for in that section is, as lawyers say, a matter of fact.  In a court of law, matters of fact are determined by a trier of fact — either a jury, or a judge sitting as a trier of fact.  While, of course, the trier of fact should give the benefit of the doubt to the defendant, juries (and judges, in a bench trial) aren't required to throw common sense out the window, much less run down the stairs to get it with a shovel and make sure it's dead.  They're allowed to — invited to — look at the evidence presented to them, by both the prosecution and the defense, and make some judgments about what the facts are.

When I do my carry classes, I talk about this stuff.  One of my standard raps goes something like "if you're surrounded by a dozen Bogus Boys (they're a local gang, consisting of gang bangers who have not been able to maintain the minimal interpersonal skills required by the Bloods, Crips, or Vice Lords) trying to knock you down and stomp you to death, a jury might conclude that you were in imminent danger of immediate death or great bodily harm, even if they displayed no weapons.  If you're surrounded by a pack of Cub Scouts, threatening to punch you in the thigh with their little fists, you're really very unlikely to be able to persuade a jury that you were."

Getting back to my first answer, we ran into these same sorts of objections to carry reform.  We heard all the theoretical worries about how the Personal Protection Act would turn bar arguments into gunbattles, fender benders into gunbattles, disagreements about parking spaces into gunbattles... and when we pointed out, then, that something like three dozen states already had similar laws in place — in some cases for many decades — it hadn't happened there, we were right... but the folks opposing carry reform just refused to listen and to look for themselves at the other states, but kept repeating the same theoretical fears, over and over again.

So, in answer to your question: in other states, with laws similar to HF498, people who have claimed self-defense have, in fact, been brought to trial.  I don't see any reason to believe that it will be different here — and, in fact, every reason to believe that prosecutors will bring people claiming self-defense to trial, if and when they have sufficient grounds to believe that the claim is bogus, and that they'll be able to persuade the juries of that, when they have sufficient evidence that the claim is bogus.

That any help?

As a heads up, when we get to the gun registration bill, I'm going to be pointing out how gun registration has been — not everywhere, nor all the time — a necessary precondition to gun confiscation, and how almost invariably useless it's been for the purported purpose of preventing violent crime and aiding in the apprehension and punishment of criminals.

Over to you.

Charlie: Well, I've always made a living by my imagination, so maybe it's too highly developed. I've also had a youthful experience of entering a dwelling by stealth — at least in the view of my girl friend's father, who had a shotgun and no sense of humor. It's easy for me to imagine not being around to have this discussion, had Colorado passed its law about 20 years earlier.

But I take your point. Here I am.

I also noted that the Halloween story recounted in an article I linked to last time was from 1992. So yes, there are cases used to evoke fears, but they're not exactly ripped from the headlines.

Here's a case from Colorado that's more current. It involves a homeowner wounding a late-night intruder in his home, who was drunk and disoriented from a motorcycle accident. He thought he was entering his father's house down the street. After considering charges against both parties, no one was prosecuted, and no apparent outcry followed.

Another involves a man assaulted in his house shooting one of the assailants in the back while the guy is sitting in his own car. The jury, interpreting the evidence and the law, found him not guilty of murder. That one was more controversial, but despite the ambiguity (Colorado also has a detailed self-defense statute), the Colorado legislature hasn't gone back to clarify the 1985 Homeowners Protection Act.

You've allayed most of my concern about the intent of HF498 and how it's likely to be interpreted. I'm still not convinced it's needed, but I don't believe it will unleash gunplay in the streets, either. I hope I don't come across too wishy washy here, but I'm not anti-gun or anti-self-defense. I do not represent gun control forces; I represent me trying to come to terms with this issue and trying to provide a model for how others might, as well.

Now, speaking of active imaginations, tell me about how gun confiscation and registering private gun sales come together in your mind. The usefulness of regulating sales requires a whole 'nother post, at least.