Across the Great Divide

The Five-Minute Argument or the Full Half Hour?

So, far Craig Westover and I seem to be doing better than the fellows in the Argument Clinic.

We started our conversation with this story about social services providers continuing to work through the government shutdown, and then we discussed his "first lesson" here and the second regarding the private sector/government relationships here.

Though we may continue hammering away in the comment sections of those posts, it's time to move onto the third lesson, which Craig formulated this way:

A third lesson is one shouldn’t put all one’s economic eggs in the state basket. It’s also another reason “tax the rich” doesn’t work.

Williams was in a financial bind because all (most) of her revenue came from the state. In her case, the problem was a state shutdown; in the future, it might be a recession that reduces the income of the “rich,” which significantly reduces state revenue from taxes. The problem with highly progressive taxation is in dollar terms a relatively few people are supporting everyone else. They take a hit, and the ripple effect is disastrous.

The solution for Williams is multiple revenue sources, which implies a market solution.

Craig, you'll get no argument from me about the "all-in-one basket" caution, but your explanation of it betrays you once again peering from the fat end of the telescope.

The clients at All About Kids daycare are indeed subsidized, but we don't know how much of Williams' revenue came from the state. The story says, "All of her clients are low-income and struggle just to pay their $2 to $24 sliding fee." Sounds like multiple revenue sources to me.

This is one reason I picked the story to discuss. The subsidy is supplemented with client funds based on their ability to pay — sort of a progressive scheme, just like the income tax. As their circumstances improve, they pay more.

Perhaps this model could be employed more widely. Not simply, as in the case of health care vouchers, as a way to throw people out of public plans, but as a client-centered, outcome-based approach to helping people at the margins Republicans seem none too interested in.

You argue Williams' problem came from being too dependent on the government payments. I'd argue her revenue shortfall came her choosing to serve a segment of the population that is disproportionately affected by policies that favor your favorite constituency.

The shutdown occurred because the representatives of wealthy Minnesotans didn't want them to pay higher taxes, and guess who paid the price? A recession definitely affects the income of the wealthy and lowers government revenues, but it affects the low-income clients Williams serves even more.

Well-to-do taxpayers have lots of options that don't affect their lifestyles one whit. They can lay off workers, book losses against future tax bills, draw from savings or take capital gains. And the progressive income tax rates on high earners, remember, are historically quite low.

Last year, with the "help" of some tax losses, our combined effective state and federal income tax rate was 13.1%, although our household income put us right on the cusp of the top ten percent of earners in the state. We aren't hurting, and I'd be surprised those making substantially more are, either.

The Private Sector Makes Government Possible.

If you're just joining us, Craig Westover and I started our conversation with this story about social services providers continuing to work through the government shudown, and then we discussed his "first lesson" here.

His original response to my post continued:

The second lesson is about economics and my statement “Government cannot do anything for anybody until it first takes the resources from the private sector that produces the wealth that makes compassion possible.”

Roxanne Williams is able to provide the service she does – even at her own expense – because there are millions of people going to work everyday to produce products and deliver services (and pay taxes) that ultimately provide her the resources (not just money) that make her service possible. These people go to work for their own reasons and not to help low-income parents find daycare.

Yet one of the consequences of their action is Roxanne Williams can provide daycare. Without their effort producing wealth, Roxanne Williams can’t provide daycare.

And my response here starts a second thread in the discussion:

No argument from me, Craig. The nature of government is to fund its activities through taxes. Some of us consider it a duty to pay taxes; some consider taxes theft; and most of us do what we can to keep our personal taxes as low as possible.

Also agreed, we go to work for our own reasons — and for the most part, we are not thinking about others all that much. Even when I show up as a volunteer with preschool children in a homeless shelter, I am not working purely for the children in the room that day. If I did not feel personally rewarded by my efforts, I would do something else.

So far, we're in reasonable alignment with each other. Hooray for everyone who goes to work every day to provide services, create wealth and pay taxes!

Then you say: "Without their effort producing wealth, Roxanne Williams can’t provide daycare." Roxanne Williams, though, is a private contractor. She happens to serve a low-income segment of the market, which receives some subsidy.

So perhaps you meant, without others producing wealth, her poor clients couldn't afford daycare.

Many years ago I interviewed a man who was instrumental in the massive urban renewal effort that erased the Washington Avenue skid row in Minneapolis. What happened to all those people who lived and worked there, I asked.

They just went away, he said, as if that were a satisfactory answer.

That seems to be subtext of what small government advocates call "reform."

You punted my last attempt at this question, but it matters to progressives: "What happens to these low-income families and children if the government gets out of the daycare subsidy business?"

 

Virtue, Government and the Marketplace for Social Services.

I invited Craig Westover to join me in a discussion about a shutdown-related story I considered rich with implications about the roles and limits of government: Does Private Wealth Make Compassion Possible?

The original story concerned social services providers who elected to continue services to their clients, despite not being paid during the shutdown. A psychologist provided some context about possible motivations the providers might have, but I thought there was a lot more worth discussing.

Craig responded to the original post in a form that invites breaking the discussion into individual themes. I'll set up separate posts, so we (and readers) can extend the discussion in the comments section without creating one overwhelming read. 

Here's his first point:

Indeed, Charlie, there are lessons to be learned from All About Kids.

The first is a lesson about virtue. Roxanne Williams is a virtuous person, but not as you imply because she does what she does for low-income people. She is virtuous because she takes her work personally, and she takes personal responsibility for the results. That low-income parents benefit from her work is also a benefit to the community, but Williams deserve praise for her dedication to the work, not for whom it was done. The same praise is due a contractor who performs unpaid time and provides unpaid materials on a job he underbid on a $1M home. Virtue is about the work, not for whom it is done.

And my response:

Craig, I agree with you somewhat on your point about virtue, although I would use the word integrity because it has less of a moralistic overtone. The integrity displayed by Roxanne and your contractor exists in many work settings, whether the payer is a wealthy client, a low-income parent, a global corporation or the state government.

Let me also observe that your lesson declares a tie and allows everyone to dust off their hands without doing anything. I'm not interested in handing out brownie points for abstract virtue.

I believe the kind of work also matters in this discussion. To separate the work from the client strikes me as overly convenient to your argument; we can all think of cases in which the worker was "virtuous" but the client's purpose or the work's outcome was horrific.

Compassion and caring for others is a very important attribute of this story. Note that it is about about the delivery of social services — not IT services or construction. (State highway contractors suspended their work during the shutdown, and it now appears they may not get paid for the costs they incurred, thanks to language inserted in the budget bill. That example raises a whole other set of issues.)

We hear from small government advocates that the private sector could better fulfill roles presently taken by government — but except for some generalities about "the market," not how this will take place or how effective it will actually be.

Integrity of the sort on display here is a valuable social asset. My interest is in how our governmental, social and economic systems either encourage or repress the beneficial practice of integrity.

So here's a question: What happens to Roxanne and her clients if the government gets out of her business?  

Craig answered:

Charlie, to qualify the kind of work is the crux of the difference between your philosophy and mine. You would insert a third party, in this case yourself (“I believe”), as arbitrator of some hierarchy of values to be imposed upon others, legally through taxation or morally through peer sanction. I do not believe any third party has that authority – legal or moral.

I agree, compassion and caring is a part of this story, but compassion implies the concept of “compassion to whom for what.” Roxanne Williams extended services to her clients at personal expense – people in whom she had a vested personal interest. They were individuals to her with faces and names and personal relationships. Her personal integrity was at issue; she could have walked away as others did, but to walk away would have been to sacrifice her integrity – a greater sacrifice to her than whatever material loss she might suffer.

I submit that Williams did not sacrifice anything to serve her clients at her own expense during the government shutdown (she chose a higher value over a lesser value) and for that she is to be praised. By your definition -- the “kind of work” matters -- Williams’ primary merit is that her effort was done selflessly for others, not what she accomplished. The latter attitude is fundamental to progressivism – taking the property of the wealthy is ok if doing so provides for others, for example.

The reason you hear only generalities about “the market” and not how the private sector could (would) better fulfill roles presently taken by government is because free-market advocates are not arrogant enough to assume they have all the answers; they know, however, that there are people who do have the answers, and removing the expectation (and moral hazarad) that government will solve all social ills would motivate a diversity of alternatives for, in this case, daycare for low-income families.

Government cannot solve the normal problems of a complex community, but the expectation that government can creates a moral hazard that represses the beneficial practice of integrity. There is no virtue, no integrity, when A & B get together and take from C to benefit D because they feel D is in need and C can afford it, and it is D’s need alone that makes him deserving. That Williams was not newsworthy (or unable to display integrity by your definition) until government shutdown would seem to support my point. It was not the presence of government that displayed Williams’ integrity; it was the absence of government.

Charlie, I cannot nor would I presume to definitively answer your question “What happens to Roxanne and her clients if the government gets out of her business?” any more than I would definitively tell you what product will replace the iPad or what company will be the next Apple. I do know the iPad replacement will be really cool; I also know that without the general expectation and moral hazard of government mucking around in social problems, spontaneous solutions, more efficient and effective (albeit not perfect) solutions, will arise. I speculate about such in my original response, which I leave to discuss in a later thread.

And my reply:

"I do not believe any third party has that authority — legal or moral."

 This, of course, is why we should not give 16-year-olds the right to vote, and why we will not make much more headway on this question.

Finally, you twisted my meaning about Roxanne Williams and the “kind of work.” What she accomplished matters very much; what she did and who she did it for had more social value than, say, polishing doorknobs in one of David Koch’s vacation retreats.

I'll keep the comments open here, but let's move on to "lesson two:" The Private Sector Makes Government Possible.

Timewarp, With Tacos.

Spent some time at the century-old Elks Lodge in town, where many moons ago a band of mine played a dance in this hall.

Photo: Christopher Tomlinson

Tonight, it was filled with folks who'd come to tour the place (check the photo link for more views), eat tacos, hear music and raise money for a program that commissions sculptures of localluminaries.

Without even being that connected here any more, I could run into a former classmate, my ex-English teacher, and — seeing a familiar name on a name tag in the taco line — suppress the impulse to say, "Are you Jim's parents?"

Fortunately, because the old folks in front of me proved to be Jim and his wife — another classmate.

A greater highlight, though, was trying to order beers from the bar. The only "microbrews" they had, said the waitress, were Corona and Guinness. I was away at the taco table for $3 seconds, or probably would've gone with a margarita, but my brilliant domestic partner came up with the idea of a microbrew Black & Tan, which I poured very nicely into the plastic cups, using the Corona bottle neck as the spoon to drizzle the Guinness.

The other highlight was the roll of past presidents of the Lady Elks. Allow me to share some of them here:

• Leta Peep
• Dorothy Dollar
• Beryle Apps Belt
• Wilda Fortune
• Lois Sorter
• Maude Dooling
• Caroline Huck
• Norabelle Easely
• And, best for last, Aura Moon

Appreciating the Opposition.

I learned long ago that your opponents can either make you better or make you worse. The outcome is largely your choice.

Over the last decade, we've seen a coarsening of what passes for public discourse and a lack of respect for our opponents coming from both sides. Pres. Obama's practice of engaging people with whom he may disagree may have helped him get elected, but it still runs counter to the prevailing winds in politics — seen most recently in the current impasse over the Minnesota state budget.

Although the legislators I heard today on MPR were conciliatory and talked about how hard and well both parties worked together in committee, when it came to actual votes and legislative outcomes, their respective political positions seemed as polarized than ever.

More than a year ago, Jeff Dege showed up here, attracted by an American Crosscut post about gun rights, and left his first strongly worded comment. Since then, he's stuck around and done more of the same — 124 times in all by my official count.

I've wondered at times why he has stayed a faithful reader, and whether he has been assigned my case by the vast right-wing conspiracy. Either way, I'd put my shadow up against Dave Thul at The Cucking Stool and Angry Clown at Shot in the Dark any day.

Throughout it all, Jeff has been provocative and challenging, but he's also been civil and careful to back up his point of view. (His citation of the Laffer study on rich and poor states will likely inspire a few posts here.) His comments have also done much to promote discussion, force me to sharpen my thinking and to clarify my positions. We don't often agree, and I don't expect we will ever sing Kumbaya together in New Hampshire.

But like my other readers who usually agree with me, he has made this a better, more interesting blog.

The only question is whether he can take a compliment.

Drinking with the Enemy.

The other day I poked some double fun at the upcoming happy hour "hosted" by MN Publius and MDE.

As someone who founded his blog on the premise of figuring out how people who disagree can still build a decent world, I owe the organizers an explanation of why I look on this opportunity with little excitement.

Yes, I know there are differences between this happy hour and meeting of heads of state, but the question is still pertinent. Why would I or any progressive attend a branded event that seems calculated to create a veneer of bipartisanship for perhaps the most partisan attack blog in the state?

Mitch Berg makes one pass at a reason, reminiscing about a happy hour of yore:

[I]t was just a tiny bit harder to flame on people that I’d met in person.  That I’d actually met as humans, rather than as mere brain-damaged big-government-coddling tax-and-spend liberal drones.  And a few of them wrote as well, saying they could maybe be a little more tolerant of uncaring, selfish conservatives now that they’d actually met some of us — something they didn’t do much of in real life.

It made an impression.

Oh, it only lasted so long, of course. 

And his commenters swoop in to prove the point.

I do agree that such face-to-face contact can encourage civility, but I don't need to bike to St. Paul for a beer to learn its virtues. And I have no interest at all in fake civility that does nothing more than help Michael Brodkorb go back next week and slag more Democrats with more utter B.S.

Real community and real civility — civitas — come about when antagonists find something important they truly want in common. Something they cannot have without respecting the other's perspective, values and rights.

Jonathan Thompson, of High Country News, edits a publication that attempts to bring an environmental audience face-to-face with the complex realities of the American West. They write about inevitable collisions involving die-hard opponents. In the process, they have learned a thing or two about how people who've fought bitterly for years can move on to something better.

The magazine's current issue has a story about how native tribes and farmers along the Klamath River had one fundamental thing in common:

They rely on the river for their food and their livelihoods. While those needs have competed with one another in the past, they are also what kept these guys at the bargaining table until an agreement came together.

It wasn’t easy. Before the farmers and tribes could hold hands, they both had to endure a lot of pain — massive fish kills, dried-up fields and the tedium of the negotiations themselves.

Perhaps that’s the lesson here: Unlikely alliances don’t happen by magic, they take work. Sometimes the situation needs to become so dire that the two sides have no other choice but to get along. Then they can find a bit of common ground, and their reverence for and reliance upon the land will finally win out over age-old animosities. And then they will discover that their alliance was never that unlikely after all.

I'm conflicted about attending. What do you think?

American Crosscut: Disagreeing to Agree?

This time Joel and Charlie tell stories about how people manage to not talk about what they might have in common.

Joel: When we left our heroes, they — we — had explored, if not come to complete agreement, on the two bills we set out to discuss, and while I'd be happy to go into more detail on that, I'm not sure that it would serve much of a didactic purpose for our readers.  They've already gotten, I trust, that two folks with different orientations can discuss stuff that they don't agree on without throwing stones or epithets, although apparently not without a snarky comment from time to time.

I'll ask you to point our readers at your last posting, as that's where I want to start off, with the difficulties that you say that folks like me run into in trying to persuade folks like you, 'folks like you' being defined, for the purposes of this discussion, as people who aren't pro-gun, but are willing to listen, and consider other positions than the one you start off with. 

I dunno, Charlie.  And some of this stuff breaks my heart.  I really don't worry a lot about most folks who always and only react to their stereotypes and/or neurotic fears about gun owners, and won't hear anything to the contrary; there's nothing I can do about them.  (I'm not saying that all folks who disagree with me on these issues fall into that category, but I am saying that some do — and while I'm not going to go into detail, I'm including some people who I love dearly, including members of my family of origin.  Almost got me killed once -- and no, I'm not exaggerating; anti-gun neurotics can be dangerous, and all the moreso if they're merely naive and hysterical, rather than malicious.  But I digress.) 

The rest of it frustrates the hell out of me.  If I want to write or say something that goes kind of long — it takes a while to describe, say, the history of "shall issue" gun laws in the US, as part of the argument that they're not only mainstream, but working just fine — many folks don't read it.  Hell, you'll worry about going long, and fret over whether or not your readers will be willing to follow a discussion that takes thousands, or tens of thousands, of words, and you've agreed to be open-minded in this discussion.

But going long has its problems.

So sometimes I go short, and pull out a picture like, say, this one, to illustrate a point.  Or to help make one.

And therein lies a story.  It may or may not have some relevance to this discussion.  But it's going to be long.  Bear with me; I'll try to tell it entertainingly. 

Nationally, Joss Whedon's fans have put on a charity showing of Serenity <http://csts.mnfirefly.com/sponsors.htm> , in celebration of his birthday, every year for the past few years.  It raises money for Equality Now <http://www.equalitynow.org/> , one of his favorite charities.  You can look at their website and decide for yourself whether or not you're on board with their agenda. Me, I am in part, and not in other part.  Hell, I don't even agree with me all the time . . .

So, there I was, siting at my desk getting some work done, and minding my own business, when Felicia calls me up and asks if I want to go see the charity showing with her; it'll be few bucks, but will go to a charity that I'm probably generally comfortable with, and I do love that movie, for a lot of reasons, and not just the hot babes with guns.  (That I like hot babes with guns isn't a problem for Felicia; we've been married for close to thirty years, and I've long been out of the closet as a heterosexual.)

And then I took a look at the sponsors page.  Regular tickets were something like ten bucks each, but there were several levels of sponsorship packages, culminating in the Big Damn Hero package.  $250; buys you something like four tickets, a t-shirt, and a halfpage program book ad. 

This, to me, sounded like too much fun to miss, and while $250 isn't always easy to come by, I figured I could probably get a few of my gun nut friends to kick in.  Some of them are fans of the movie; others might like to see it.  Yup, there would be some conservative folks who would have problems with Equality Now's pro-abortion-choice position, and what they should do, I said, is decide if, on balance, they're willing to support the event, or not.  No problem, either way.

My friends quickly came up with $250, and kept giving.  So I bought another Big Damn Hero package.  And another.  And another. 

Lots of individuals and groups contributed to the event.  Some bookstores and writers sent books; some stores contributed discount coupons and merchandise to be raffled off.

But there were a grand total of five of these $250 packages bought.  Four of those five were bought by my "gun nut" friends and me.  My suggestion to the local anti-gun group that they match our contributions to the event were ignored.  Figures.

As you can probably imagine, the folks running the benefit — media science-fiction fans, whose main interest, or at least one of them, is Joss Whedon's Firefly — were rather pleased that I kept coming back to buy more of the two hundred and fifty dollar packages.  My fairly modest requests — and you know me, Charlie; these were requests and not demands — that our four half-page ads be consolidated into two one-page ads, and that my bunch of folks get a reserved seating block so that we could all sit together were things they were happy to do.   

Oleg Volk produced the two ads, on a very short deadline, and they were great.  I already showed you the one that ended up gracing the back cover; the other one is here.

So, come the night of the show, my crowd gathers across the street, to have coffee and dinner before the show, and then walk over.

About two dozen of us, and I don't think many of them were unarmed,  walk up to the Riverview theater.  With one exception, nobody was carrying openly — the one exception was me; I had a knife on my belt, but my handgun was, as it usually is, carried discreetly.

Appearances can be deceiving.  The tallest of us, Bruce Krafft, is about 6'6" tall, 300 pounds or so with a long, fiery red beard, and a shaved head.  He looks like a Viking ax murderer, except for the pleasant smile (not having actually met any Viking ax murderers, I'm just guessing that most of them don't smile pleasantly), but is actually a very nice, very bright, very soft-spoken guy.  Seismic Sam looks like the sort you wouldn't want to meet in a dark alley — and, truth to tell, if you were to mean him or his family any harm, you wouldn't — but by profession he is a scientist, whose medical inventions have saved thousands of live.  (That is not a figure of speech.)  Greg's a pilot; Felicia is a librarian. 

When we'd received our packages in the mail, we were told that we shouldn't be standing in line — we should just proceed directly into the theater, because we already bought our tickets, after all.  As we did, the very nice woman running the benefit spotted me — she recognized me from my pictures; we'd never met — and shouting, "You must be Joel!" she ran over to give me a hug. 

There was a moment of street theater.  The very pleasant, shaved-headed black guy walking out of the previous movie, said, "oh, hugs.  Cool."  and gave me a quick hug, much to the amusement of all. (I don't know if he hung around to find out what that all was about.)

So we proceeded to our seats to wait for the show.  The program books were handed out as people came in and bought tickets...

And then the unfortunate incident happened.  I'm still irked about it.

Ten people, led by some middle-aged woman, took allowed exception to the self-defense poster that was our back cover ad — the link that I opened this story with — and they stormed out of the theater in a huff. Seems they objected to the gun she was wearing.  In the ad. 

I missed the unfortunate incident; I'd stepped outside the theater for a cigarette, and heard about it as I came back in.  I don't know if that was just as well; I'd have been tempted to say something like, "You're worried about a picture?  Lady, there's a couple dozen people in the theater actually carrying guns" — which would probably have been wrong, and I probably would have resisted the temptation.

I was, to say the least, a little irked.  Just as I was about to dash back into the theater — the movie hadn't started — to take up a collection so that the charity wouldn't suffer a $100 loss, which hardly seemed fair, the woman running the event told  me that there was nothing to worry about; they hadn't refunded the hysterics' money, and the seats had resold, anyway, so the charity was going to, rather than suffer a loss over that, actually make a little more profit.

So, still irked but feeling a little smug, I walked back in and sat back down.

Before the show, the various banner ads that various sponsors had purchased were flashed on the screen, and every time that one of the TwinCitiescarry.com ads showed up, it was met with applause from the entire theater.

And then we watched the movie, and enjoyed it thoroughly.

Honestly, I don't know how many peoples' views on issues around carrying guns in public were affected that night.  Maybe none; maybe several dozen.  But I'll score that night as a win.  A bunch of gun folks, identified as such, contributed their money and their time and their presence to a charitable event, and had a lot of fun doing it.  It's entirely possible that we did nothing, that night, to change anybody's prejudices about the sort of people who routinely carry handguns for personal defense.

Then again, maybe a few minds were changed, and a few hearts were softened.

I guess we'll have to see.

Me, I'm working on another t-shirt.  It's got the twincitiescarry logo -- a snubby revolver over a carry permit on the front -- and the words

ASK ME ABOUT MY SECRET AGENDA

On the back it says:

TRUTH, JUSTICE, AND THE AMERICAN WAY.  WHAT THE HELL IS YOURS?

Charlie: I think our topic is about how, if we share some values or positions, can we communicate with those who aren’t disposed to our view of the gun issue. The people in your story who walked out of the showing might represent a certain inflexible and intolerant subset of anti-gun people. They might also represent people who were outraged that you had tried to exploit their cause to advance yours, one they didn’t support. We’ll never know how you might’ve been able to reach an understanding since you didn’t talk to each other about it.

I don’t think that hijacking the Equality Now benefit was your intent, but can you see how people might think so? Unfortunately, when we send messages out into the public domain, we don’t get to decide how other people interpret them. Let me give you a different example.

Here’s an image from the same fellow who produced your ads. Now here’s my tale.

My father committed suicide with a firearm 24 years ago this month. He had begun treatment for a serious mental breakdown, but after some false starts, there was reason to hope he could be helped and recover. He was a tremendous human being and a pillar of the community, he had a loving family and the resources to get better. He also had a number of guns, all of which we thought had been located and secured out of the house. He had started medication to stabilize his condition, but the drugs took time to work.

One morning, he got up early and went into the dining room to do his crossword puzzle. Once my mother rose and went to take a shower, he went back to the bedroom, pulled his pistol hidden in their closet, went down into the family room and put a bullet in his brain. The account by my brother, a trained crime investigator, was at once dispassionate and heart-rending. He was staying at the house, heard my father come downstairs, heard the shot and ran in to discover our father’s body. Too late.

Now, ask yourself whether my family might feel that the poster — which was not aimed at persuading me, obviously — was just a bit lacking in sensitivity, not to mention lacking a refined understanding of the circumstances related to suicides. That message may pass muster with the faithful, but makes it a little harder to find common ground with me, don’t you think? And consider there are more Americans who’ve experienced a family member’s suicide than belong to the NRA.

I’m willing to assume the creator would be horrified to know how offensive his image could be and move on from there. But I’ll also insist on pointing to some facts that contradict the poster’s “they’ll just find another way to kill themselves” propaganda.

Most firearms deaths are suicides, and localities with supposedly overly restrictive gun laws have much lower suicide rates. Washington, D.C., has the lowest rate in America, one-fourth the rate of No. 1 Alaska. New York ranks 49th or 50th. California is 42nd, standing out among western states that account for 10 of the top 12 highest suicide rates.

I don’t even need to go into the statistics on accidental deaths and abusers murdering spouses to be able to claim that guns are a major public health issue. I’m not willing to dismiss this aspect of gun ownership from a discussion about the impact of regulations. The proper role of guns in self-defense against criminals is only one part of the issue. I want to look at this systemically, believing we can work out our differences over time, as long as we remain open to all the information and all possible solutions — maybe not getting to perfection or universal satisfaction, but better for all.

In our last post, I connected sex education with gun safety. Let’s extend the metaphor a bit. In both debates, everyone is concerned about prevention — preventing unwanted pregnancy and injury or death. Both debates have advocates for abstinence, and those who say abstinence isn’t realistic and doesn’t work. In my mind, if we insist on abstinence from guns instead of focusing on prevention, we’ll never reach agreement, much less a solution.

Back to your story. The people who walked out focused on the gun and missed a potentially provocative discussion about how a shared commitment to equality could be expressed differently. Over the past month you and I — and our respective readers — have done pretty well engaging in respectful discourse. I’ve personally done more listening than talking, in part because I want to better understand your point of view and because gun control is really not a burning issue for me; I’m more interested in how it stands for more fundamental differences about the limits of individual sovereignty in a free country. 

I hope we have opened eyes on both sides, and maybe the minds will follow.

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.

American Crosscut, Round 4: At Last, the Bill.

When I started this conversation, I didn't expect it to be a single-shot. Now it looks like we'll need a big magazine.

Joel and I switched red and blue last time, and I've kept those colors here.

Joel: When we last left off, Charlie, we'd agreed to move on to the specifics of the two bills, HF498 [Download pdf] and HF3324.  I'd like to take the first one first; all in all, I think it's the one that's much more likely to be in front of the lege this session — it may be amended onto another bill on the floor — and, if not, well, we'll be back to it next session.

I'm also going to try to keep my opening of this round short, and as focused on the bill itself as I can.  A bit of preparatory stuff, for those who have never looked at these before:  language that isn't either stricken through or underlined is in the law now; stricken through stuff would be removed, and underlined stuff added, if the bill becomes law.

609.065 JUSTIFIABLE TAKING OF LIFE USE OF DEADLY FORCE IN SELF DEFENSE.

Which is where I'm going to start off:  at the beginning, and what I'm going to focus on in this installment.  At present, Minnesota law is clear — both statute and case law — on when you can lawfully kill somebody, not when you can lawfully do something that may kill somebody, or legitimately and lawfully threaten somebody.  (I hope you will agree that there are times when it is legitimate to threaten somebody — not out of anger, but out of a reasonable fear that one is about to be harmed.)

That's a problem, and I'm going to draw on some experience as a guy who teaches civilians, cops and lawyers about this stuff in saying that.  Nobody — nobody sane — really wants to kill another person, even if under a deadly, violent attack.  But reasonable people do want to know what they can do — both short of that and, should it become necessary, including that — so that an encounter that they didn't want doesn't end up with their blood on somebody else's hands.

Let me tell you a short story; I'll file off some names and play around with dates and muck with some of the facts, but it was at least as bad as I'm telling you that it was; you've my word I'm not whitewashing this.

Al and Betty were having a few folks over one evening, when they heard a commotion outside their house.  When they went to the window, they saw four guys kicking the crap out of a fifth guy.  "Hey," Al yelled, "get away from him!" and they fled; Betty was on the phone to 911, and Al went out and administered first aid until the ambulance and the police arrived.  The kickee was hauled off in the ambulance; the police took a report and left.

A little while, there was another commotion outside.  The four perps plus another had returned, and they were not happy that Al had interfered with their kicking.  Another call to 911.  Average response time to a Priority One in Minneapolis is in the double-digit minutes.  They started moving up the sidewalk, announcing their intention to come in and do harm to Al and his family and friends, in no unambiguous terms.

At that point, Al made a decision that was to cost him. Granted, it almost certainly saved him to come to his wife come and his friends from some serious harm — but it was to cost him.  He stepped out on his porch, a shotgun in his hand, and told the thugs — remember, these were four men who had just beat another man unconscious, and then had been kicking the unconscious body; they'd brought along a friend — to go away.

They started to move toward him — he fired one shot into the ground, not near them, but signaling his intent — and they scattered.  Fast.

The police arrived.  Giving no consideration to the fact that they'd know where to find him if they needed to arrest him, giving no consideration to the fact that he had just called the police, twice — once to report the beatings; the second time (technically, yes, it was his wife) to call them for help — they cuffed-and-stuffed him, and hauled him off to jail.

He was charged with two felonies.

That is among the outrages that this law is needed, if not to prevent (it won't remove the "ham sandwich" prosecutor powers, but it might inhibit them a little), to make less common.

We can go into the provisions of HF 498 that would have been applied here, but I think — and hope — that you'll agree that he would not have been better off waiting until the threat was even more imminent, and he would have been allowed, under present law, as we've seen above, to take one or more of their lives.

Over to you.

Charlie: First, let me say I have no problem with Al's conduct. In fact, he behaved the way I'd want my neighbors to behave. You don't say what happened after he was charged, but based on your account, it sounds like he was dealt with unjustly. The story raises several questions for me.

One, was Al constrained by current law from doing the right thing? It doesn't appear so.

Two, will others, knowing what happened to Al, be constrained from behaving in a similar, responsible manner? Some will argue yes, though I bet most gun owners in his position, including those doing the arguing, would still act as Al did.

Three, should we try to prevent what happened to Al, if we can do it without unintended consequences that are worse?  Again, I say, yes.

And that brings me to four: How? I'm not convinced the bill under consideration would actually accomplish something we both agree would be a good thing. I've thought about this and have some alternative proposals, but if you want to convince me about this legislation first, keep going.

Joel: Well, after some time in jail, several thousands of dollars to a very good criminal defense attorney, the case was settled. He didn't go to prison. 

Was he constrained by law? Well, he clearly wasn't constrained from doing the right thing — he did it, after all — but he could have been, quite easily, put in front of a jury, and that's always a roll of the dice. He clearly was treated unjustly — it's the old MPD "arrest the gun" problem.  The cops — and for all I know they were good, service-oriented cops — weren't allowed to cut him loose, write up a report — and they weren't required to consider his self-defense explanation (as HF 498 would have required) before arresting him, even though they would have known, had they looked into it. that he wasn't some sort of transient who was likely to disappear, but a working man and homeowner who, had he been indicted, would have been easy to find.

It's still possible, I guess, that he could have been indicted; it's also possible that the cops wouldn't have done more than pretended to consider the circumstances surrounding it, and that it was pretty clearly self-defense... it's just more likely that he would have spent that night in his own bed — sleeplessly, fearfully, granted, but his own bed nonetheless — and never have been indicted in the first place.

Your second question — and it's a good one — is what would other folks do, knowing that.  I don't know; there is no way to tell.  But I think it's fair to guess that at least some, knowing about that, would say, "Hey, Betty — a guy's been kicked to death in the street, and if I go out and shout at them to stop, they are going to know that it's us who called the police, and we might end up, if we're lucky, like that guy Joel told me about in class. If we're lucky."

I'm really glad we've gotten to your third question, because I think it's exactly the right one. And exactly the right way to look at any changes in law. It's important, as you say, to consider both the benefits and costs.

In this case, we don't have to hypothesize. Language very similar to HF 498 exists in the laws of around 20 states; HF 498 is the Minnesota flavor of a bill that the NRA has been pushing for, nationwide.  (There are additional states that have very similar language — Utah, for example — but they don't have the same origin.)

So, I'll ask you, in all of those states — some of those having had similar language for many years, some for only a few years — what have the costs been?  Show me — I'm willing to consider that these laws have resulted in people being unreasonably killed when they otherwise wouldn't have been, or murderers have gotten off when they otherwise would have gone to prison. 

But give me examples — as many as you can.  Not, please, some prosecutor saying that if some gang banger shoots another gang banger he'll claim that he was scared and get off on a self-defense claim; for that sort of thing, show me where some gang banger murdering another gang banger got off on a self-defense claim because he claimed he was scared.  Don't restrict yourself to that; you don't have to.  Show me where, in the more than two dozen states that have similar language in their self-defense laws, authorizing scaring an attacker or not retreating has resulted in bad things happening that likely otherwise wouldn't.

Beyond that...

I'm going to be fair here.  If I was having this discussion with one of our local antis, who have been characterizing this as the "Shoot First!"  or the "Shoot the Avon Lady" bill, I'd be asking for the numbers of dead Avon ladies.  But I'm having it with you, and I'll refer to you how the bill would handle "arrest the gun":

(b) A law enforcement agency may arrest a person using force under circumstances described in this section only after considering any claims or circumstances supporting self-defense.

The emphasis is mine.

Your turn.

Charlie: I am not going to be drawn into representing all the anti-gun arguments in the world or separating actual from imagined consequences. I won’t supply you with a bunch of counter examples, because I am willing to grant you that the changes you seek may result in very few dead Avon Ladies, Mormon Missionaries or Trick or Treaters.

Ooops, here’s a dead kid in a Halloween costume, but it’s only one kid, he was a Japanese exchange student, and Rodney shot him in 1992 before these newer laws were in place.

Again, the way Al was treated was extreme, especially since no one was harmed. I have no problem with the cops saying, in cases like Al's, “don’t leave town for a few weeks while we look into this.” But I also think being dead is a pretty severe penalty, whether it's for someone’s mistaken reading of kids looking for a party, or for being on the wrong side of a drug deal. So I think it's reasonable to expect in those cases that even a normally law-abiding citizen could be inconvenienced a bit before the facts are sorted out.

I confess, I've read the text of the bill a number of times, and I've read a lot of pro-commentary on it, but it wasn't until re-reading the beginning of your post that some of the fog lifted. You said (my emphasis):

At present, Minnesota law is clear — both statute and case law — on when you can lawfully kill somebody, not when you can lawfully do something that may kill somebody, or legitimately and lawfully threaten somebody.   

If I understand you correctly, your intent is to cut some slack for Al — the guy who scared off some thugs. But not to let Rodney — the guy who killed a kid in a white tuxedo who didn't understand the idiom "Freeze" — off the hook.

You may hope HF498 would change that murky bathwater, but the bill still looks to me like it could excuse shooting screaming babies. (At least if someone had just finished reading Ray Bradbury.) It first presumes an individual who perceives a threat is justified in using force and then it appears to give a stay out of jail free card in (a) preceding the (b) you mentioned above.

(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.

Maybe you can walk me through how (a) and (b) relate, and how the new law would treat Al, Rodney and some of the other permutations likely under claims of self-defense.