No. 32: Watch Me Pull a Rabbit Out of My Hat

Like mine, most criminal background investigations won’t generate the kind of red flags worthy of denial. As long as a permit to carry applicant meets the legal minimum requirements for Minnesota, the only thing really standing in the way is a gun safety class.

In 2014 MinnPost journalist Mike Cronin published an article describing his gun safety instructor, Minnesota Gun Owners Civil Rights Alliance Director, Andy Rothmann.  The article’s opening sentencewas sobering. 

“The second time I ever shot a gun, I passed a safety class that qualified me to legally carry a pistol in Minnesota.”

After seeing what passes for minimum required gun safety training, Cronin’s observation does not fill me with confidence.  Law makers who passed the PPA statute apparently took collective leave of their senses.  What else explains why the State would delegate instructor certification to business owners who profit most when State oversight is weakest?

That’s not hyperbole.  In fact, instructor certification is not the State’s responsibility.  The DPS sets forth minimum requirements but actual certification rests with an expanding catalogueof for-profit business operators who crank out training certificates to instructors and other carry customers.  It has become a breeding ground for malfeasance and a ready network for political extremism.

Beware of This Red Flag, Minnesota

On a bright October morning I drove to the Fairfield Inn & Suites in Eden Prairie.  My permit safety training began there.  It cost $89.  The pistol range collected another $12.50. Gun rental and ammo was an extra $10. Total for the day: $111.50.

Before 2003 there were just a handful of individuals throughout Minnesota charging North of $250 for this kind of training.  Today there are over 410.  Some advertise training as low as $49 through Groupon. 

From one instructor to the next, training is routinely divided between class and range time.  However, there can be significant differences in price, substance and tone.  Customer failure is at the discretion of each instructor.  There is no State requirement to objectively rank class or range performance.

That morning I lined up at the end of a badly lit hallway.  Inside the room were four women - one black, three white - and eleven men - 1 black, 2 Asian, 1 Latino and 7 white.  Ages ranged from eighteen to mid-sixties.  Most were from Hennepin County. 

Two of the white customers sat up front wearing matching American Taekwondo ball caps and warm up jackets.  Full on McDojo.  The two black customers, both with extensive calligraphy tattoos on their neck, forearms and hands, sat in back. I signed in and took a seat in the middle.

Our instructor, Joe, collected fees and finished paperwork. He locked away somewhere between $1300 – $1800 inside a keyless gun safe and kicked off the 4-hour training; $325 to $450 per hour before expenses. Not bad.

Right away, Joe appeared likable.  He spoke briefly about his 17 years in law enforcement, twelve as a licensed peace officer in small town Minnesota.  He was certified by the National Rifle Association in Basic Home Defense and as an Affiliate Instructor through United States Concealed Carry Association (USCCA).

In less than three hours he condensed some fairly heavy subjects into seven short segments - about twenty-one minutes apiece.  This included handgun basics, shooting fundamentals, legal use of force and Minnesota carry law.

Joe relied on professional USCCA training videos to supplement most of the instruction.   He demonstrated firearm mishaps playing a YouTube compilation I’d already watched on line.  Most depicted twig-like women flying backward after firing shotguns. More than a few felt staged. It went on too long.

Two depicted men unintentionally shooting themselves.  One featured a black DEA agent who discharged his pistol into his foot while discussing firearm safety inside a Florida elementary school. Remarkably bad timing. Terrified children could be heard off camera.

Inside our class of adults this produced laughter and energetic head shaking. 

A couple people taking the class never fired a gun before so this struck me as a poor choice. These viral moments better fit someone’s idea of entertainment than serious examples of irresponsible gun handling.  

For a safety class, Joe placed an awful lot of emphasis on quick-draw proficiency.  He demonstrated several times how fast he could pull his Glock from his holster and chamber a round.

The one comment he made that stood out left me cold. “Bans guns on premises signs don’t carry the force of law" he told us. "You can always say that you didn’t see it.”  In doing so, he revealed a personal bias toward the spirit and letter of that state statute that gives proprietors a chance to opt out.

Apparantly honoring a posted legal notice that bans guns, no less legal than signs enforcing highway speed limits, didn’t enter into his equation for responsible or law abiding conduct while carrying.  The take away was that this former cop and certified instructor felt perfectly comfortable advising fellow Minnesotans to break the law if they felt they could get away with it.

Maybe that explains why he is a former cop.

But Joe certainly isn't alone.  He expressed an opinion popular among Minnesota’s "law-biding" carry community.  It just made the class more closely resemble indoctrination than genuine safety training   Don’t take my word for it.  Read what’s writtenon Facebook sites dedicated to the carry movement.  They're above the law now.

His business card reinforced this assessment. “Keep this inside your wallet at all times” he told us.  On the back was a printed list of “legal phrases to memorize” for that moment we shoot someone and the police arrive.

“I feared for my life and I defended myself.”

“I do not consent to a search of my person or property.”

“I invoke my right to remain silent until I speak to my lawyer.”

Below that was an advertisement that read, “If you need a personal defense lawyer contact Marc Berris 612-332-3100.”

Joe also said, “Hey, I don’t get a thing for saying this but…”  Then he provided contact information for an insurance agent who specialized in policies for people with carry permits.

No. 31: Minnesotans Like Me Get Carry Permits, Too

With a brand new training certificate in hand I entered the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Building and took the white marble stairwell down to room 22.  The man behind the bullet proof window received my certificate, driver’s license, a completed application and $100.  He made copies then casually asked how many people attended my carry class.

“Fifteen” I responded.

He smiled and handed me my receipt.  “This is not a permit to carry.  It takes 30 days for approval. Don’t carry until you get it in the mail.”

“Understood. Thanks.”  That took all of two minutes.  The entire process was easy although it set me back $211.  My criminal background check came back clean.  The carry permit, which also serves as a permit to purchase, arrived in the mail two weeks later. 

.  .  .

The Minnesota Personal Protection Act (PPA) specified the two-part process I followed to legally carry a gun in Minnesota.  First, I gave my County Sheriff “evidence” of training in safe handling from a “certified” instructor.  Second, my Sheriff performed a criminal background check. 

Minnesota is a shall issue state meaning the Sheriff has no discretion to deny my permit without demonstrating a “substantial likelihood” that I pose a danger to myself or others. Even if I was denied, I could hire an attorney and appeal it.  But that wasn’t necessary.  My permit was approved without so much as a welfare check.  No one contacted my spouse or my doctor. 

Had the County taken that one extra step, it would have learned about my diagnosis and treatment at the Minneapolis V.A. for depression, PTSD and substance abuse stretching as far back as 1992.  Without hesitation my wife would have informed them my medical record contains a V.A. psychiatrist note recommending I “never own another gun.” 

Taken together this seems to rise to a level of “substantial likelihood.”

But the decision is binary under the current law.  There is no middle ground where I can maintain a reasonable expectation of privacy and at the same time protect myself when I’m healthy from times when I am not.  This is a common blind spot appearing in legislation throughout the US and it affects a lot of good people with diagnosis like mine.

Sheriff Departments conducting criminal background checks haven’t the legal authority nor the existing infrastructure to query private psychiatric records for specific information that, when compared alongside records for court ordered treatment, meet or exceed the legal litmus for “substantial likelihood.”  This dilemma is further complicated by Federal mandates (HIPPA Act) requiring health insurers and healthcare providers safeguard patient information.

But debating the supremacy of public policy versus my civil rights is of little use for the moment because for the next five years I can walk into any FFL storefront in Minnesota and walk out with a semi-automatic pistol, high capacity magazines and all the ammunition I can afford.

How many permit holders are there just like me in Minnesota?   That’s impossible to tell.  The Centers for Disease Control reports that each year 6.7% of U.S. adults 18 or older experience major depressive disorder.  “Nearly two out of three people suffering from depression do not actively seek nor receive proper treatment (DBSA, 1996).”

Doing the math, Minnesota can expect, with pretty high confidence, that thousands of the more than 200,000 citizens with permits to purchase - as many as 8900 - will experience a major depressive disorder this year.  And like me, they won't appear on the Sheriff’s radar.  Unlike me, they don’t actively seek or receive treatment.

Let that sink in.

No. 27: Pay No Attention to the Gun Theocracy Behind the Curtain

Last Tuesday, PBS aired a Frontline production titled, Gunned Down: The Power of the NRA.  PBS promoted it as an expose of longtime NRA front man, Wayne LaPierre. That LaPierre is synonymous with the NRA ought to come as no surprise to anyone familiar with American politics so I was hoping for new and damning intelligence on the NRA and the insidious commercial gun industry.

It was a big disappointment. Mostly, Gunned Down was an on air post mortem of Congress and the Obama Administration set to music from 24.  Cause of death?  You guessed it.  Wayne LaPierre and the National Rifle Association.  Not too newsworthy.

As the credits rolled I considered what producer, director and writer, Michael Kirk wanted me, the viewer, to take away from Gunned Down.  Kirk easily made the case that ranking government officials are powerless against the NRA to marshall the necessary political will in congress.  Perhaps the take away comes more in the form of a question; whether civilian gun regulation is just a pipe dream now that the NRA owns congress? 

After retelling how each political setback merely fed the mighty ire of the NRA beast and its constituency, it repeated the question asked by greater America, just who is going to do something to stop the NRA?  Unless it was buried in code Gunned Down offered not even a hint of a silver lining.

Gunned Down gave Kirk a platform to dissect the political life of Wayne LaPierre when he should have examined more judiciously the US gun industry and it’s contributions that sustain the efforts of the NRA’s lobbying arm, the Institute for Legislative Action.  It’s no mystery gun makers and their boards are more involved in owning congress that it would like the world to know.  Kirk drew no lines making this connection to the  gridlock paralyzing Washington D.C. and increasingly inside state capitals when it comes to gun regulation.

Why?

Certainly, LaPierre transformed the NRA into the lobbying juggernaut it is today.  LaPierre is hailed as the uncompromising champion of “gun owner” rights and he is compensated well.  But look closer at the rewards of LaPierre’s success enjoyed exclusively by civilian arms manufacturers.  All NRA revenues combined are minuscule by caparison and somehow, someway Frontline omitted this from Gunned Down.

What gives?  Maybe PBS charitable endowments find that too distasteful?

After interviewing a who’s who of  journalistic heavy weights, NRA insiders, and reform advocates it is inconceivable Kirk did not share some sense, be that a wink and a nod, that “the man” behind the curtain has never been Wayne LaPierre.  Why instead didn’t Gunned Down confirm on air that LaPierre is simply the skullen blue genie shielding bloated gun industrialists behind a moldy shower curtain? 

Why?  Because that conversation would never make it past Frontline post production.

Rachel Maddow picked a fight with the gun industry
instead of the NRA.  Big mistake.

To quote Hunter S. Thompson, LaPierre is a front “for all the rancid genes and broken chromosomes that continue to corrupt the possibility of the American Dream.”  After Sandy Hook, Rachel Maddow flew dangerously close to the sun calling LaPierre and the NRA a heat shield for the gun industry. The base criminals at the root of this gun theocracy have always been the Chief Executives, Board Chairs and majority shareholders.  Not Wayne Goddamn LaPierre.

Symptomatic of a much larger disease, corporate sponsors and foundations would prefer, in this instance, that well-educated liberal progressive PBS audience pay attention to LaPierre and not the gun theocracy.   The PBS audience must remain adamant that LaPierre is calling cadence. The alternative would implicate too many of their own and that would start to unravel everything.

Gunned Down merely repackaged things we already knew; that LaPierre is the most detestable whore in Washington.  Even his political battle buddies mustered faint praise for the man but varying shades of envy of his political savvy.  At the same time they ridiculed his lack of gun prowess.

An objective review of PBS and its corporate sponsors and foundation as they actually function would make affluent liberals uncomfortable. They’d have to examine the corrupt system which they are an uncontested part. As investigative journalist Russ Baker put it, they’d be forced to see that “when liberals get into power, all too many end up serving corporate interests in ways that differ from conservatives more in style and tone than in profound shifts of policy and governance.”

Large, corporate sponsorships and foundations like the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Pew Charitable Trust, the Ford Foundation and Charles G. Koch Foundation would experience serious heartburn if Frontline exposed it’s executive and boardroom brethren inside civilian arms manufacturers like the Freedom Group, Glock, Smith & Wesson, etc.

Weapons manufacturers have quietly bankrolled the NRA’s Institute for Legislative Action for 40 years. The ILA is arm of the NRA that accomplishes the gun industry bidding.  The ILA knows where all the bodies are hidden.  Everything else the NRA accomplishes is air cover.  

I counted exactly zero times that Chris Cox was mentioned.  In 2002, Cox replaced Wayne LaPierre as executive director of the NRA-ILA.  When the legislature is in session Cox, an attorney by training, is busy calf roping congress.  As the senior most, tenured, semi retired NRA operative, LaPierre rarely emerges from his crypt for anything less than a school massacre.  He conducts the Sunday talk show circuit tour, distracts John Q. Public with absurd and debase portrayals of freedom and patriotism.  He warns the twitchy base that gun confiscation is eminent and then he limps back into twilight. LaPierre and his foaming minions inculcate faux grass root organizers in the art of obfuscation, rat hole argumentation and zealotry.  All so that the NRA-ILA can buy political campaigns and hand pick elected officials.

The purpose behind Gunned Down wasn’t to anger America off the sofa to fight the NRA.  It was to inure the PBS demographic to a narrative that not only suits the civilian arms industry but keeps the PBS viewership tuned in and comfortable with the "new normal."

Again, Russ Baker:  “By creating an aura of thoughtfulness, PBS has essentially lulled the public into complacency. By its very existence, it has convinced us that dissent is not only welcomed but has a vigorous presence in the American conversation. By having hard-core corporate operatives gently debate tepid reformers, it has given us the facade of open discussion and probing inquiries. Which is why those oil companies, banks, and foundations set up by the very rich are so happy to underwrite all that good taste”.