After the Republicans, in their eagerness to pay back NRA for its generous support, told the local law enforcement here they WOULD issue permits to anyone qualified, the Star Tribune carried articles for many days running. THOUSANDS were clogging the system applying for these permits. According to all the gun experts, this was supposed to put our gang bangers on notice that potential victims would be able to return fire and geronimo! our gun violence problems would plummet. Boy, reading the paper lately sure has me puzzled. We seem to be a shooting gallery now. Was the news some sort of upper to the criminal element? Are they out there hoping someone will draw on them! Color me bemused.
Issue: Inspections
First, I was glad to hear that firefighters were going to be kept on payroll. I don't think the fire department should incorporate inspections, and I think the rehired firefighters should simply be detailed to accomplish inspections until they can be made fulltime firefighters again. Such things are done in city government. I had a former boss who worked in ITS and got detailed to the equipment division. So, there are precedents. But two questions do occur to me. Where is the Tenants Union in all these alleged failures by the city? And doesn't inspections take tenant reports of problems as a way to choose places to inspect and also for possible legal action against false truth-in-housing reports? I hope so because it would be pretty insipid to ignore tenant complaints and inspect "whatever we can get to".
Crime
I read that Clinton cops made no difference. Says who? Based on what? I read that good economic times were really responsible for the long, LONG downtrend in crime. Maybe so. But what does that tell you? That bad economic times foster crime? That knowing the deck is stacked and that rough stuff is socially approved tends to make people take matters into their own hands? The media let us all know we had a government financing assassins and selling arms to states that sponsored terrorism. How is a teenager supposed to process such information? That this is a society that values peace and harmony? That would be an imaginative inference for someone in the midst of life's biggest identity crisis. When the administration changed, we now were pulling out of places where we were being shot. We were deferring to peace-keeping organizations. AND we were doing something serious about making jobs available. The people in formative years could take that as "adults now think funding assassins is a bad idea". That might be reflected in their behavior. The evidence for all of this is about as strong as anything offered here. But if this is a thinking forum, maybe the strident advocates could think on these things. And maybe we ought to reflect on our city problems in their light. More guns do not buy more peace. More crackdowns, in the absence of something POSITIVE, do not produce a civil society. If you believe in that, maybe China is the place for you. They certainly share that philosophy. Look at Tiananmen Square. I truly believe some here think Minneapolis should adopt the Deng Xiao Peng worldview.
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Jim Mork
Cooper Neighborhood
Longfellow Community
Minneapolis, MN
We think. You'll like it here.
And we're more fun than a barrel of Norwegians
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