Happy New Year. Remember to flip over the calendar and write 2024 on your checks instead of 2023. If you still write checks.
I don’t remember hearing any gunshots at 12:00 a.m. Eastern Standard Time in Detroit earlier today. There used to be this tradition of shooting guns in the air to ring in the new year. The people who did that did so without stopping to think about the fact that what goes up must come down... somewhere.
It’s a change that’s still in progress: last night there was a “No Guns, Just Fun” rally, Luke Laster reports for CBS News Detroit.
The Detroit city clerk, city council members, police and fire department gathered at the Heilmann Recreation Center Sunday afternoon to ring in the year with a "No Guns, Just Fun" rally.
Speakers took the opportunity to hit on topics like gun ownership and the safety responsibilities that come with it. Detroit City Clerk Janice Winfrey says celebratory gunfire to ring in the new year is not the way to celebrate.
Instead, bells were distributed to use. The rally is held to discourage celebratory gunfire and to provide Detroiters in attendance with free gun locks, fire alarms, and also free food to welcome the new year.
I hope that’s also the case over in Minnesota as well, that they celebrate the new year with bells, not guns. At 1:00 a.m. Eastern, a new law went into effect in Minnesota, which is currently on Central Standard Time. The new law authorizes some commonsense gun regulation. Dana Ferguson for MPR News:
Beginning next week [from December 28, 2023], there is a new pathway for petitioning Minnesota judges to temporarily remove a person’s firearms if they’re believed to pose a risk to others or are at significant risk of suicide.
They’re officially called Extreme Risk Protection Orders, often referred to as a “red flag” law.
The policy takes effect on Jan. 1 after the DFL-led Legislature approved and Gov. Tim Walz authorized it earlier this year. [DFL is the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, which fully supports President Biden’s presidency.]
Groups that pushed for the law change said it could help prevent gun violence. They pointed to states that have passed similar measures where rates of firearm-related suicides dropped. Meanwhile, gun rights advocates said the policy could abridge Second Amendment rights.
Oh, right, yes, the Second Amendment, the one that was meant to ensure that individual states of the United States could equip their state militias those muskets that were very laborious to load and uncertain to fire, that amendment which is now understood to mean that any idiot can own any gun for any purpose whatsoever. Where’s a true originalist when you need one?
I guess now Minnesota Republicans are going to be screaming about the need to defund the police.
Law enforcement agencies note that each of these [gun removal order] situations is going to be resolved on a case-by-case basis, so it depends.
Officers could go to someone’s dwelling, present the order and remove the firearms. Minnesota police and sheriffs groups have said they’re training for these interactions now and will continue into early next year [2024].
The law also spells out that the individual named in the order could hand the firearms over to a family member or someone who has a federal firearms license and can hold the guns for them.
Sounds like a loophole to me, but it’s better than nothing.
DFLers in the Legislature have tried to pass a “red flag” law for years. But they came up short due to divided control in the statehouse. With slim majorities at the Capitol this year, they were able to get it across the finish line.
And of course the article quotes concerns that the new law “could deprive Minnesotans of Second Amendment rights.” I would ask Minnesotans who bring that up: “When’s the last time you showed up for drill at a Minnesota National Guard base?”
And hey, PT counts for this purpose. “Nah, we’re good, never mind,” is what I’m hoping they would say at the suggestion of doing jumping jacks and push-ups at the direction of some old staff sergeant.
Expect challenges to the new law to be completely free of any sense of irony in relation to diabolical anti-abortion laws.