ANSWER: When it is the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence (formerly Handgun Control, Inc.) who is grading you!
The Brady Campaign has just released their 2008 state scorecards and I am proud to say that Minnesota has failed miserably! Scoring a mere 11 points out of a possible 100, Minnesota has once again failed to infringe enough of their citizens’ rights to satisfy the extremists at the Brady Campaign.
You see … the way it works is this. The Brady Campaign awards points for each infringement that a state has enacted such as banning certain classes of firearms altogether, outlawing private sales and requiring as-yet non-existent personalization technology on firearms. A score of 100 would, in their eyes, mean that you live in a utopia. In practice, it probably means that you live in a dictatorship or under the rule of an authoritarian regime.
Despite the fact that Minnesotans are already burdened with a number of requirements that are more stringent than most states such as a 7 day waiting period on the purchase of handguns and so-called “assault” weapons, the Brady Campaign feels that Minnesota has not regulated their citizens nearly enough.
Once again, the Brady Campaign has missed the point and chosen to attack law-abiding hunters and gun owners rather than address the root causes of crime in our culture such as poverty, drug addiction, mental health treatment and social and economic hopelessness. If Minnesota needs to improve its approach to crime prevention, then it should start by lifting up those in need and not by pushing down on law-abiding gun owners!
