I grew up shooting guns and did Minnesota gun safety training, c.1980s. We never talked about the 2nd Amendment and our "rights being taken away"? Know why? Because a decades-long campaign of fear led by the NRA, MN Gun Owners Caucus, etc made this all up. www.startribune.com/tolkkinen-sh... 1/2
Tolkinnen's namby-pamby, smooth-brain treatment of guns in Minneapolis versus outstate (a completely dumb dichotomy to start with) in this @startribune.com piece is shameful. This is what you get with Steve Grove driving the bus. 2/2
As others have pointed out, the suicide rate (guns often involved) in rural Minnesota is much higher than in the Twin Cities. @startribune.com does a disservice to all Minnesotans when they publish myopic tripe like this Tolkinnen piece that ignores the elephant in the living room--gun suicide. 1/2
She doesn’t list poisonous snakes or tarantulas in the paragraph about other ways people kill people — even though it’s in the headline in a story right next to hers on the Strib website.
All leaders and journalists need to read this: www.ruralmn.org/the-suicide-... Even the Center for Rural Policy and Development admits it's the guns: "Access to firearms: Among the many factors contributing to a higher suicide rate in rural Minnesota, the largest one may be access to firearms."