It's been almost a year since the Minnesota concealed-carry law passed, over the shrill objections of fear-mongerers who don't trust ordinary folk to have any sense. "A return to the wild west" became the visualization of choice for those who tried to get publicity and contributions by opposing the Minnesota concealed-carry law. The control freaks claimed that crime would rise... that tens of thousands of new guns would be on our streets.

The we-don't-trust-you controllers rallied forces, convincing some gullible organizations to put signs out front banning handguns on their premises. Sure, they have a legal right to do that, and they should have the right, but doing it is so obviously ignorant that it labels the business as having more "political correctness" than brains.

First, the store owners probably wouldn't know if a patron was carrying or not. Most who carry do, in fact, conceal, although they don't legally have to. Wearing a holstered gun on your hip is perfectly legal.

Second, those with carry permits are most likely to just go to a competing business as a matter of principle, even if they're not carrying at the time. Third, it's an open invitation to thugs and crooks to target that establishment.

Back at the end of May, I wrote in "Much ado about nothing" :

The law change will allow many more people to get a permit to carry a concealed weapon. Some of them will. Some of those who get a permit will actually buy a gun. Some of those who buy a gun will actually carry it, concealed. That's the beauty of concealed carry... you're unlikely to ever know who is carrying... and the criminals won't know either... until there's a real need. Then you'll hope there's an armed citizen to help.

Well, the great return to the wild west has been a huge letdown. Fewer than half of those expected have gotten permits to carry, and there are no incidents to report. Something over 17,000 new permits have been issued... 17,000 supposedly brainless, reckless gunslingers turned loose on us... but where the hell are they? Have you seen any?

I know some of those new permit holders. They've joined the group of gun owners who are nothing at all like you might expect if you've listened to the Chicken Littles who want to disarm almost all of us (they usually make an exception for themselves). The gun-owning community is probably the most safety-conscious, responsible bunch of people you would ever hope to meet. They know guns, and they understand what guns can do... and they take that knowledge seriously. They practice using guns, at shooting ranges, so that they know how to control their weapon. They practice hitting what they aim at (which also means not hitting anything else).

Most handgun owners will never fire at anything but a target, but that practice does prepare them in case an emergency should arise. Nobody is "cool" in a dangerous situation, but a practiced gun owner won't have to worry about sloppy habits making a bad situation worse.

It's estimated that, so far this year, there have been over 3 million instances of gun owners stopping criminal attacks... that's once every 13 seconds. Hard to believe? Sure it is, because you seldom hear about those incidents. Media rarely covers them, because they're not big news... most of them don't involve any shooting... just the presence of the weapon halts the crime... and often leads to apprehension of the bad guys.

Here are 2 from the Detroit area:

Farmington Hills police said a 32-year-old Novi woman, who had a permit to carry a small-caliber pistol in her purse, stopped a man armed with a 9mm semiautomatic handgun from taking her $40,000 diamond ring and Rolex watch. When he came within about 10 feet, Dwyer said, the woman calmly pulled the gun out of her purse and pointed it at the man -- identified as Carl Walker, 21, of Detroit. Walker did not draw his weapon, police said. Instead, he ran to a nearby car and the woman called 911.

The Novi woman, mother of 2, who had once before been robbed at gunpoint, may have saved her own life, but she put a stop to a group of 4 thugs who would undoubtedly have done more of the same... and she did it without firing a shot.

Farmington Hills Police Chief William Dwyer, who dreaded a change in the law in 2001 to make it easier to receive a concealed weapons permit, admits that he's changing his mind about that law.

Two other men -- a father-son team accused of trying to rob a 65-year-old retiree -- are expected to be arraigned this morning in St. Clair County. The men already had robbed one woman before being stopped by the home owner's bullet on Friday, police said. The Ft. Gratiot Township home owner answered his door on Keewahdin Road about 8 p.m. and was accosted by a 20-year-old Worth Township man armed with a handgun. When the young man's attention was diverted, police said the home owner grabbed his own .38-caliber handgun and fired. "The round ended up coming out of his buttocks, so I'm sure he'll be thinking about that old man every time he sits down for a while," said Detective Lt. Mike Bloomfield of the St. Clair County Sheriff's Department.

"This is one of those ones that you hear as a policeman and you go, 'All right!' " Bloomfield said. "I mean, a guy breaks into a man's house armed, prepared to do harm, and the man defends himself. That's great."

Damned right it's great! Great for the retiree, and great for everyone else that the thugs would have attacked if they hadn't been stopped here by a gun-owning citizen. Their crime spree days are at an end. They were caught when trying to get the rump-wound cared for at a hospital.

Naturally, the Detroit Free Press, in reporting these incidents, had to seek "opposition" commentary, and they chose State Sen. Gilda Jacobs, D-Huntington Woods.

Can you guess what she had to say?
Praise for the citizens who protected themselves and others?
Praise for the Constitutional right to self-protection?
Delight that some thugs had been stopped?

Scroll down to read the swell intellectual comment from an elected official...

"We have to be careful we don't end up having the wild, wild west,"