The Last Gun Shop in Minneapolisby
Vin Suprynowicz
Since 1995, Mark Koscielski has been co-owner of the one remaining gun shop in Minneapolis. On
May 19, the city government would like to make that "zero"
gun shops. That makes Belton – now a senior fellow in race relations at the University of Minnesota's Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs – wrong on two counts. As the case of Washington, D.C., proves, once it becomes impossible to legally buy a gun within a certain jurisdiction, the police and the other drug-carrying gangs become increasingly well armed; it's only the law-abiding residents caught in the crossfire who have no recourse to self-defense. Net result? As John Lott proved in his exhaustive study More Guns, Less Crime (University of Chicago Press, 1998), the murder and armed robbery rates in "gun-free" jurisdictions skyrocket, or remain high while counties that "allow" citizens to carry weapons see their violent crime rates drop. (The crime rate in Vermont, where anyone can carry a concealed weapon without a "permit," is unusually low.) And as Lott and others have since demonstrated, that's not just here in the United States, but in Britain and Australia as well. But Belton's second and largest error lies in the notion that the "public health and safety" are improved when the government police have guns but the average citizen does not. Ask the residents of Poland in the 1940s – or Laos in the 1970s – how that works out. And to think we're talking about Minnesota, where – in the town of Northfield – the reign of terror of the post-Civil War James and Younger gangs was brought to a sudden end on Sept. 7, 1876, by townsfolk using loaded rifles handed out by the proprietor of the local hardware store (without a background check.) The Minneapolis city fathers moved to effectively outlaw gun stores in their city – by making it illegal to site a store within 500 feet of a church, a school or day care center, a park, or a library, or within 250 feet of any residence – in 1995. Mark Koscielski outsmarted them, managing to open his store at its original location just days before the law went into effect, which meant he was "grandfathered in." But the energy and deviousness of the hoplophobes are not to be underestimated. Koscielski contends his previous landlord became the beneficiary of $1.2 million in "Neighborhood Revitalization Program" money "to plant some trees and put in some new lights, but one of the council members of that ward wrote in a newsletter that one of the conditions was that he was not to renew the lease of the gun shop." So in 2002, Koscielski moved to his new location, which is not in compliance with the zoning law. Earlier this month, the city sent Koscielski an order telling him to cease operating the gun shop by April 18, because it is out of compliance with the zoning codes. Thursday's hearing is before the local Board of Adjustments. The last time Koscielski went to court on the matter, "They pulled this rabbit out of the hat on us and the judge; they came up with this list of 183 places where supposedly we could have a gun shop. One was the county jail. They gave us this list a year prior to our move; we went out and photographed these addresses, they were the county jail, a loading dock, the medical examiner's office, and so forth." Koscielski says one of the addresses turned out to be the offices of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. The city has since given him three legitimate addresses to which he could relocate, Koscielski admits, "but they didn't come up with those until three or four months after we'd moved." And he's not relocating to one of those sites because ... it would be too financially prohibitive? "I think that ran me around 18 grand to move a mile-and-a-half to this location, just for signs and to beef up security and so forth. ... "They claim this is for the public's health, safety and welfare. They seem to think if I was 499 feet from a library, people would come buy a gun and go shoot up the library. But if I was 501 feet from a library, people are going to say, 'Oh, he's 501 feet from a library, now I can't go shoot anyone there.' It's totally asinine. ... "At the old shop what happened is for about three years there they opened up a day care center with the city's blessing right next door to my gun shop. They said, 'It's OK for a day care center to move in next to you, but you can't move in next to a day care center.' So go figure."
Vin Suprynowicz [send him mail] is assistant editorial page editor of the daily Las Vegas Review-Journal and author of The Black Arrow. Copyright © 2005 Vin Suprynowicz |
