Well, the people in Michigan have been allowed to exercise their Second-Amendment rights for a year now, and the handwringers are still waiting for blood to flow in the streets a la Dodge City.

But Michael Zagaroli, a Grand Rapids attorney who represented the state's police chiefs in their fight against the law, said it's too early to draw conclusions.

"I can't sit here and say there's been a huge problem that has cropped up, but it's only been one year. What may happen over five years? I just have to believe that injecting so many tens of thousands of additional guns into the public realm is not going to lead to good things."

"I have to believe, brother! Testify! Show us the power!"

To heck with rationality, or statistics, or empirical results, or...reality. He has to believe, thus demonstrating that anti-gun hysteria is irrational, and religious in nature (which we knew all along).

Here's another man who remains true to his faith:

Kent County Prosecutor William Forsyth expected the worst. He envisioned an armed populace "overreacting" and pulling guns to shoot purse snatchers. He was among 17 prosecutors across the state to quit their county's gun boards in protest of the new law.

"You just can't convince me that allowing everybody and anybody to carry a gun concealed on their person is going to make it a safer place to live," Forsyth said at the time. He did not return calls for this report.

I particularly like that last sentence. Rather than speaking in tongues, his fervent worship has apparently struck him recently dumb. Errrrr...mute. Based on the above, it sounds like the dumbness has been a longer-term problem.

Oh, but wait!

Maybe this is the reason that Michiganians haven't been perforated and desanguinated in record numbers over the past twelve months--they've been keeping the guns out of the hands of vicious criminals:

"Looking at your application, it shows you have a life- preserver violation," said Ottawa County Assistant Prosecutor Gregory Babbitt, who ran the meeting.

Vitunskas sank in his chair as he recalled fishing for catfish on the Grand River in June 2001 with two buddies on his 10-foot, flat-bottom boat. He said he didn't know it was a misdemeanor when he signed the DNR ticket for having two life jackets instead of three.

Sharp eyes, there, Mr. Prosecutor! That's right, we all know that it starts with life preservers, and from there it's straight down the steep and slippery slope to bank robberies.

But not all of the potential evildoers were so obvious:

A Grand Haven man was denied because he pruned a tree while deer hunting in a federal forest -- a misdemeanor...

...Forrest Brown figured he'd breeze through. The 45-year-old Grand Haven man expected to walk out of Ottawa County's May gun board meeting with a permit. His record is clean, except for the ticket he got from the state DNR in October 2000.

Brown said he didn't know he was committing a misdemeanor when he trimmed branches of scrub oak in a national forest to create a shooting lane for his father, who recently had hip surgery.

Yes, it would never have occurred to me, but the authorities know better--it starts with trimming branches, then it moves on to felling whole trees, and the next thing you know the perp's walking down Grand River Avenue plinking at baby carriages.

But alas--they're not perfect. Here's the one that slipped through the cracks, and really has me wiping sweat from my brow, as I contemplate the potential mayhem now that this fiend has gotten hold of a gun:

"There are still some holes in the system, some substantial holes," she said. "This is very much a self-reporting system. It's likely that if somebody wanted to represent themselves as having a clean record and had knowledge of how to do it, they may get away with it over a period of time."

A hole became apparent at a recent Kent County gun board meeting as members considered an applicant named Jason. The board didn't know about his misdemeanor criminal conviction for illegal use of a telephone in Montcalm County until he told them. A background check had turned up nothing.

They gave a gun to a...a...telephone user. And not just any telephone user, either. They gave it to an illegal telephone user. And I'll bet it was a concealed phone, too.

This is a man who shouldn't even be walking the streets, free to call people at will, perhaps telemarketing to them. But no, they not only let him roam free, but these incompetent ninnies give him a gun.

There's no telling what nefarious activities he's carrying out even as I type this, because of their malingering insouciance. He's probably using one hand to sell long-distance service for 4.8 cents a minute, and gunning down innocents with the other.

Well, at least, as we start to get the first news reports from the Great Lake State of the great telephone and gun massacre (I'm sure it will happen any day now, if not any year), some peoples' faith will be justified and renewed, and we'll finally be able to overturn this insane law that allows people to protect themselves.

*Holds up sign:
[9.7]

Funny Funny Funny.

"Illegal use of a telephone" -- I suspect there are pay-for-access websites devoted to this...

This reminds of a time that I was hanging out with a group of people that I hadn't really known for very long. They were nice people, fun group to run around and party with. Anywas I remember this one time a overly dramatic story came up on the local news and they were talking about a kid that got caught with a gun at a school. It was right around the columbine incident. They started talking about how evil guns were in general. And how they just didn't understand those hicks that felt like they needed to own guns, and shoot guns and, "Blow stuff up, Hardee har har." I just sat there and took it all in. I had heard about these anti gun people before but never really been in the middle of a group of them quite like this. Anways I let them carry on for about 15 minutes and then eventually dropped the bomb shell. I said, "I own 5 guns, I just bought a new Sig Sauer .357sig the other day, that gun is sweet." And a silence fell across the room and every single one of these faces turned and stared at me for several minutes as the words I just spoke chugged through their tofu & sprout eating heads. I could tell that there were all these things that they wanted to say, but I think the embarrasment of displaying their initial prejudices sort of caught them off guard. I just summed out the conversation with, "see a crazy gun touting idiot can be right under your noses and you'd never know it. KABAAM!"

The most amusing aspect of being a bigot is you never know you're one. There's always a reasonable basis for you to not like Blacks, or Jews, or Asians... or people who own guns.

Check out Deroy Murdock's piece on the Pink Pistols, over on NRO. There's a group that's giving the gay orthodoxy hives, the same way the Second Amendment Sisters gives the feminist establishment hiccups.

Yeah take my name in vein will you! Someday the Dodge family will sue and get the use of Dodge City and dodgy out of the popular lexicon. I mean it is offensive and I am hurt every time I hear it. I mean feminists got universites to call womeyn (sic), homosexuals are now gay, evolution is being replaced by creationism in schools and blacks are african-americans. We Dodges will not be oppresed anymore!

Never mind Dodge City, Ian. Sue Chrysler Corporation.

sadly, it is time to throw in the towel and resign ourselves to the fact that the CCR law is here to stay. About a month ago, I caught an interview on a local AM talk show with future Governer Jennifer Granholm. The host sandbagged her with this, pointed out her opposition to the law, and how the casualties she predicted didn't happen, and she (gasp) caved on it. She backpeddled as much as she could without outright admitting to being wrong. She has learned from Warner in VA that opposing guns (at least out loud) is no way to get elected in a state with (the horror) hunters as a major constituency. If we can't count on a liberal like Miss Granholm to fight the second amendment, who can we count on?

Damnit! You are all too clever, no one had a strop about my little rant...argh... :}p And who says bloggers are a bunch of morons?

Try this for size. In Michigan they can deny someone a CCW if you....don't sign your car registration card. Oh, the humanity.

"Kent County Prosecutor William Forsyth expected the worst. He envisioned an armed populace "overreacting" and pulling guns to shoot purse snatchers."

Is it really important whether or not a purse snatcher gets shot?