Only one politician, a Minnesota State legislator, has called attention to the worst threat to homeland security today. America’s gun laws would shock James Madison. He wrote the Second Amendment, after all. Madison had in mind security American freedom against a tyrannical government. But Congress and the legislatures should liberalize our gun laws for another reason. They might prevent a terrorist attack.

Minnesota gun laws and the Mall of America

The amusement park in the Mall of America. Photo: Jeremy Noble, CC BY 2.0 Generic License

The Islamist group Al-Shabbab, working in Somalia, threatened to attack American shopping malls. They named the Mall of America in particular. The Mall of America stands in Minnesota. So one should look at the gun laws of Minnesota. Then one can know why Al-Shabbab named that target. Notice they did not name Houston’s Galleria, for instance.

Minnesota’s gun laws do not let anyone conceal and carry a weapon. For $100, one can get a permit to carry a weapon openly. (Minnesota’s gun laws specify “shall issue.” So local sheriffs must issue such permits to anyone who applies and qualifies by an objective standard.) Those same gun laws do not let anyone younger than 21 carry a gun anywhere. (How ironic, that any law restricts the right of a voting citizen to do certain things.)

Under no circumstances may anyone carry a gun in a:

• School
• Day-care center
• Jail, prison, etc.
• Courthouse
• State building
• Federal building
• Any private place whose owner will not allow it.

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Note that last: any storekeeper, or mall keeper, has the absolute right to let people carry guns in his store or mall, or not, as he wishes. No law calls a store a gun-free zone. The owner can decide that.

The owners of the Mall of America, long ago, forbade all customers, storekeepers, and their staffs to carry guns in the mall or in any store.

A Minnesota legislator said this morning on Fox and Friends he would ask the Mall of America officials to abandon that policy.

What has the Mall of America done? They have held an attack drill. They shared some of their security measures with the Associated Press. They include:

• A K-9 corps
• A central surveillance monitoring station
• Checking every load for explosives

The K-9 corps might keep a Muslim terrorist out, or incite him to shoot. (Islam calls dogs unclean.) But what good can watching do, if the guard force cannot meet the threat as it develops? The AP article did not say. The drill included locking the place down. But what would they do, after men with guns walk into that gun-free zone and take shoppers hostage? A group of determined and desperate men could do it easily, especially as an inside job.

What gun control should mean

The best gun control is careful handling of a gun while using it in self-defense.

For your only sure defense against a bad guy with a gun, is you with a gun.

The Mall of America owners don’t understand that. Neither, sadly, do Minnesota voters. (Why else do they elect legislators who write gun laws like these?) At least one legislator wants someone to let people defend themselves. He might also want to urge his colleagues to respect the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

A well-regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

And what did Madison mean by “militia”? He meant you, me, and anyone else who could carry a weapon. He did not mean a designated armed force with regular or semi-regular enlistees. That describes the National Guard.

Al-Shabbab named the Mall of America for a reason. Its owners made it a gun-free zone. Of course terrorists will hit that. They will not waste men, bullets, and explosives to hit a hard target. Harden all targets, and the threat might go away. Even if not, the people can better deal with it.

Self-defense today becomes good homeland defense. Homeland defense cannot rely on a designated guard force. It must rely on individuals. That was true in the American Revolution. It is even truer today.

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