by Steve Timmer

Sep 2, 2025, 11:00 AM

Rob Doar, or your lying eyes?

Sweating profusely in the wake of the carnage at Annunciation School last week, gun sucker Rob Doar pens an op-ed in the Star Tribune defending, naturally, guns; Rob’s a reliable gun sucker with a life lease on space in the Minnesota Star Tribune. Regardless of whatever bloody carnage occurs, Rob can be depended upon to shoulder his bandoliers, sit down at the keyboard, and pen a screed that flies in the face of the most casual observation of events. He owes his sinecure to it.

There are renewed cries — and maybe a special legislative session — for greater gun control: an assault weapons ban, magazine size limitations, better background checks. Oh, no, says Rob, these won’t work and he cites a study conducted while John Ashcroft and Alberto Gonzales were attorney general. Swell. But the study has its critics, including Public Health and Surveillance:

In total, 1225 people were killed in a mass shooting over the past 53 years [the article was published in 2021] with more than half occurring in the last decade, a function of increases in mass shootings and weapon lethality [emphasis added].

* * *

The most striking finding from this study is that there was a reduction in the number of public mass shooting events while the FAWB [federal assault weapons ban] was in place. Using prediction models in combination with regression slopes, we estimate that 11 public mass shootings were avoided due to the FAWB. By projecting what would have happened if the FAWB remained in place, we found that there would have been significantly fewer public mass shootings if the FAWB had remained in place to 2019. Remarkably, although it is intuitive that the removal of assault weapons and magazine clips will reduce the lethality of a mass shooting, we observed an inverse relationship between weapons/ammunition and mass shooting events, meaning that mass shooters may be less likely to perpetrate a mass shooting without rapid fire military-style weapons [meaning without the firepower, perps are less likely to attempt mass shooting events].

You really ought to read the whole study.

When you go duck hunting, you can only carry a shotgun that holds three shells. We care more about ducks that we do kids.

The real problem is mental health, not guns, says Rob Doar, echoing the Louisiana cracker, Mike Johnson. But Doar doesn’t even want better background checks, and his organization opposed a red flag law. When you watch the video below, ask yourself: Who is really in need of mental health services, here? Could it be the glowering gunizens in maroon t-shirts, trucked in for the event, or maybe the sneering Rob Doar, or the beetle Andrew Rothman or the sex pest Tony Cornish?

Look in the mirror, Rob. And read up on the fact that other countries have citizens with mental health problems, too, but their citizens don’t shoot up the place with such mind-numbing frequency. They just don’t have access to military grade semi-automatic weapons and the shattering ammunition that goes with them.

This was a real shit-against-the-wall piece, even for Rob. He, and whoever pays his salary, must be pretty worried.

Doar has been a shameless gun sucker for quite a while; he got the job because he can breathe through his nose and he has two eyebrows. Here he is among the homunculi at a hearing about banning guns at the Capitol a dozen years ago.

There is a broader discussion of the video that you can read here.

Rob Doar is a policy genius who believes you should be able to brandish a weapon on a crowded LRT station platform.

I’ve wondered for a long time who really feathers Rob Doar’s nest. If you watch the video, you’ll readily conclude it isn’t the hang dogs attending the hearing on behalf of guns. They aren’t Rob’s patrons.

This is especially personal to me. The young girl shot to death at Annunciation School is the grandchild of my neighbors.

§ § §

Here are two links that I commend to you.

Brian Klass, baptized at Annunciation Church, now an academic in the United Kingdom, writing on his Substack in a piece that could be titled It’s the guns, stupid.

Ruth DeFoster, a professor at the Hubbard School of Journalism, writing an op-ed in the Minnesota Reformer titled How is the far-right outrage machine going to pivot away from gun policy this time?

§ § §

Update 9/3: In his usual pithy style, commenter Joe says:

With JD Underpants coming to Annunciation things, will be better. Ya, sure. Who the [heck] invited that waste of space? I doubt someone from the Church Community. It is seriously disappointing how quickly this is turning into a political lever.

Steve replies: I imagine he invited himself.