I am not a rebel.

I am a rule follower, a law and order kind of guy. It’s how I was raised. My father was a US Marine Corps drill sergeant and following rules was important in our family. When I was a kid, my siblings and I were not allowed to watch “The Dukes of Hazzard” because my dad didn’t like that it made a fool of the law. We were THAT kind of family.

I don’t have a problem with people who are not like me. I have friends and loved ones who are rule breakers and I find no fault with that. I do expect those who break the rules to accept the consequences of their actions, and I have no sympathy for those who complain when they are caught and held accountable for their actions. But if your principles lead you to break the law, and you are willing to accept the penalties if you are caught, then you are all good as far as I am concerned.

There have been a few times in my life when there were widespread protests against the government or law enforcement. I have never participated in these protests, not even once. It’s not that I’ve believed that all of the claims against law enforcement have been unwarranted: There have certainly been times when law enforcement has failed and holding them accountable was the right thing to do. But on the whole I have found the protests to be performative and a waste of time, and the protesters to be naive and/or uninformed. I have never felt motivated to join the rebels, even when I’ve shared some of their concerns with law enforcement tactics.

Something has changed in me this month. I am still a rule follower, and I still have the utmost respect for law enforcement. I feel sympathy for members of the Minneapolis and Saint Paul police: They are being put in an impossible situation and are handling themselves like the true professionals they are. But my respect does not, and will not, be extended to ICE agents. ICE has proven themselves undeserving of my respect and unworthy of my support. I can’t sit quietly by while my city is overrun by poorly trained and morally bankrupt mercenaries. I won’t sit quietly by while these masked men in desperate need of anger management therapy surround my home and terrorize my neighbors.

Reasonable people can disagree on the best policies to address the immigration problems in this country. Reasonable people can debate about how much, if any, state and local police should support immigration enforcement. People of good conscience can have different opinions on which undocumented immigrants are targeted, and how they are targeted. This goes beyond reasonable disagreement.

ICE agents are routinely violating the rights guaranteed to residents by law. ICE agents are hiding behind masks and insisting that they can do whatever they want to whoever they want with zero accountability. ICE leaders are claiming sweeping immunity to avoid accountability for any of their illegal actions. And most tellingly, administration officials are shamelessly lying about their agents’ actions, despite ample video evidence proving their dishonesty time and time again.

I refuse to be gaslit by these criminals. I will not be swayed by their propaganda. I will not look the other way while thousands of others suffer needlessly.

I am still not a rebel, but I am joining the rebellion. I will protest. I will observe ICE and record their crimes to ensure they can be held accountable in the future. I will support my neighbors who are living in fear, and I will never submit to living under the thumb of a lawless, unaccountable government.

I just spent time talking with an immigrant woman who I’ve known for a year or two now. She is legally in this country and as a green card holder she is permitted to work here. She had been here for more than 10 years, working and paying taxes. She has not committed any crimes and has a spotless record.

She has spent the last several years cleaning houses for a living. She works hard, does a good job, gets paid for her work, and pays all the taxes on her income. She has 3 young children, all of them born here and therefore US citizens.

As of right now, she is afraid to leave her house to work. ICE agents are harassing people with zero probable cause. People she knows in her community have been beaten up for no reason. Some have been taken away with no good explanation of why. She has had unidentified masked men coming up to her house trying to look into the windows. She has shown me a video of this, so I can personally vouch for it being true.

She is constantly looking over her shoulder to see if they are coming for her or her family. The look of fear on her face is ever present. She can’t work regularly for fear of being whisked away without due process. Her husband is out of work due to serious back injuries, and thanks to the “big beautiful bill” they no longer have access to health care, so her inability to work a full schedule affects her ability to feed and clothe her children.

She doesn’t want handouts. When I offer her a little money to help her get by she declines. She is a proud woman who wants to earn what she gets. She does not want to rely on the charity of others just to get by.

Kristi Noem insists that they are only going after targeted bad guys. dangerous criminals, the worst of the worst. She is lying her fucking ass off. They are going after anyone who looks Latino or Somali. They are ignoring the law and violently terrorizing law abiding residents.

This is Trumpism at its core. This is cruelty. This is terrorism. This is America remade in Trump’s image.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the concept of “consent of the governed.” English political philosopher John Locke was the first to articulate the concept, describing it as a foundation for legitimate government. Locke’s writings on the subject profoundly influenced early Americans like Thomas Jefferson, leading to these immortal words in the Declaration of Independence:

Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

As I look at what is going around my home in Minneapolis, I have to ask: Does anyone really think that the Trump administration can claim to have the consent of the governed? Recent national polls have shown an overwhelming disapproval of the administration’s approach to immigration enforcement. If elections were held today, Minnesotans would likely select a new governor far more liberal than Tim Walz, and Minneapolitans would almost certainly select a mayor far more combative towards law enforcement than Jacob Fry.

I realize that we’re not yet to the level of Minnesotans abandoning their “Minnesota Nice” upbringing long enough to overthrow the federal government. But we are moving slowly and steadily in that direction. With every escalation from the feds, the Trump administration loses a little more of the consent from which their power derives.

Trump and his cronies need to realize that they are losing consent. If not, then it is the right of “we the people” to alter or abolish the current administration.

On August 30, the Minnesota Star Tribune published a commentary from a leader of the Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus. His solution to the gun problem that killed one of my neighbors and seriously injured another? Pretty much anything BUT gun control.

I wrote a response. Today the Star Tribune published my response. I am sharing that letter here so that it can be viewed without paying for a Star Tribune subscription.

Please share if you are so inclined. The more we push back on the non-answers of the gun lobby with facts, the more likely we are to force change.

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In his Aug. 30 commentary, Rob Doar suggested what will and will not work to prevent mass shootings like the one at Annunciation Church, where a shooter killed two children, injured 21 and traumatized an entire community. As the senior vice president of Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus, his conclusions came as no surprise: Absolutely nothing should be done on the gun control front, and we should only consider solutions unrelated to gun control. He is wrong.

First, when dismissing the effectiveness of assault weapons bans, Doar misled us by cherry-picking a quote from a 2004 National Institute of Justice report: “We cannot clearly credit the [1994 Federal Assault Weapons] Ban with any of the nation’s recent drop in gun violence.” He conveniently left out the next two sentences: “However, the ban’s exemption of millions of pre-ban AWs [assault weapons] and LCMs [large capacity magazines] ensured that the effects of the law would occur only gradually. Those effects are still unfolding and may not be fully felt for several years into the future, particularly if foreign, pre-ban LCMs continue to be imported into the U.S. in large numbers.”

Second, he didn’t mention reputable studies, such as the RAND Corporation’s more recent analysis that found: “Among the three studies with higher methodological quality, one found that state assault weapon bans significantly reduced school shooting casualties, and one found that high-capacity magazine bans significantly reduced mass public shootings.”

Clearly there is evidence that assault weapon bans could save lives, particularly if we look honestly at the data on what did and did not work with the previous ban.

Third, Doar argued that an assault weapons ban wouldn’t have stopped the Annunciation shooter because the shooter carried a shotgun and pistol along with an AR-15-style assault rifle. Doar ignored the fact that the assault rifle was the primary weapon. Police reported that they recovered 116 rifle shells but only three shotgun shells. They also found one live round in a pistol that had malfunctioned.

Would an assault weapons ban have stopped the Annunciation Church shooter? We’ll never know. But it seems pretty likely that without the weapon that caused more than 97% of the carnage, there would have been fewer casualties.

Fourth, Doar dismissed enhanced background checks by noting that the Annunciation shooter passed one. But, while background checks did not stop this tragedy, it doesn’t follow that they have not and will not stop others. While it is hard to get reliable data on how effective background checks are, there is a well-documented correlation between states implementing stricter background checks and statistically significant decreases in firearms homicides and suicides.

Finally, after dismissing any kind of gun control, Doar suggests what would work: Mental health care improvements, hardening soft targets and limiting media publicity that gives shooters the attention they crave. Most people on both sides of the gun control debate support these three suggestions. However, the U.S. has the highest level of gun violence in the world, by far, compared to other wealthy countries. These same countries have soft target schools and places of worship. They have media who report on crime. Some even have similar problems with mental health care disparities. None have the gun violence problem the U.S. does. Why? Massive differences in access to guns.

Our elected officials and those against gun control owe it to the rest of us and their own communities to look honestly at the actual evidence rather than cherry-picked snippets that support unrestricted access to all guns of any kind. They need to be open to the possibility that some gun restrictions might actually help address the mass shooting epidemic in this country. If we can save even one child’s life, wouldn’t it be worth it?