Beware - Minnesotan packing heat

As a Minnesota expat, I've been watching with some mixture of horror and amazement as "my" state passed law after law turning the parks and streets and libraries into a twisted concealed-carry wild West. Churches have had to fight in court to keep concealed handguns out of their sanctuaries; whether they can ban guns from their parking lots is still up in the air.

At least I'm not the only one who's troubled over this metamorphosis:

Minnesota is only one step away from requiring every citizen to carry a gun and use it when provoked... This is what I’d expect of Florida, which recently passed a “shoot first” — also called a “shoot the Avon lady” — bill. I’d expect it of Texas too. But Minnesota? I grew up thinking of Minnesota as a socially progressive state. After all, it was home of the D.F.L. — the Democratic Farmer Labor Party — and a place where local control and common sense had strong roots. Like my family in Iowa, Minnesotans were gun owners because they hunted pheasants and rabbits and deer. But then I’m thinking of a time when the leadership of the National Rifle Association resembled a band of merry sportsmen and not the paranoid cabal it is today. Whether this was also a time when a legislator could vote his conscience, and not his gun lobbyist’s orders, I was too young to know.