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What can we learn about gun violence?

In 2018, Congress revised the Dickey Amendment, a law passed in 1996 that prohibited the Center for Disease Control and Prevention from using federal funds intended for injury prevention from being used to advocate for gun control. In effect, any study of gun violence and the problems it causes in our society was shut down from 1996 until 2018. Today, the CDC can research gun violence, as long as it isn’t lobbying for gun control. About $50 million has been approved for such research in 2020 and 2021. There is so much we need to know about gun violence, and we need some ...

Et Cetera

Brewery Congratulations to Joseph Riemann for putting in the work to bring a new business to Fairmont. Drawn to our community by its natural beauty and sense of safety, Riemann’s decision to relocate to Fairmont should be a source of pride for all of us. It’s also great that he and his family want to contribute and bring in something new. Riemann utilized local resources for funding and has wasted no time in getting to know members of the community. While he still has some work ahead, we’re excited to see what he and people like him can accomplish in our little slice of ...

The Minnesota Supreme Court issued a ruling, based on the state’s laws, that a woman who was raped while she was drunk should not be considered mentally incapacitated, because she had consumed the alcohol willingly. Her attacker did not force her to consume alcohol against her will. Her attacker, therefore, is not liable for a more serious felony charge, though he could be chared with a gross misdemeanor charge. The man has been granted a new trial. Well, if that’s what the state’s law says, it’s time to fix the law. A person who is too intoxicated to know what they are ...

Boulder suspect shouldn’t have been sold a gun

The family of a suspect in the mass shooting in a Boulder, Colorado grocery store on Tuesday told investigators they thought he suffered some kind of mental illness, that he had delusions and sometimes believed people were following or chasing him. And yet, six days before the shooting, Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa, 21, was able to buy the AR-15 he used to kill 10 people, including a police officer who was first to respond to the shooting scene. We stated before, after the mass shooting at the Allina Medical Clinic in Buffalo by a man who is now about to undergo a court-ordered mental ...

Sign of progress

Minnesota reached a special point in the battle against COVID-19 on Monday. For the first time since last April 13 last year, the state recorded no new deaths due to the virus. There’s still a long, long way to go before the battle against COVID-19 is over, but this is an encouraging sign of progress. At its peak in December and January, COVID was claiming 50, 60, 70 lives a day or more. The peak was 101 on Nov. 27, 2020. We expect there will be more deaths in the future. But we should all do what we can to prevent the continued spread of the disease. First of all, get vaccinated as ...

The battle over voting rights

The battle over who gets to vote and how they get to vote is turning nasty. In a recent invitation-only call to Republican state lawmakers, the Associated Press reports, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) urged them to resist Democratic efforts to pass H.R. 1 and expand voting rights “to illegal aliens and child molesters.” “H.R. 1′s only objective is to ensure that Democrats can never again lose another election, that they will win and maintain control of the House of Representatives and the Senate and of the state legislatures for the next century,” Cruz is said to have told the group ...