In the fantasy world where NRA CEO and shill for the gun manufacturers, Wayne LaPierre, lives, the US is just one natural disaster away from a complete societal meltdown in which armed gangs roam the streets and chaos reigns. The only way to save our country, according LaPierre, and ourselves, is to buy as many semi-automatics with high capacity magazines as possible.

Then, when the “government” decides to confiscate all guns, we’ll flee with our wives and children to the hills where we’ll conduct some Red Dawn guerilla war in which we defeat the whole military industrial complex, that, for inexplicable reasons, have all decided to support a president and congress that has voted to abolish the second amendment.

In the meantime, we, the majority of the people who don’t believe Armageddon is in our future and who support common sense changes, cannot make ANY change to current gun laws. In fact, LaPierre believes we should continue to loosen laws to make it even easier for “law abiding citizens” to own and to carry firearms.

One of the tenets of the NRA’s arguments for loosening gun controls is that thousands of gun permit holders have used their weapons in self-defense. However, an investigative report from the Star Tribune in Minnesota shows that claim, like many the NRA makes, is completely false. Since 2003 only 5 instances of justifiable use of firearms by a permit holder have been reported. Three other cases were documented, but not reported. The FBI reported an average of 250 justifiable homicides per year from 2006-2010, an average of 5 per state, or well in line with what Minnesota has reported.

On the flip side, the Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension reports show that permit holders have been convicted of 124 crimes using a firearm during that same period of time. Nineteen of those cases were assaults, ten were for carrying under the influence, six were for drug-related crimes, and one was a homicide.

For those of us who believe Armageddon is not in our future, or that the “government” has no intention of taking away our guns, this Star Tribune report undermines the arguments of those who live in the alternate universe known as Wayne’s World, and for those who believe more guns make us safer.