Rep. Luke Simons is perturbed to peaches. His House Bill 1381 aiming to permanently disallow any North Dakota city or one man’s last stand to form a government, from initiating a gun buy-back, ever, was called stupid by lots of people, including me, but this is the jab that got the young lawmaker worked up:

Nicholas Kristof, a columnist for The New York Times, also criticized the proposed North Dakota ban of state and local government-sponsored gun buy-backs, which he called possibly the “dumbest bit of legislation so far this year.”

Kristof acknowledged that the effectiveness of gun buy-back programs is controversial. In fact, he wrote, “we don’t really know whether gun buy-backs are a cost-effective way to reduce gun crimes, but there is some logic to the idea that if fewer unwanted guns are lying around, there will be fewer murders, accidents and suicides.” — Fargo Forum

Simons doesn’t like being called dumb, or so I’ve noticed, and he won’t put up with logic, so he wrote this Facebook post to remove all uncertainty:

• “When liberals squeal, you’re probably doing something right. Where there is smoke, there is fire. For to long North Dakota has sat back thinking this stuff that plagues this great nation won’t happen here, I hate to rain on your parade. But it’s coming. And we will be ready. (A teeny U.S.flag was pasted here, lest Luke’s country of origin be in doubt.)” — Rep. Luke Simons, R-Dickinson

What the hell was that? It looks like a poor first reading of the hillbilly sexual assault scene in the movie “Deliverance,” with a firey and rainy parade. The rain sounds nice. A plague wouldn’t be good, though.

• “Squeal. Squeal louder. Louder. Louder, louder. Louder! Louder! Louder! Get down now, boy. There, get them britches down. That’s that. You can do better than that, boy. You can do better than that. Come on, squeal. Squeal.” — Mountain Man, played by the firmly-against-rape Bill McKinney

Rep. Rick Becker may have found that scene funny since he finds the topic of rape humorous in meme form.

The liberals in Luke’s mind evidently play the Ned Beatty character being raped. He wrapped it up with a traditional Simons mix of incoherent cliches and gibberish.

But that’s a little rough, even for a wild-eyed liberal hater. Maybe it’s a new wave piece of poetry.

When liberals squeal

Something is right

The smoke is so real

There must be a hot light

We’ve sat on the back of stuff

Don’t leave the parade in a huff

Winter is coming and bringing a plague of druids

Be ready out there and drink plenty of fluids

Obviously, the composition is in wisenheimer code, but you get the message.

“I see what’s happening nationwide,” Simons said, adding that he wants to send a message that the programs are not welcome in North Dakota.

He sees what’s happening nationwide? I don’t what he’s talking about, but it can’t be gun buy-backs. They happen, but not across the country, so let’s not get carried away with boneheaded rhetoric.

And a message? To who or whomever? I guess it doesn’t matter because Simons’ method of message sending isn’t going to rattle any of the markets, so whomever his message was intended for, they didn’t get it.

I blame the schools for not teaching their pupils how to send a message that will sail over the bow of your nemesis like a cannonball, not just lay there.

Rob Port blames Heidi Heitkamp.

“First of all, we know the program just doesn’t work,” Simons said. He cites a study in Buffalo, N.Y., where buy-back programs got 3,000 guns off the street over a five-year period but did not reduce rates of gun homicides, gun assaults or gun robberies.”

How about suicides? These gun apologists don’t care about the suicides. It doesn’t meet the standards they’ve set for a gun death because the stats make bullet holes seem so sordid.

Removing guns from the home is critical to averting self-harm, an accident or a familial dispute tragedy. It’s well-known.

And Simons doesn’t have to be so happy about the gun crimes in New York.

I can’t find that Buffalo study, but I have located opinions on both sides of the issue. But it doesn’t matter how things went in New York because it’s just a Simons fever dream, where he gets to save the future from a harmless act.

Besides, he doesn’t care what a stupid New Yorker has to say, except for Donald J. Trump, who couldn’t make a deal with a deck of cards, so Luke must be one of those situational thinkers, fluid in his feelings.

• “I couldn’t really care less what somebody in New York says,” the bill’s sponsor, Rep. Luke Simons, R-Dickinson) — Plain Talk Podcast

See?

And.

• “He said he proposed the bill because he doesn’t want children seeing the government taking people’s guns and because the programs don’t work.” — Plain Talk Podcast

That’s what I did as a child. I hung around the police station and city hall, to see what the government was up to. No one was taking any guns while I was watching. If anything, the cops were passing them out.

But Simons isn’t concerned about a kid being shot to death, just the emotional scars the youngsters will have if they happen to see an old .38 that no longer has a forever home and is headed for the gallows.

You might think that one of our representatives is saving dalmatian pups from the gas chamber. Nope. Pup murdering is OK, but please don’t destroy a firearm. That would surely drive up the price of the other 260 million guns, or more, and make them too pricy for wannabe crooks to buy.

The free market keeps the criminal count down. I can’t believe the Bastiat Caucus didn’t spot this. I don’t know how many dollars the average rookie crook is holding. I’ll guess it to be a low amount. Pretty soon, the mutts will need a chunk of a good career and responsible savings before they can turn to crime. It’ll ruin the crime industry.

The poor are already priced out of the market, but Simons’ fellow Republicans are more concerned that those in poverty are getting too much food and birth control.

But don’t worry, Luke, the number of guns in civilian hands has increased drastically in the last few decades. The timeline coincides with the new fearmongering strategy of the NRA and bunker activists. Do you think guns will get rare?

• “The rise in privately-held guns came from the emergence of hardcore firearm aficionados who represent just 3 percent of all gun owners but individually possess an average of 17 guns each and collectively account for half of the civilian stockpile.” — National Firearms Survey
• “You don’t see criminals changing their minds and selling their guns,” Simons told me. — Plain Talk Podcast

How about people with suicidal ideation? Can they change their minds? Do some remove a lethal weapon from the home to eliminate the option for them or a family member? Of course, they do.

I don’t see criminals changing their minds, either. How do you see the mind changing? I call bullshit on that vision. Pre-criminals would have lots of doubts, like anyone entering into a new enterprise. People change their minds about their line of work all of the time. It seems like the job would carry a lot of stress and doubts. The hours would be terrible.

“It just doesn’t work,” Simons said.

Luke doesn’t know what works because it’s the guns he loves. But when you base your opinions on emotion, which is a vice among conservatives, you’re going to end up making a law that hamstrings communities in the future.

-Will Casselton, or even Fargo, ever have a gun buyback? I doubt it, but it isn’t for Luke Simons and the other gun fondlers in the Bastiat Caucus to pre-emptively tell a locale what it can legally do in 2045.

I don’t know what good it does to have an uninformed ideologue who bases the quality of his votes on the opinion of The American Conservative Union Foundation, based in Virginia, but they don’t pay for his large family’s health insurance.

Simons only represents a small percentage of his actual constituents — certainly not the liberals, he openly despises — and all guns, bump stocks and clips.

I’ve lived in Dickinson. Few folks are as far to the right as Rep. Simons. He is against background checks for all gun buyers and temporarily removing guns from someone deemed dangerous to themselves and others according to a court.

Why?

Far-right legislators want civilians to carry handguns at Bison games. Drunk or sober. Seriously. And thank goodness for Midco in case my bulletproof suit is at the cleaners on game day.

Supposedly, this is their idea of freedom