No Matter What He Does... Hmm, What Could It Be?

Back in mid-September, the Star Tribune published these poll results about Minnesota's statewide races:

They show men favoring the Republican challengers and women favoring the incumbent Democrats, but also that Attorney General Keith Ellison isn't favored by quite as many women, and he's disfavored by substantially more men than the other two statewide Democratic candidates.

This is playing out around the favorite Republican talking point of Ellison being "soft on crime," even though the state's Attorney General has almost nothing to do with law enforcement, which is carried out at the county and municipal levels. 

An example of this showed up in the Strib a few days before the poll was published in a story about how people planned to vote. A young, male Gen Xer from the north metro suburbs was quoted as saying he was splitting his ticket: he would be voting for Walz and Simon for governor and secretary of state, but definitely not for Ellison, who he said was a "divisive" figure who "does not represent Minnesota well." (Those two descriptors are vague and easy to see as code words for Black, it seems to me.) And, of course, he said that "tackling crime" is one of his top priorities.

Well, yesterday, Keith Ellison did one of the few things that the Attorney General can do about crime: his office filed a civil suit against the retail chain Fleet Farm for "negligently selling firearms to straw purchasers, aiding and abetting these criminals, and contributing to gun trafficking in Minnesota by allowing guns to get into the wrong hands." 

Getting illegal guns off the street: hey, that's part of bringing down the worst crime of all, right? Some of the guns proven to be sold to straw purchasers at Fleet Farm were used in a high-profile homicide or were left where young children had access to them. Many are still out on the street. The straw buyers have already been convicted.

So, you would think Ellison's action would meet with approval from all the law-and-order types who say he's soft on crime, right?

You would be wrong. 

Maybe some of them approve (who knows?), but as soon as the AG's suit was announced, there was a chorus of right-wing voices yelling that Ellison should go after real criminals and leave legitimate retail businesses like Fleet Farm alone.

Fleet Farm so far insists they have done nothing wrong, but I don't see how that will hold up against these details:

• The straw buyers made multiple purchases of similar handguns, especially 9mm guns, in buying sprees within concentrated periods of time. Specifically in one instance, they bought 24 guns between June and October 2021.
  
• They staggered their visits to different Fleet Farm locations to elude multiple-sale reporting requirements…but Fleet Farm has these things called computers and an inventory system that should be able to track that.

The relief sought in the AG's suit (remember, it's a civil suit, not criminal) includes greater oversight of Fleet Farm's operations, increased training to stop sales to straw purchasers, and payment of their profits from the past straw purchase sales.

No matter what Keith Ellison does, these people will rail against him and try to bring him down. They'd rather have an attorney general who has never been in a court room, who doesn't seem to understand what the job duties are, but who's a white guy who looks like them.