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VIN SUPRYNOWICZ: The last gun shop in Minneapolis
Since 1995, Mark Koscielski has been co-owner of the one remaining gun shop in Minneapolis.

On May 19, the city government would like to make that "zero" gun shops.

"They say it's a matter of the public's health, safety and welfare" Mark Koscielski told me last week. "Past mayor Sharon Sayles Belton said, 'If there's no gun shops there won't be any guns.' "

That makes Belton -- now a senior fellow in race relations at the University of Minnesota's Hubert H. Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs -- wrong on two counts.

As the case of Washington, D.C., proves, once it becomes impossible to legally buy a gun within a certain jurisdiction, the police and the other drug-carrying gangs become increasingly well-armed; it's only the law-abiding residents caught in the crossfire who have no recourse to self-defense....

...And to think we're talking about Minnesota, where -- in the town of Northfield -- the reign of terror of the post-Civil War James and Younger gangs was brought to a sudden end on Sept. 7, 1876, by townsfolk using loaded rifles handed out by the proprietor of the local hardware store (without a background check.)...