The Minnesota Department of Public Safety has hired a longtime gun control activist to serve as the agency’s “Extreme Risk Protection Order Coordinator”; a move that’s drawn swift condemnation from the Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus.
In a letter to DPS Commissioner Bob Jacobson, Caucus chair Bryan Strawser highlighted some of the extremist views espoused by Rachael Joseph and told the commissioner it’s “difficult to imagine a more divisive and inappropriate individual to place in a taxpayer funded role overseeing the implementation of Minnesota’s controversial ‘red flag’ law.”
Ms. Joseph is not a neutral public servant-she is an entrenched political activist with a long record of hostility toward law-abiding gun owners and elected officials.
She has:
Appeared on a podcast where the Republican Chair of the House Public Safety Committee was crudely referred to as a “pigf-er” for refusing to advance gun control legislation.
Threatened to protest at the homes and workplaces of Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus leaders-an intimidation tactic wholly unbecoming of someone now tasked with enforcing state policy.
Been deemed too extreme even for Protect Minnesota, Moms Demand Action, and Everytown for Gun Safety, organizations not known for moderation on this issue. We’re informed that Everytown/Moms no longer allows Ms. Joseph to volunteer with them.
Joseph has previously accused Strawser of “arguing for more child murders” for his opposition to gun control legislation, while claiming that opposing gun storage requirements that mandate firearms be kept locked up, unloaded, with ammunition stored separately is somehow “murder advocacy.”
Strawser’s letter also includes links to two posts on Medium authored by Joseph, including one entitled “White Supremacy and the Pro-Gun Movement”. It looks like Joseph has wiped her Medium account clean, however.
One post that did survive her purge is a 2022 column in the Minnesota Reformer where Joseph argued that the gun control movement “must keep police at an arm’s length”; a position that puts her at odds with her current role in coordinating the implementation of Extreme Risk Protection Orders. After all, it’s law enforcement that’s charged with serving those orders and confiscating any legally owned firearms from the subject of an ERPO.
Historically, the national gun violence prevention movement has long asserted that they needed cops on their side to pass legislation on guns. Clearly, that approach failed and we’ve seen organizations like Moms Demand Action and Everytown for Gun Safety sell their souls and work with the Fraternal Order of Police, the most racist, white supremacist police union in the country.
The gun violence prevention movement must keep police at an arm’s length starting now. The origins of modern policing are bound up with white supremacy, and the negative impact of today’s militarized police on BIPOC people are plainly obvious. Moreover, every dollar spent on policing is a dollar not spent on attacking the root causes of gun violence.
If Joseph is now working directly for a law enforcement agency, does that mean she’s sold her soul too? Or has she decided that maybe policing isn’t all that bad so long as it’s focused on gun confiscation?
Either way, Strawser is right when he says that this position should be staffed by a “qualified professional who will approach this sensitive responsibility with the impartiality, fairness, and respect for constitutional rights that Minnesotans deserve.” Hiring an anti-gun extremist like Joseph is a huge mistake on the part of DPS, and Minnesota gun owners should add their name to the MN Gun Owners Caucus petition demanding her ouster.
Editor’s Note: The radical left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.
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