Saldaña testifying in a body armor vest.
(Rich Pedroncelli / The Associated Press)
Oakland's KTVU.com has posted a video of an open carry debate hosted by the Commonwealth Club in the East Bay city of Lafayette. At the end of it, we learn that CA Assembly member Lori Saldaña, author of a bill to ban the practice of open carry in California, travels under the protection of an armed security detail.
Click here to watch it and then come on back for a discussion.
The first thing that strikes me is how the media frames terms, and correspondent Debora Villalon crossed a line from objective reporter to editorialist when she characterized citizens carrying firearms as "flaunting their right to pack heat."
Karen Arntzen of the Brady Campaign stuck to the talking point that armed citizens are "extending personal risk out to society." This, of course, is the same argument they've used to fight concealed carry laws as well (along with making insulting and unfounded Dodge City analogies). Among the numerous problems with her contention: It directly contradicts a new admission by Brady Communications Director Peter Hamm:
Hamm said criminals are more likely to pick a target who isn't armed.
Of the attendees interviewed, the one who disappoints is the self-described "Second Amendment guy" who says he doesn't care. Just great, buddy. If it's not your ox being gored let the government do what it wants. So who's going to care when it is your ox?
Come we now to the focus of this piece, Lori Saldaña, a politician who is working to ensure you have no choice when it comes to armed personal defense. Saldana claims "it's really about intimidation" and "a real mistrust of law enforcement."
It's not that the irony of cops being the "Only Ones" armed (aside from criminals, of course) escapes her, it's that she doesn't care. She's got hers and intends to keep it that way as we learn she is traveling with an armed security detail because, as with testifying in a protective vest (see photo, above), it creates great media theater and provides an instant visual that her political opponents must be violent armed extremists.
Her justification for the armed escort? She's become a "lightning rod" and "she's had to step up her personal protection."
And if you have to "step up" yours?
[Thanks to Anthony Bouchard for the news tip]
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Man in the middle
I just noticed the following comment on a prior column and wanted to share it with you:
middleman says: Since when does the governing of our nation pivot solely on the support for assault weapons. You and all of your drug-lord loving friends need to get a grip and quit hiding behind the 2nd. Why don't you move to the Arizona or Texas border and experience the assault weapon diaster we have on our hands.
Explain your lack of support for the law enforcement folks down there that are ducking or taking automatic rounds from the very weapons we make available to drug cartels and other human rights violators. Our military and our police officers are the only folks who need assault weapons.
Why don't you consider what political leaders have done to make sure the right folks have the assault weapons, instead of making them available to everyone which includes most prominently the criminals that your open ended vote will support. Get real and put your stubborn politics aside for a moment and think.
So many errors in "reasoning," particularly with his completely falling for the automatic=semiautomatic deception. If you'd like to try and see if he's capable of putting his stubborn ignorance aside for a moment and thinking, be my guest.
Comments
Another commie that should be swinging in the wind.
Again, the root of the problem is not Ms. Saldana. It is the doofus voters that keep returning the Boxers, Feinsteins, Daleys, Shumers, McCarthys et al ad nausaum to office.
Where do these whiners come from? Be a real person and carry your own protection. Most importantly, leave everyone else alone and let them obey the laws in their own manner. Fascists everywhere! VOTE VOTE VOTE
You carry your own gun, because
1) When you need a cop they are unfortunately only 5 minutes away
2) Cops, bless them all, are too heavy to carry around
3) You are usually a better shot, from what I have seen, than most LEO's, because they aren't MADE to practice enough, and the cities are too CHEAP to provide ammo. The liberal politians would spend millions to defend a creep captured in a shoot out, rather than expend the moneys such that a LEO had a good chance at a succesful head shot at the perp, if need be.
TrackerPacker, an open carrier from San Diego (currently observing the stand down requested by CalGuns Foundation) drove to San Francisco for the debate and was "lucky" enough to chat with security:
caopencarry.blogspot.com/2010/06/lafayette-memorial-debate-on-ab1934.html
If I lived in Saldana's kingdom I'm afraid I would live the life of a criminal. Luckily, I live in Arizona. Even here, as of late, I've seen more and MORE fellow citizens open carrying. Thanks to whoever reported the security detail.
Saldana, like this buffoon "middleman", is a walking cornucopia of deliberately misleading fabrications. Mao, Hitler, or Stalin would have jumped on the chance to have these two on their teams. Saldana would make a smashing good propagandist and "middleman" would have been the perfect useful idiot.
Right on DDS I'm an NRA LM too - but the NRA is also full of doofs that won't get rid of Wayne L.! We need more of Ted N. and less of Wayne L. Flip that house too! I'm also a LM of GOA, a group that REALLY works to protect the 2A
The idea that if Congressmen voted on 'such good health care' for the masses, it should be good enough for them to, instead of having a different 'special' health care for them. If it's good for the goose, it's good for the gander too - - the same thing goes for Lori Saldaña.
If she thinks we should go about our business unarmed, she needs to lose her 'hit squad goons' that she carries around with her.
Lori Saldana is a right wingnut! She tried to have telescopic sights registered because ".. they are tactical ..". Her armed escorts first came into the public eye at a meeting here in San Diego because she was afraid of the Minuteman folks. So much for a lawmaker with a Phys Ed degree.
I live in AZ and I always carry. If I lived in CA I would do so there as well because I do not care what the law says. Anyone who obeys a law against protecting themselves deserves what they get and has no one to blame but themselves. Grow a pair and take a stand. They do not have enough cops or jail cells for everyone.
My personal opinion is Saldana is one ugly woman who can only get attention by sponsoring something like this. Take away her taxpayer armed escort and the bullet proof vest and see how quickly she pulls in every political favor she can to get a concealed weapons permit. By the way does she have one? Anyone check lately? And why does she think she is worth a threat to the point she has to wear a bulletproof vest and have an armed escort at taxpayer expense? I have challenged serious criminals and never felt the need to wear a armored vest or have bodyguards. Does she think she is that important? If so she is delusional. You have lower crime rates in cities that have larger numbers of concealed weapons permits and open carry with loaded pistols. She has no stats to disprove that. Americans are buying guns at record rates because cops can't do the job with the layoffs and no citizen is using his legal firearm to commit a crime. she knows her bill does not enjoy public support.
Hate to say it as I am a strong 2a supporter but the CA open carry movement walked right into this. Public open carry demonstrations to garner media coverage in support for 2a was, somewhat predictably, bound to create a public backlash, especially in CA. Highly publicized open carry demos only frightened people and gave the anti's good reason to outlaw ANY form of public OC and paint us as people of poor judgement. Supposedly the proposed legislation will have an exception for hunting or ranges, but we Californians know how our legislature can mess even the simple things up.
I understand that open cary advocates say, what good is a right if you don't use it. My response is if you don't use common sense in exercising your rights, you will find your liberty short lived. So always be responsible in your use of firearms, ALWAYS! Possibly there is a lesson for people in other States that can be learned from this, I hope so!
EdinSac!
Think about what you said!
Common sense dictates that if you believe in and support the 2nd amendment (and the constitution as a whole, I hope), then you would have no problem with open carry, under any circumstances. In fact, if you were a 2nd amendment supporter, you would be aghast at the 20,000 plus gun "laws" in America that attempts to, in one way or another, stifle your 2nd amendment reminder to the the government that it shall NOT be infringed. And ... you would not give a hoot what these sheep and wusses think. We didn't win the war of independence by worrying what or how the redcoats ... feel.
Interesting that a 1st amendment right is also being infringed isn't it. The complaints are not about a single individual openly carrying it is about the assembly of those people which is protected under our civil rights, constitution and human rights that are all adopted by the United States. If we infringe the right of free speech and the right to peaceful assembly we have now lost our constitution here in California. I am sorry we have such an ignorant Assembly. I HOPE THE SENATE DOES NOT SUPPORT AB 1934. If they do they now have taken a stance against the people to assemble which has been upheld by the US Consitution.
I will be at the public safety meeting at the Capitol on 6/22 at 9:30am. WILL YOU?
Chuck Devore Speech
"The proponents of open carry are exercising their first amendment right of the people to peaceably assemble. A right that is says very clearly at our first amendment that congress shall not abridge this right and as we know through case law at the US supreme court level this has been found to apply to the states by the fourteenth amendment and so I was shocked when I heard the proponent of this measure not only put forward what I view as an assault on the 2nd amendment but also specifically mention protest as if this bill would close off an avenue of the people's free speech rights in this case to protest increasingly restrictive government rules on the right to keep and bear arms. Yes, Is the open carry movement a protest? Yes it is. Is peaceable protest protected under our first amendment? Yes it is. So ladies and gentlemen I expected the attack on the 2nd amendment this morning what was entirely unexpected to me was an open throated assault on the first....
If I had an armed escort, I wouldn't need to carry either...
To EdenSac:
If exercising one's liberty invites tyranny, is it not better to meet it head on?
"When governments fear the people there is liberty. When the people fear the government there is tyranny." - Thomas Jefferson
Sign the petition for California at petitiononline.com/CalOC/petition dot html - AB 1934 must be stopped.
In 2008 the Supreme Court said that the Second Amendment secures "the individual right to possess and carry weapons in case of confrontation." What part of right-to-carry does Asemblywoman Saldana not understand?
Sign the petition today! And then TAKE ACTION at www.opencarry.org/ab1934 dot html
This is typical. When a democrat doesn't like something (s)he legislates it passing a law against it. This hyprocrite is a typical democrat. "Do as I say and not as I do" is what the CA democrats do in CA. They think Californians are second class citizens. Let's pass a petition demanding that if a politician needed any escort they need to pay it out of their private money and not from taxpayer money. In the meantime, remove the protection detail. I also wonder if she has a CCW issued in L.A., which is another county with countless restrictions as most Bay ARea counties. CA is bankrupt because of these idiotic democrat politicians. Time to change CA. Food for thought re AZ SB1070. L.A. and SF and other cities boycotting AZ. What if AZ pulls the plug on the electric grid that feeds L.A. and shuts down the damn that feeds the water to L.A.? These politcians do things from their asses rather than their pea brains.
I think it funny that our so called Rep.s in Sac/Wash. D.C., seem to think they have the right to be armed and not the citizens. I don't care if they pack on their persons or hire someone to protect them, THEY USE GUNS TOO. Are they better than citizens or just more self centered. Note to middleman,If the founding fathers thought the same way we might still be British. In case you don't get it, the police and military can only react after an incident. Your on your own until they come if your alive. Protect yourself.
Ms. Saldana is termed out, and will be leaving elective office at the end of the year. Who will be paying for her armed escort then?
Look up the definition of "hypocrisy" in the dictionary, and there will be a picture of Lori Saldana.
Why hasn't the media asked her why it's OK for her to have armed protection, but not OK for other citizens?
I wonder if Saldana is of the many mentally handy capped who actually think you can go to Wal-Mart and purchase gernade launchers,50cal. machine guns and burp pistols as was portrayed on last weeks news . 95%of guns from the good ole U.S.A.are Gov,t surplus sold all over the world to rogue countrys and then sold to mexico via.black market.The same goes for those gernade launchers you see every day being carried by obamas friends and allies in Afganistan.Most arms crossing the border protect drugs coming in and protect money going out NOT PURCHASED HERE.!!!!!!!!!!!
Lori Saldaña demonstrates what many of us say about why we carry - "I carry a gun because a cop is too heavy." She is pictured wearing body armor, which is regulated for the general public, and I'd be willing to bet that her armed escort and the vehicle that makes it possible for her to have security is either provided at no cost or she has the cost reimbursed by the tax payers. In answer to the idea that those that carry don't trust law enforcement - I trust law enforcement, but when seconds count they are only minutes away. On the side of a rant - I am sick and tired of politicians that tell us we cannot exercise our Constitutionally guaranteed Rights while they flaunt their ability to do so in front of us!
She's got head like a melon. xnay people
Lori Saldaña is showing her "mistrust of law enforcement", by having someone open carry a gun for her, instead of using 911 like her subjects are expected to.
She is traveling with an armed security detail, probably paid for by taxpayers.
I am sure the IRS would be interested in the imputed income that she is not reporting.
Nearly ALL of the anti-gun big wigs have Personal Body guards because THEY are special. They can kiss my ass with their special lips.
Really Saldaña, you had to wear a flak jacket along with your armed security escort to give your um, speech. Especially since it was conducted in a "Sterile Area". Wow, if it's that bad out there, then I think she has more or less justified why one would want to have some type of protection i.e. unloaded open carry (since hardly anyone can get a CCW in this State). For that matter I think she has justified why CA should be a "shall issue CCW State". The question is why she wants to put all citizens in the whole State in harms way, with no way to protect themselves, their friends or family. I'm sure she is aware of all of numerous police lay-offs State wide. How long will it take for law enforcement to show up at your door when you call 911 for help when you need them? Good luck, when you have a skeleton crew working cause the other half was just laid-off. I wonder if Saldaña has a concealed gun permit. The info is readily accessible to the public by law. Might be interesting to see
Saldana is a two dollar whore who has managed to inflate the going rate for "virgin seesters"
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