Safer Streets 101: L.A. murder while police are outside.

November 13, 8:02 AMLA Gun Rights ExaminerJohn Longenecker

Previous Next

12 comments Print Email RSS Subscribe

Subscribe

Get alerts when there is a new article from the LA Gun Rights Examiner. Read Examiner.com's terms of use.

Email Address   Include other special offers from Examiner.com Terms of Use

Today's Los Angeles Times reports how a man eluded LAPD Officers to kill a woman while the police were outside her apartment. [Mid-city slaying shows the difficulty of protecting domestic violence victims.]

The Times reports how Flor Medrano was stabbed to death by her ex while police were outside. Short version, they took her home from the police station, secured her apartment, and posted outside for a little while. When they telephoned her from downstairs to say they were leaving, they heard her screaming, ran upstairs, found her ex stabbing her, and shot him to death. Flor Medrano was pronounced dead at the hospital.

How could this have turned out if Flor Medrano herself were armed? We don't know how she felt about the spirit of self-defense, but she could have used it. Self-defense is not a less-than-lethal proposition, it is a ladder of force proposition of resolve and means, and in Kalifornia as it is today, that means and spirit are hidden and generally discouraged. I'm going to follow this to see what her plans were. There's a case study in this murder, and, in facing a new election in 2010, this case will add to others to illustrate areas of needed change. Suggestion: repeal all gun laws.

You see, this is not only the fate of anti-violence citizens, but their fate thanks also to the instruction of the anti-violence leaders and politicos who limit the choices citizens have. With the police just downstairs, Flor Medrano was still stabbed to death.

Please note those paragraphs of The Times report explaining how the officers phoned her, heard her screaming, and could not get in. So near, yet so far. Far too late, that is. As facts emerge, I will look for this: could she have stopped her own death? Was she preparing for any surprise attack from her ex? This is important, even when police are a few paces away, because the underlying truth is that no one can take your place as the first line of defense. My complaint is with anti-gun politicos who hide this – and other self-defense truths – from their electorate.

The Times reports how LAPD is trying to piece together how ‘a highly determined attacker' eluded officers posted outside her digs after she'd filed a domestic violence complaint. I have news for you: all successful attackers are highly motivated. Even drunks. Even opportunistic, impulsive thugs.

The question for Kalifornians is how motivated are we? How motivated is a 90-pound lady to defend herself from a 250-pound thug? How motivated is a father in stopping his child's abduction? Over-reaction, or serious-minded and necessary preparedness? Nobody else, including police, is going to do it for you.

Once you file a domestic violence complaint, you have to be on an emergency footing, and one of those items on that footing must be respected by officials; one is the waiting period for obtaining a gun for self-protection. The waiting period, for those who understand how on their own they really are, for those who understand that, in the final analysis, they are their own first line of defense, is much more of a sitting duck period.

It is this sort of abuses which puts the K in Kalifornia. No it doesn't have much to do with the Governor, it's all to do with the tactics of nearly all officials throughout the state. The thing that puts the K in Kalifornia is the idea of gun control for all citizens where the state can't even keep guns out of the hands of persons already prohibited from possessing a gun. It's like health care reform when the government can't even manage Medicare or vaccines on its first showing of performance.

Besides: Flor's ex didn't use a gun, he stabbed her to death, and fast.

So it is with gun control in Kalifornia. It doesn't save lives, it takes them by making every unarmed citizen as much the sitting duck as Flor Medrano was in an emergency. So near, yet so far.

Kalifornia is seeing a new run for Governor in Meg Whitman. She sounds like she has experience at real-life performance in business, the accountability of office, she articulates values well and not the bookkeeping fantasies of liberal theory. Would Whitman change how crime is met and survived? She can call me anytime for advice.

Any new candidate who runs on a conservative platform will have to consider gun control as a plank on the liberty ticket, something we need here and, frankly, everywhere. A little dose of Vitamin C (C for Constitution) is what we need, especially the second amendment.

More to come.

Be sure to register for my Safer Streets Newsletter.
_________________________________________

The second amendment is not about guns, it is about adult burdens and how we carry them so that government will not attempt to substitute itself for citizen power and authority. Safe Streets In The Nationwide Concealed Carry Of Handguns, (Hardcover) is the due process formula for smaller government, and is now available online as an e-book.