Posted on 08/21/2002 10:37:27 AM PDT by 45Auto
Violent crime jumped last year in California. That rise in crime brought to an end the state's eight-year trend of decreasing crime. In cities with populations of 100,000 or more, serious crime rose 3.5 percent.
Statewide, forcible rapes went up 6.6 percent, homicides went up 3.9 percent, and motor vehicle thefts increased by 8.9 percent. In Los Angeles alone, the overall homicide figure went up 27.5 percent. Serious crimes also rose in Riverside, San Diego, San Francisco and San Jose.
But wait!
There is one county in California where crime is not increasing. In this particular county there has, in fact, been a 29 percent decrease in violent crime in the past year! That county would be Orange County Santa Ana, Disneyland, Newport Beach, etc.
Would any of you care to guess why some people think crime is dropping in Orange County while it's climbing throughout California? Could it possibly be that Orange is the only urban county in California that allows its citizens to carry concealed weapons? Carrying a concealed weapon is virtually taboo elsewhere in the state, unless you're a celebrity, a politician or someone guarding a celebrity or a politician.
Predators in California are enjoying a field day. Californians have recently been treated to a host of other restrictions on their Second Amendment rights. They have to wait 10 days to take delivery on firearms purchases. They've been restricted to one gun purchase per month. They can no longer buy, sell or trade high-capacity magazines made before the 1994 ban. And they had to register so-called assault weapons with the state before January 1, 2000.
The people who abide by these laws are, by definition, law-abiding citizens. People with criminal intentions are just not going to march off and register their guns. They don't care about these laws because they don't obtain their guns through normal commerce. Do you see what's going on here?
Violent crime is increasing in areas where gun-hungry politicians are engaging in a concerted effort to disarm their constituents. People who own guns make their homes and neighborhoods hard targets for criminals.
Disarm those people and the criminals will run wild. Why? Because they know they won't be shot if they attack someone or steal a car.
But criminals are afraid to commit crimes in the city of Orange ... because they know citizens carry weapons. They don't know if a victim will offer armed resistance. So they move on to other places where they know their victims are unarmed. Like, say, Los Angeles.
Meanwhile, Los Angeles is working on new legislation requiring fingerprinting of gun buyers and making sales of small, easily concealed handguns illegal. Los Angeles City Councilman Nick Pacheco said, "I don't believe in any firearms being owned by civilians under any circumstances, concealed or not concealable."
And San Diego's NBC affiliate, KGTV, is planning a gun buyback this weekend to "help keep our communities safe."
Of course, they probably won't listen if you tell them that criminals don't usually buy their guns through licensed dealers, and that you have to collect about 60,000 guns before you can be statistically assured of saving one life. You'd be injecting logic into a purely emotional anti-gun movement. And logic is anathema to the gun grabbers.
Locales full of Third World aliens have high and climbing crime rates - a politically-incorrect fact. Look at climbing murder rate in Boston - another place full of South American illegal aliens and getting more of them constantly, while (like Kalifornia) dominated by leftist antigun politics. Violent crime has much more correlation with immigration than with anything else.
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This article, in which Orange County is the glaring exception in the growing crime statistics is off a piece with the one two months ago that in Los Angeles, one-third of ALL the children would be required to go to summer school or held back, if legitimate grade standards were usef dor propotiton of students to the next grade.
Congressman Billybob
The only county in California with more illegal aliens than Los Angeles County is Orange County.
Two years ago, Felicity Fahrquar and I were sitting in the living room at night when we heard a noise on the porch. We thought a racoon had gotten into the trash bags waiting to be hauled to the landfill. Since I had my shoes on, I went to investigate.
Found myself nose to nose with a full-grown black bear. He scared me; I scared him. We took off running in opposite directions. He stopped at the front door (all glass) to see what was in the house. Felicity tried to get a photo of him, but the anti-red-eye early flash set him running again.
Come spring when we cleared the swale next to the house, we found the den where he had been staying, about 50 yards away. That was too close for comfort.
Billybob
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