Why Defend Yourself, Anyway?

March 1st, 2012

Subject: FW: Why Defend Yourself, Anyway?

> >———- Forwarded message ———-

forward this to your anti-self defense friends…
if you have ADD just read down at the part about THE HARSH REALITY OF CRIMINAL ASSAULT..
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In the wake of the murder of Edgar Suter’s friend Dr. Kim Fang in an attempted home invasion robbery, people are suggesting that he shouldn’t
have defended himself and his family: that if everyone had just complied with the robbers’ demands (there weren’t any, they just came in and
started bashing people with pistols) then maybe the robbers would have only knocked them around some, or perhaps would just have only shot them
a little bit.
Michael Pelletier, whom we were privileged to have working our table with us for the Kilmer/Metcalf initiative drive at the San Jose gun show last weekend, addresses this subject brilliantly.
Dale
> >>>>>>>>>>

http://www.aidoann.com/guncontrol/letters/garofoli-010900.txt

Mon Jan 10 21:28:40 2000 Date: Sun, 9 Jan 2000 16:38:47 -0800 (PST)
From: Michael
To: [email protected]

Subject: In response to Joe Garofoli’s “What if’s” on the Fang murder

Dear Mr. Garofoli,
There’s a few points I wanted to discuss with respect to your January 9 article published in the Contra Costa Times:

http://www.cctimes.com/news/columnists/garofoli/stories/ari35445.htm

…in which you were playing Monday-morning quarterback in the case of Dr. Fang’s armed defense of his home and family. First of all, let’s clear up some definitions of common anti-gun
catch-phrases that cropped up in your article:
SO-CALLED “ASSAULT WEAPONS”
An “assault weapon” is a military firearm capable of either multi-round burst or fully-automatic fire. Such rifles have been regulated since the passage of the 1934 National Firarms Act, a tax
measure designed to register and control all machine guns and short-barrelled shotguns, to make some work for a Bureau of Alcohol,Tobacco, and Firearms in the wake of Prohibition’s repeal, as well as to create new crimes with which gangsters sporting their Tommy guns could be charged. None of the rifles recently banned by the Assembly are “assault weapons,” they merely look like them. They are functionally no different than any self-loading firearm — they fire one shot per pull of the trigger. The only distinguishing features are the shape of the metal and plastic bits attached to them. Have a
look at to see how, as if by magic, to convert an illegal AR-15 rifle into a legal rifle with the full blessing of the California Department of Justice by removing one piece of plastic and attaching another of a different shape.
In the words of Josh Sugarman, one of the leaders of the Violence Policy Center: “Assault weapons… are a new topic. The weapons’ menacing looks, coupled with the public’s confusion over
fully-automatic machine guns versus semi-automatic assault weapons — anything that looks like a machine gun is assumed to be a machine gun
–can only increase the chance of public support for restrictions on
these weapons.” — “Assault Weapons: Analysis, New Research and Legislation” Josh
Sugarmann, March 1989
In other words, it is part of the gun-banners long-term strategy to exploit confusion and ignorance in the mind of the public and journalists such as you, to marshall political support for further restrictions upon peaceful, law-abiding gun owners, such as the
recently-enacted California SB-23.
THE RACIST ROOTS OF GUN CONTROL
A “Saturday Night Special” is a term applied to any inexpensive handgun. The term is derived from the incredibly racist phrase ******town Saturday Night,” applied to any raucus or riotous goings-on. Some of the original “******town Saturday Night Special” bans were enacted shortly after the civil war in states such as Tennessee and Arkansas, restricting handgun sales to only the Colt 1911 Officer’s Model and other similarly expensive models. The intent was clear — to prevent poor, recently freed slaves from acquiring
the tools with which they could defend themselves against rampaging bands of Ku Klux Klan, but without running afoul of the restrictions imposed by the 14th Amendment. What the proponents of such laws are saying is that poor people should not have the right to buy the tools with which they can defend their homes or their families — that only rich and politically connected people such as Dr. Fang, Diane Feinstein, and Chuck Schumer should. It is shameful and outrageous
that the term “******town Saturday Night Special” is used so loosely in our nation’s press, and falls so easily from the lips of our politicians. http://www.jpfo.org/racecard.htm
> ><http://www.jpfo.org/racecard.htm>
> >http://www.lp.org/lpn/9908-guns-racist.html
> ><http://www.lp.org/lpn/9908-guns-racist.html>

THE POLICE HAVE NO DUTY TO PROTECT
You go on in your article to seemingly ask for certainties in evaluating the situation of Dr. Fang’s murder and home-invasion robbery. Maybe the armed robbers would “only” have pistol whipped the people in the house, maybe the police would have shown up and apprehended the criminals after a call to 911. Your statement is puzzling on a variety of levels. First of all, ask yourself what you get when you call the police. People with guns!! If your home was being robbed, would you ask for the police to leave their guns in their cars when they arrive? If the point of dialing 911 is getting people with guns to come to the scene, then why not save yourself five, ten, or sixty minutes and have your own gun? Secondly, there is something of which you may not be aware in the vast, incomprehensible tangle of California law. It is Government Code Section 845, which reads as follows:

http://www.leginfo.ca.gov/cgi-bin/displaycode?section=gov&group=00001-

01000&file=844-846 — 845.
Neither a public entity nor a public employee is liable for failure to establish a police department or otherwise to provide police
protection service or, if police protection service is provided, for failure to provide sufficient police protection service. [ ... ]
— In other words, the police have no duty to protect you, and
cannot be sued for failing to protect you.
Ultimately, your protection against criminals is in your own hands.
On September 4, 1972, down here in San Jose, this fact was spelled out in the blood of Ruth Bunnell. She had been terrorized by her
estranged husband Mack, and had reported incidents of assault to the San Jose Police about 20 times in the prior year. On that day, Mack
called Ruth to tell her that he was coming to her house to kill her. Ruth dialed 911 and reported the threat, but was told by the 911 operator to call back when Mack arrived. Forty-five minutes later, he arrived and stabbed Ruth to death before she could reach the phone. A neighbor called the police who later discovered Ruth’s body. Despite the fact that the SJPD had refused to come to her aid, the court ruled that the City of San Jose was shielded from the negligence suit
brought by her family because there was no “special relationship” between Ruth and the police.
This is all spelled out in [Hartzler v. City of San Jose, 120 Cal Rptr. 5 (Cal. App. 1975)]. See for yourself. The same situation
obtains in most of the rest of the country, including Washington DC where private ownership of firearms is essentially outlawed for law-abiding citizens. In Washington DC, three female victims of a March 16, 1975 home-invasion robbery watched from hiding — afraid to call out and give themselves away — as the police arrived, looked around, and left after five minutes while soon-to-be rapists and brutalizers were rummaging around on the lower floors. The three were later discovered by the robbers, and subjected to 14 hours of physical and sexual abuse. The court returned an identical decision in this case as in San Jose, before hearing any evidence, because “official police personnel and the government employing them are not generally liable to victims of criminal acts for failure to provide adequate police protection.” [Warren v. District of Columbia, 444 A.2d 1, 4 (D.C. 1981)(en banc)(quoting the trial court decision)]

THE HARSH REALITY OF CRIMINAL ASSAULT
And thirdly, it seems evident that you have never been the victim of an assault, by the way that you describe the situation that Senator Rainey recounted of home-invasion victims being pistol-whipped. They were “badly beaten, but alive,” you wrote. If only you knew, Mr. Garofoli. Close your eyes for a moment, sit back, and imagine..Imgaine feeling each pounding, racing heartbeat pulsing in yourskull, watching each second tick away without knowing if it will be your last.
Imagine the feeling of abject helplessness, knowing that your life and the lives of your family are in the hands of your attackers.
Imagine seeing the gleeful, mocking, merciless eyes of an evil person as he forces you to peer down the spiral barrel of his gun, and then
inflicts bone-shattering, mind-numbing blows against your face. The next blow comes while you’re still reeling from the last one, each blow a fresh explosive surprise.
Imagine feeling the bones of your face shatter, feeling your teeth rattling around in your mouth, swallowing them. Imagine the sizzling pain screaming through every nerve of your body.
Imagine them laughing at you. Imagine feeling the blood drip down, soaking your clothing and streaming across your eyes. Imagine tasting it as it drips across your mouth, watching it pour
into your lap and onto the floor. Imagine feeling the electrical cord cutting into your wrists as you strain to escape, while at the same time wondering if these attempts will only infuriate your attacker all the more. Imagine wondering through a ringing pink haze what it would feel like to be shot.
Imagine wondering if they’re going to rape your wife and force you to watch. Imagine the crushing, nauseating horror of wondering if
they’re going to rape your 13-year-old daughter while they’re at it. Imagine wondering if they’re going to torture you before they kill
you, and in a fleeting thought, whether you’ll be able to get your bloodstains out of the carpet.
Imagine wondering through all this when, or whether, the good guys with guns are going to show up.Imagine a thousand of the most horrifying horror movies all rolled into one, made a thousand times more horrifying by your inability to close your eyes, to stop the pain, to run from the theater. Imagine the fury boiling through your veins, and imagine the agony of
living through it and having to remember it for the rest of your life.
There is a very clear reason why suicide is so common among rape victims, Mr. Garofoli. “Badly beaten, but alive…” Alive how? Alive
BUT stripped of their basic human dignity and self-respect. Alive BUT hollowed out by shattering proof of the depths to which the human
soul can sink. Alive BUT intensely angry at their attackers,intensely angry at themselves for being powerless to stop the attack,intensely angry at the “justice” system that lets their attackers out
on parole. Alive BUT grasping for shards of meaning, groping in the dark for a way to explain the depravity of their attack to their children. Alive BUT perhaps wishing they’d been murdered instead of their child or their spouse. SECOND GUESSING Mr. Garofoli, you rudely second-guess Dr. Fang in acting to defend his home and family against these intruders. Maybe he should have stayed upstairs and listened to the piercing screams of his family, you say, while waiting for the good guys with guns to show up, instead of being the first good guy with a gun on the scene. But what you don’t seem to acknowledge is
that when someone bursts into your house waving a weapon, be it a gun, a knife, or a baseball bat, you are absolved of any responsibility to try to guess whether or not they mean to harm you.
By their actions, they have stated very clearly that they intend to do as much harm to you and your loved ones as necessary, up to and including killing you, to gain your compliance. And maybe they’ll just harm you for sport even after you comply.
If they wanted to just steal your stuff and be done with it, they would have waited until they knew you weren’t home. The criminal who Dr. Fang heroically killed wasn’t wearing a mask — does this strike you as someone who intends to leave any witnesses who could identify him? Dr. Fang died, yes, but he died with his human dignity intact. He died knowing that his family had been saved. Among the things that I suspect will keep Mrs. Fang up at night over the coming years is
not only the memory of her lost husband, but also wondering if perhaps just a few more blows with the frying pan would have prevented Soknoeun Nem from having his pathetic lies — concocted in
a piteous attempt to escape the Death Row cell now swinging open for him — published in the newspaper. However one thing she will NOT
wonder about is her victimization, because she REFUSED to be a victim — she fought alongside her husband, fought fiercely for her life
against those who would have forced victimhood upon her and her family.
And in fact, the National Institute of Justice study entitled “Firearms and Violence,” shows that people who resist robbery with a firearm are the least likely to suffer any injury — at a rate of 17% — versus those who offer no resistance at all have a rate of injury of nearly 25%. For assault victims resisting with a firearm, their injury rate was 12%, versus 27% for those offering no resistance. The course of action taken by Dr. Fang against his attackers was, in fact, statistically safer than offering no resistance at all. GUN LAWS The fact that one of the guns used by the attackers was stolen
just goes to show that the avalanche of laws coming from Sacramento have utterly no effect on firearms crime. Criminals will be armed, one way or another, and the laws that strive to place more and more capricious restrictions on law-abiding gun owners simply serve to widen the scope of guaranteed disarmed-victim zones — an OSHA-style “safe working environment” for violent criminals — as citizens decide that buying a gun, the most effective tool for self-defense,
isn’t worth the government-imposed hassle.
In fact, according to the US Supreme Court case US. v. Haynes, the Fifth Amendment rights of convicted felons and other disqualified
persons make them exempt from prosecution under all firearms registration laws. This should make it crystal clear that “gun control” is not at all about preventing crime, it’s about making technical lawbreakers out of peaceful citizens.

http://shadeslanding.com/firearms/cramer.haynes.html

THE FRUITS OF GUN BANS IN OTHER COUNTRIES Armed crime in England — a “gun-free utopia” often cited by proponents of “gun control” — rose by 10% in 1998. In Mexico, possession of a single round of ammunition can get you a five-year prison term, and yet that nation is in the grips of a decade-long wave of violent crime, murder, and official corruption.
Is this the kind of nation that Handgun Control Inc., the Violence Policy Center, and other such anti-gun groups want to make for our
society? Do they want every major city to be just like gun-banning Washington DC, tied for the rank of “Murder Capitol of the US?” Despite your second-guessing of Dr. Fang’s armed self-defense, Mr. Garofoli, the transparent hypocrisy and futility of “gun control” legislation is becoming more and more apparent to the general public.
People are starting to realize that over 30 years of gun control starting with the 1968 Gun Control Act, and followed by tens of thousands more laws and regulations, are all an abject policy failure when it comes to controlling criminal behaviour. They are realizing that during the steady decline in crime over the last decade 31 states, starting with Florida, have repealed racist discretionary
concealed-carry laws and begun issuing permits to any law-abiding citizen who wants one. They are becoming aware that no matter what a politician says about banning guns, that they will never give up their armed bodyguards or their concealed carry permits (such as the permit held by Senator Feinstein). We are starting to realize that
between 800,000 and 2.5 million people every year use guns to defend themselves against crime, and that the police have no legal duty to defend us.
And finally, people are realizing that the books of “gun control” laws around the world have had the blood of 54 million victims of
genocide splashed across their pages in the last 100 years -

http://www.aidoann.com/guncontrol/ http://www.aidoann.com/guncontrol/

The truth has a way of getting out. And Dr. Fang’s public service performed with a handgun will not soon be forgotten, even as our elected representatives in Sacramento and Washington DC are hard at work devising new ways to inch closer to the ultimate goal of banning all handguns and other firearms.
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“Banning guns addresses a fundamental right of Americans to feel safe.” — U.S. Senator Diane Feinstein, quoted by AP, 11/18/93
Until we can ban all of them [firearms], then we might as well ban none.” — U.S. Senator Howard Metzenbaum, Senate Hearings 1993 “With a 10,000% tax we could tax them out of existence.” — U.S. Senator
Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Washington Post,
11/4/93 If it were up to me we’d ban them all” — U.S. Representative Mel Reynolds on CNN’s Crossfire, 12/9/93
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Ask yourself, Mr. Garofoli, whose best interests do they have at heart here? Dr. Fang’s… or the criminals’? -Michael Pelletier. San
Jose, CA

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Why Defend Yourself, Anyway?