I just imagine that most of you do not share my dilema, so cannot truly understand where I am at on this one. Do you have a huddle of gangbangers on your route to the local market? Oops, I'm whining again. Maybe it will get better through the efforts of brave citizenry willing to risk retalliation and slashed tires. At least they stopped running prostitutes from the driveway across the street.
I should just cough up the $450k to move to a better neighborhood huh? I'll get right on that.
Shalako, I empathize with your dilemma. I understand what you want, and why you want it. I lived enough of my life in downtown Milwaukee to extrapolate what it must be like to live in a truly gang-ruled area, and I'm sorry. I've had my car and residence broken into, robbed, and vandalized enough to understand the frustration, helplessness, and fear that come as a result of living in such an area. A couple years back, a car (not mine) was fire-bombed two houses down the street from me.
But there's no getting around one of life's simple truths: bad things happen to good people. You don't want to be one of those good people, and neither do I, but it's neither your place nor mine to demand that other people pay the price for our fears, no matter how justified they may be. No one, and particularly not the government, can make the problem "go away" for you. No one is going to come in from outside and make it all better. Your safety in your person and your possessions is your responsibility.
The real crime is that CA, in particular, goes to such effort to deny you the effective means of meeting that responsibility - but that doesn't mean the correct solution is to deny even more people more of their fundamental rights.
The correct solution is what jefmad and Car Knocker, respectively, have said. Get the criminals put away (and I don't mean plea bargain down to probation, and I don't mean trade evidence for a get out of jail card, I mean doing time commensurate with the offense), and get the people they terrorize to start taking responsibility for their own safety. Slapping curfews on suspected gang members (as defined by someone at some level of some bureaucracy) isn't just an unethical solution, it's an ineffective one. We all know that criminals don't obey gun laws, why do you suppose criminals will obey curfews? They're not afraid to deal crack on a street corner, they're not afraid to shoot up somebody's house in broad daylight, they're not afraid to buy stolen guns, they're not afraid to shoot cops, but they'll be afraid to go out after 10? That's the law they plan on following?
Or is it just so that the police have an excuse to pick someone up if they "know" he's going to do something bad? If there's enough police presence to effectively prevent breaking curfew, how is there not enough police presence to effectively deter real crime? How will the police know if a given person walking down the street is one of the people that's got a curfew? They'd better stop anyone who's blac...I mean, hispan...I mean, SUSPICIOUS, just in case. Or better yet, maybe they can make all the people slapped with a curfew wear a GPS device/transmitter, so they'll know when they walk out their front door.
While we're at it, we might as will rescind their right to vote and their RKBA. Then they can have all the cool perks of a felony conviction, just without the tattoos. And it'll save money, too, when we don't have to fund that "due process" thing anymore.
Maybe it will get better through the efforts of brave citizenry willing to risk retalliation and slashed tires. At least they stopped running prostitutes from the driveway across the street.
