Remember The L.A. Riots? Many Seem To Have Forgotten.

“For years, California has been a laboratory for gun control. Now that laboratory has come crashing down in flames. . . It’s a shame that it took a riot to wake people up about what the anti-gun lobby has done with their fundamental rights,” said James Jay Baker, the Executive Director of NRA-ILA in 1992 after the rioting that came after the verdict was announced at the end of the Rodney King beating trial. Mr. Baker overestimated the logical capacity of the left-wing liberals.

I’ve been going through boxes of old gun magazines, and tossing the ones without anything really of interest to me. The article, “The L.A. Riots. . . From A Distance” by Neal Knox in the August 1992 issue of Guns & Ammo magazine struck me as interesting to say the least.

Clearly, California learned nothing from the riots. They still have some of the most oppressive gun laws in the country, and are pretty high up there worldwide. They still have a waiting period, which likely cost a number of Californians their lives during the riots. “Assault weapon” and “high-capacity magazine” bans limit the resources that California residents can use to defend themselves. Normal law-abiding citizens are denied the right to carry firearms in just about every case.

The police admitted that they couldn’t help everyone. LAPD chief Daryl Gates shrugged and said, “There are going to be situations where people are going to go without assistance. That’s just the facts of life.” The police were telling people they were stretched thin, and that they were “on their own” to protect their homes and businesses.

Shop owners with guns, defending their businesses were branded “Vigilantes: Lacking Confidence in Police,” by The Los Angeles Times. One of the defenders interviewed by the author of the article recalled, “You better know I lacked confidence in police. . . They fled, tires screeching at the first sign of trouble.” The manager of Western Gun Shop said, “Four police cars were there when shooting started. I was very disappointed when they left very quickly.”

In at least one other case, a gun shop (Bowers Wholesale) was promised by police that they would protect the store. Looters took more than 300 handguns.

Still, state law imposes strict limits on how, and what with, its residents can defend themselves, suggesting that residents should rely on police assistance when they are in trouble, and that firearms are too dangerous to have around.

As rioters and gangs drove trucks into gun shop storefronts, taking what they wanted, California residents who wanted to buy guns for defense were saddled with 15-day waiting periods.

The police couldn’t arrest all of the rioters and looters, but they could arrest a few store owners defending their shops.

A National Guardsman shot and killed the driver of a Nissan on his second attempt to run him down. This prompted the Guard to order their people to carry their M16s unloaded. A short time later, two Guardsmen were robbed of their guns and uniforms. Nobody learned anything from that either. The troops posted in airports after 9-11 didn’t have loaded weapons (at least in some places), and the guards at some military bases are still forbidden from keeping their firearms loaded.

Also, there is the issue of the mainstream media essentially sparking the riots by not showing all of the video of the beating. In the first few seconds of the video, King, having already been hit twice by a stun gun, jumped up and charged one of the police officers. You don’t remember that part of the video because it was probably never aired on the major networks. This strikes me as a good example of the media using events to present a sensational story without much regard for the resulting events, something they have continually done to promote gun control in the way they report on murders and in rare cases when they actually report on civilian self-defense.

Those of you who don’t have the tools you may need to defend yourselves, friends, and families, should keep in mind that you may not be able to go out to get what you need when you need it. If you call for help, the sad fact is that help may not come until it’s too late. Get the tools you need before the new congress and White House, with the assistance of propaganda from the mainstream media, ban everything remotely useful for defense.