Yeah, gun control works

Via Knuckledraggin

The sound of gunfire and sirens drew about a dozen people out of their homes on San Bernardino’s west side one recent Wednesday night.

A beat-up Honda sat in the street — a small cross dangling from the rearview mirror, two bullet holes in the door. Rescue workers pulled Alejandro Herrera, 28, from the driver’s seat and wheeled him into an ambulance.

“The other day, they killed someone down the street,” said a middle-aged woman, leaning against a fence next to her husband. All around this part of the city, she said, there are candlelight memorials to victims of violence.

“Before, we would hear about killings every once in a while. Now, there are so many,” she said, asking that her name not be published for fear of becoming a victim herself.

A few days later, in a neighborhood less than two miles away, investigators pulled the body of Jose De La Torre, 24, from the trunk of a Nissan.
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It’s not just Southern California. I left Central California for good back in April and gang violence was one of the reasons. Notice I said gang violence, not gun violence. I’m not buying into the leftist crap that guns are the problem – it’s gangs and the influx of the illegals and the cartels that came with it.

Using citydata.com as a reference, in 2014 (the last year data was published) Modesto had a population of 209,000 people with 36% being hispanic. When I left, it was more than 50% from some accounts I had checked.

Using citydata.com stats, the crime index in 2014 was 469.2 with the national average being 287.5. For comparison, New York City’s was 241.3 – yup, Modesto’s crime stats was far beyond the cesspool New York City’s.

The difference? The influx of illegals and the gang culture they brought with them.

I lived in Ceres which bordered southside Modesto, the heart of gangland. It was a rare night when I could stand outside and not hear gunfire off in the distance from Modesto. It was also a rare morning that I read the paper and didn’t see a report of a shooting or murder somewhere in the county.

There are towns in the county that were almost completely taken over by gangs such as Westley (96% hispanic) and Grayson (86% hispanic) – these towns don’t have crime stats available because they were patrolled by the Sheriff’s office.

I went armed every time I left my house. Every time – I don’t care if I was going to the store, the libarry, or to pay bills. I learned to be very aware of my surroundings – my head was on a swivel. I checked behind me using the reflection of store and car windows. I made it a point to sit in restaurants where I could watch the entrances as well as other patrons. I didn’t take chances.

There were areas that were self-imposed no-go areas. While I felt fairly comfortable on the main streets of the hispanic areas of town such as Yosemite and Crows Landing, there were others that I refused to go down for any reason such as Dallas, Butte and Glenn streets as well as any street in the Airport district, the neighborhood I grew up in. No big deal, no honest white man had any business in those areas anyways.

It wasn’t the proliferation of firearms in those areas that made them dangerous. It wasn’t the hispanic people themselves – the huge majority of my friends and workmates I had in California were hispanic that had assimilated themselves into Americans.

It was the gang mentality and the cartels from Mexico. It was drugs and greed that made those areas dangerous.

It sure wasn’t the availability of firearms. I live in Tennessee now where you can buy a firearm just about anywhere and without a 10 day waiting period. Everybody here walks around armed. You can walk into the Walmart with a firearm strapped to your hip and not draw a second glance. It is completely legal to carry a loaded handgun or rifle in your vehicle without a permit.

Even with the abundance of firearms, you just don’t hear a lot of gunfire around here. Matter of fact, the area with the most gunfire is my property when I’m training and even then it’s not that bad – I shoot just enough to keep my hand in because I don’t want to disturb my neighbors.

The media can spin their stories any way they want but anybody from the southwest can tell you the truth. It’s the drugs, illegals and cartels and the inability or unwillingness of our politicians to address the real issues and until they do it’s only going to get worse.