The Patriot Post® · Safer Streets 2011: How About Dodger Stadium?

Bureaucrats have a job to do, and they sometimes forget that they are to serve and not to rule in doing that job. Sometimes, they forget that they cannot be as inventive or as blasé as they might like. And sometimes, they can breed in the private sector and be subject to the same Potomac Fever symptoms as any public servant.

The thinking of Dodger Stadium Staff has caught the disease long ago along with Kalifornia legislators. [Many citizens spell it with a K as a harken back to an earlier era of identical tactics of abuse, denial of rights and indifference in the suppression of independence.]

In Los Angeles, an off-duty Paramedic enjoying a Dodger game was savagely beaten by two Dodger fans in the parking lot. The man’s name is Bryan Stow, and he is a Giants fan. He is in a coma and not expected to do well. What the hell happened?

Two men reportedly sneaked up behind him and let him have it, leaving him with severe head injuries. Where the hell was Security?

Well, remember one thing about Security: it is not there for the guests, it is there as an extension of the Loss Prevention Wing of an organization. Its mission in most companies or public agencies is to protect the corporation, not customers. In this case, the police were elsewhere on campus making arrests for being drunk. In short, there was little presence of deterrent for the TWO who committed a mayhem on Paramedic Stow.

Would it have helped if Stow were armed? It would have helped enormously if visitors to the Stadium were armed in general. An organization that permits alcohol over safety isn’t very smart: how about drunk drivers after the game, for instance?

What if the situation were a cardiac arrest in the middle of a crowd? Actually, that’s a much easier question to answer.

Citizens as volunteers are deterred from protecting themselves and others by the kinds of policies which put the K in Kalifornia, the ill-conceived polices which hold the coat of assailants such as the two who beat Paramedic Stow. Had the situation been a cardiac arrest condition, we might have seen someone administer CPR until the arrival of the Los Angeles City Fire Department. I endorse a goal of one out of ten average citizens to be trained in Citizen CPR for conditions such as these. I also advocate the concept of the armed citizen in equal concentrations of one out of ten.

This is no case of carrying weapons where alcohol is served, it is a case of a large campus where security or police are nowhere nearby and might as well be a million miles away. Their deterrence effect was entirely absent as well, and whether the two assailants were sober or intoxicated is at this time unknown for sure. Is it also immaterial.

Two paragraphs excerpted from a JEMS.com report add another dimension to the issue: “Southern California ballparks have seen violence in recent years. In April 2009, a man stabbed his friend in the Dodger Stadium parking lot after the team’s home opener. Arthur Alvarez said he acted in self-defense and was acquitted by a jury.

"Two months later at Angel Stadium in Anaheim, an off-duty police officer shot and wounded two men who assaulted him in the parking lot after a game.”

Could this have been prevented or mitigated? My assertion is Yes, it could have on two counts: 1. If it was known that armed persons are somewhere likely to be in the crowd of guests, then the two assailants might not have been able to complete their acts of mayhem, and; 2. It is a fair likelihood that they would have been apprehended at gunpoint and held for police, not unlike a citizen stepping forward to administer CPR until the arrival of EMS.

But then, this is Q.E.D. evidence enough that Citizen CPR and the armed citizen are identical in purpose.

For the first to occur – that is, for safety to grow for large crowds – Kalifornia needs to see a repeal of its dumb gun laws and anti-independence attitudes that keep der K in Kalifornia. I am speaking of open carry in California which is, at this time, more than legal; it is extra-legal. [Open carry puts the C in California.] All large campuses of workplace, entertainment and education suffer from this K syndrome of insistence on disarmed students, guests and customers. It does this as the peril of thousands of paying customers every year, where guns are not the problem as much as knives, .robberies, rapes and, of course, beatings. Security not there, either.

The force that deters this adversity by reputation as a sort of constructive notice would be word getting out that guests can be armed, perhaps as many as one out of ten, let’s say. Right now, the word is out that they are not.

Two thugs proceeded with confidence that they would not be stopped, and that they would escape. So far, they have guessed right. You might say they’re batting a thousand.

Be sure to take the Safer Streets Gun Owner Survey. Go to www.GoodForTheCountry.com for more.