In the wake of the horrific shooting in Tucson, that took six lives and left Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords terribly wounded, shouldn’t the Santa Ana City Council adopt additional security measures, with regard to those who attend our City Council meetings?
Many of those who attend our City Council meetings are given to making regular, slanderous attacks against our City Council – and to be honest more than a few of them appear to be rather unhinged. Why wait for one of these people to show up with a gun and start shooting? Our police department should be using hand-scanners to check each and every one of those who choose to attend a City Council meeting, before they are allowed into the Council chambers.
I would except all city staffers; elected officials; city commissioners and members of the media – actual credentialed media, not bloggers or folks who write for online publications that are not offered in print.
Look at the picture above. I took that at a City Council meeting, right here in Santa Ana. The guy in the background, in the blue shirt, is Charles Hart – a fellow who ran for Mayor last year. The lady giving the angry one finger salute is actually on the board of directors of a Santa Ana Neighborhood Association! Imagine what someone that angry might do in the future?
And check out the picture above. This guy ran Alfredo Amezcua’s mayoral campaign – and he actually showed up to the same Council meeting that the angry lady above was at, and affixed duct tape to his mouth – to make some crazy point. Imagine if he had brought along a Glock as well?
Show up to any Santa Ana City Council meeting and you will see these angry people sitting in the back row, or standing with their backs to the rear wall, muttering, hollering, hooting and just acting like insane people. And many of them don’t even live in Santa Ana! Quite frankly, I don’t feel safe around any of them.
And take a look at the comments offered up about our City Council on any of the local blogs, or media sites. These people don’t offer any solutions – just angry rants. It is scary to think about what these angry people might be plotting to do if left to their own devices.
In fact, click here to see an example of what I am talking about. A veteran is just foaming at the mouth about the Santa Ana City Council – and he is claiming to have several other military veterans in his coalition. Guess what? That is a non-sequitur, isn’t it? Why does it matter that this guy is a veteran? He could be a lawyer and his slanderous attacks on our City Council would still be worrisome. What worries me the most is that many of the past incidents of domestic terrorism here in the U.S. have been committed by, you guessed it, disturbed veterans.
Would scanning folks for weapons discourage anyone from attending a City Council meeting? Maybe – but that might be a good thing.
One more thing – the scanning should be offered as part of the televised portion of the City Council meetings. If one of these unhinged characters is dumb enough to try to slip a gun or a knife into the meeting, I want to make sure they do so on T.V. so we can all see them get caught, tased and dragged off in handcuffs.
