Open letter to Terry Meza

Dear Terry, your bill HB 196 would seek to limit the homeowner’s rights to defend himself or his or her property. Your bill would also create a doubt in the would-be victim’s mind as to whether they are within their legal rights to defend themselves. A second of hesitation could get the victim killed.  You are confusing the issue, conflating garden gnome’s with tangible property and or life.

In a life-or-death situation, the last thing the victim needs is doubt.  If they are reasonably afraid for their lives, they should defend themselves to the fullest extent of the law…period.

Not long ago, this same type of thinking was pervasive in our now President Biden, who said at the time, ‘If a woman is going to get raped, she should pee herself.’

Your bill would make it easier for some attorney to go after the victim, and you and I both know this is not about ‘lawn ornaments.’ That is lawyer-speak to play to the emotions of the feeble-minded.

We all have choices to make. They can choose to steal and take their chances or decide not to steal.  They can choose to rape or home invade or decide not to.  We, the law-abiding, have our rights under assault by this Congress, currently attacking the second amendment, while we on a parallel front have lunatics calling for defunding the police.

If the police act in a way that contradicts the way they should, then more training and better hiring practices are what we should be advocating.

Adding to this problem, we have a massive influx of aliens who we know by their actions don’t respect our laws. 

There is currently a rash of catalytic converters stolen from vehicles. The cost to repair starts at $1000.00 and could go as high as $4,000 if they don’t do any other damage while hacking it off your car.  That is hardly a garden gnome. 

Why don’t you create a bill that would fine the crap out of those that buy stolen catalytic convertors?

Removing the reward for theft of ‘garden gnomes’ seems like where we should be spending our energy.

I would require that all catalytic convertors be serialized. Those that bring them in for ‘recycle’ must provide identification, including utility bills, to prove that the identity was not fake. A log book should be created and maintained to insure that the ‘recycler’ is on the up and up. The former would take a Congressional act, and the latter could be implemented with an executive order.

-Best