Restraining Order series in weekend Register

The Orange County Register had a Saturday-Sunday series on restraining orders two weekends ago that made some very good points but left others out. The writer Monica Rhor wrote two major articles, one on each day, accompanied by two shorter stories each day highlighting cases where restraining orders failed to protect against the aggressors named in the orders. Those anecdotes certainly do tug the heart-strings of folks (and I'm sure that's what they were meant to do), but the meat of the series is found in the two longer pieces. Hopefully most readers of the series can compartmentalize their attention and sympathize with the very real people highlighted in the accompanying pieces while not giving too much weight to their emotions when they read the facts, figures, policies, and proposals in the feature articles.

I wrote a reader rebuttal and submitted it to the Register - we'll see if it makes it in this Sunday's issue. I would have liked to touch on three major points, two of which relate to victim disarmament - oops, I mean "gun control":

- the lack of legal obligation of law enforcement to protect common citizens
- Ms. Rhor's lack of mentioning the benefits of arming oneself for self-defense
- the potential Constitutional ramifications of disarming objects of restraining orders who have broken no laws

Unfortunately I had to stay under 550 words so I could only address the first two (which I'm sure are more accessible & acceptable to the Register's editors and its readers than the third). If it gets printed I'll link to it here and post a similar piece addressing the last point. If it gets rejected I'll lengthen the original submission to include all three points and post it in its entirety here.