Years ago, in January 2013, I made a speech called Gun Control—Like Immigration Law, Enforced Only Against Those Who Obey It.

Here's part of it:

And what gun control is about is preventing you from defending yourself when the government that can’t or won’t defend you.

“Can’t defend you” means obviously that the police can’t be there all the time—the saying is that “when seconds count, the police are just minutes away.”

“Won’t defend you” is something different. It refers to the fact that you may need help and the government will refuse to come. Some examples:

• In the LA Rodney King riots, the LAPD backed away. When the rioting started, police in police cars were told by radio to leave the area. They didn’t come back until much later. Korean store owners were forced to use rifles to defend themselves, because there were no police in sight.
• The Puerto Rican Day Wildings in New York in 2000, where 57 women were sexually assaulted as police refused to make arrests.
• The August 2011 London Riots, where, as the Daily Mail put it, shopkeepers were “mystified at tactics that left them defenceless.”
• Hurricane Katrina: the federal government held back, and the black New Orleans PD deserted and took part in the looting.
• Crown Heights Riot—blacks terrorized Jews in Crown Heights for days without police interference.

The Crown Heights Riot is a special case—it has also been described as a pogrom. The parallel with the Russian pogroms of the 19^th century is that black mayor of New York, David Dinkins, was permitting the riots by failing to order the police to stop them. The suspicion is that Dinkins may have sympathized with the anti-Semitic black rioters.

But in most cases, the authorities are simply being cowardly, as a result of many, many, complaints from the Left about “excessive force” used in fighting riots. Police chiefs and police forces who fight rioters get punished for “excessive force,” but none of them are ever punished for insufficient force. And of course, since rioters are members of a minority group, using force would be racist.

We saw this in 2020, and note this comment—the riots changed this anonymous guy's mind:

Can't load tweet https://twitter.com/a_centrism/status/1529251535775010817: Sorry, that page does not exist

Recent reports from Uvalde show the police waited outside while the killer was killing:

Why do you need a gun? The police will protect you! https://t.co/q1TiluwvOo

— Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) May 27, 2022

But if you'd been paying attention, even before 2020, you'd have known this by what happened at Charlottesville, where black police chief Al Thomas  allowed Unite The Right ralliers to be attacked by blacks and antifa with the comment: "Let them fight for a little. It will make it easier to declare an unlawful assembly."

Heaphy: reports from a couple people in the command center the chief of police said "let them fight for a little. It will make it easier to declare an unlawful assembly"

— Ned Oliver (@nedoliver) December 1, 2017

And we were supposed to have a conference at Colorado Springs in 2017, just after the Unite The Right Rally, when the Mayor of Colorado Springs said he would not provide police protection to our wrongthinking conference.

So if politicians think they're going to sell anyone on the idea that you don't need a gun because the police will protect you, they're wrong.