Earlier this morning, Mike Thiac published his article “Remember, it’s the guns, right?” on this site, noting both the silliness and the seriousness of the left’s attempts at gun control, gun control meaning, of course, taking action against the people who don’t commit crimes rather than against those who do. The left want to hold accountable for murders the manufacturers of firearms, even though those firearms used in homicides are not in the manufacturers’ control, and the gun grabbers in Pennsylvania want to make the legal owners of firearms responsible if one of their weapons is stolen and they fail to report that theft to law enforcement promptly. That’s like trying to hold the owner of an automobile responsible if his vehicle is stolen and then used in a crime, especially in Philadelphia, where carjacking rates have soared.
The Kentucky General Assembly eliminated the requirement to have a permit to carry a concealed weapon several years ago; Pennsylvania still has, if not strict, existing gun control laws, laws which are stricter in Philadelphia where things that would be misdemeanors in most of the Commonwealth are felonies in the city. Given that Pennsylvania only goes ‘blue’ in presidential elections due to Philadelphia, I think it perfectly reasonable that crimes be punished more harshly there!
I pay attention to two cities in particular, Philadelphia, where I have worked, and Lexington, Kentucky, where I first lived as an adult, and which is, once again, the closest city to me. As of 11:59 PM EST on Monday, March 7th, the City of Brotherly Love has suffered 96 homicides, eight more than the same date last year, and 2021 saw the city not only break its previous homicide record, 500 during the crack cocaine wars of 1990, but absolutely smash it, with 562 souls sent early to their eternal rewards.
Lexington, on the other hand, which also set a city record with 37 murders last year, is actually two behind last year’s pace.
Lexington, with a population of 325,330, is only a fifth the size of Philly, with a population of 1,603,797. If Philadelphia had Lexington’s murder rate — Kentucky’s second largest city saw 37 homicides in 2021 — then Philly should have seen 182 killings last year, not 562.
That’s a coarse total, and the two cities are very different, but, according to the simplistic ‘logic’ of the gun grabbers, with gun control laws being the important factor, it out to be decisive.
But it was the story of Lexington’s last killing that really caught my attention. The cause of death was stupidity. No, not that the victim was stupid — though he might have been — but that the man who (allegedly) killed him was stupid.
I noted, Saturday afternoon, Lexington’s sixth homicide of the year. Lexington Herald-Leader reporter updated her story at 4:02 PM on Monday, giving us more details:
An arrest citation says a verbal altercation with Linares and two other people led to a physical altercation with Linares’ family and two others. At the end of the fight, Linares shot one of the victims, who was laying defenseless on the ground, according to court records.
Court records also say Humberto Saucedo-Salgado, who resides in Phoenix, Az., caused physical injuries to one of the victims with his hands and feet. That victim was taken to the emergency room and intubated due to his injuries.
You can read more here.
In other words, Juan Carlos Linares had won his fight, had beaten 36-year-old Michael Yocum into defenselessness, and then decided, heck, why not, might as well just shoot the guy, right? That’s just plain stupidity.
The other two members of his ‘side’ of the fight, Oziel and Humberto Saucedo-Salgado, were charged with first degree assault, and released on $10,000 bail each. Mr Linares bond has been set at $750,000, and he’s still locked up. Even so, bail can be denied in Kentucky for persons charged with offenses for which capital punishment is possible.
Mr Linares’s record at the Fayette County Detention Center indicates that the only charge against him, as of 5:10 PM EST Monday, when I accessed the information, is murder, though it’s obvious the first-degree assault could be added.
Under KRS §508.010, Assault in the first degree is a Class B felony, punishable by no less than ten years and up to twenty years in the state penitentiary, along with a $1,000 to $10,000 fine. Under KRS §507.020, murder is a capital offense, though the penalty can be less than death. Under KRS §532.030, the penalty can be death, life without the possibility of parole, life with the possibility of parole after a minimum of 25 years in prison, or a twenty to fifty year sentence.
Mr Linares act of stupidity, (allegedly) murdering an already beaten foe, could, and should, have him locked behind bars for the rest of his miserable life. If he had just stopped with the beatdown, he’d have been looking at getting out of prison when he was 43 years old, at worst, certainly a long time behind bars. Now, he’s looking at spending the rest of his life behind bars.
Unless, of course, Fayette County’s Commonwealth’s Attorney Lou Ann Red Corn decides to let him plead down to a lesser offense, as she has done so many times recently. Such would not surprise me in the slightest.
Mr Linares is, to use the common euphemism, ‘known to the police.’ in that his record at the Fayette County Detention Center showed seven mugshots of him, from arrests beginning on January 27, 2018 through March 5, 2022. If Mr Linares has been arrested seven times from January 27, 2018 — and we don’t know if he has a prior, sealed juvenile record — it has to be asked: why was he out on Short Street in downtown Lexington on March 5, 2022? The initial charges listed in the Detention Center records do not have the tell-tale charge of possession of a firearm by a convicted felon, so we cannot assume that any of his previous arrests were for felonies, or even that he was ever convicted of anything.
Mr Linares is just plain stupid; that much is obvious. With six prior arrests, he had to have known that carrying a gun in the city was just an invitation to get into more trouble. The area in which the killing occurred is by a near-downtown parking garage, near law offices, the county courthouse, and some of Lexington’s nicest restaurants. That he decided, almost certainly in a split-second, to go ahead and kill a man he’d already thoroughly beaten up, is more evidence.
Gun control cannot defend against stupidity. Whether in Lexington, where there is less stupidity, or Philly, where idiocy is a communicable disease, far, far worse than COVID-19, there’s simply no accounting for stupid people. The only real answer is that, when you get someone like Mr Linares in custody, as the Lexington Police had him on January 27, 2018, you prosecute him to the maximum extent of the law and you keep him behind bars for as long as the law allows. With someone that stupid, the lesson that it’s better to obey the law might never be learned, but at least when you have him in prison, he’s not out committing other crimes.
________________________________
Follow AFNN
Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/afnnusa
Telegram: https://t.me/joinchat/2_-GAz…
Twitter: @AFNNUSA
GETTR: @AFNN_USA
CloutHub: @AFNN_USA
Patriot.Online: @AFNN
I had a conversation with a judge one time where he referred to a repeat offender as “stupid”, as the offender kept committing the same crimes over and over. I pointed out to the judge that the offender had experienced little in the way of negative consequences (i.e. long prison sentences) despite his frequent arrestee status, and that maybe he wasn’t the stupid one, or the only person making stupid decisions in his case.
Totally agree.