The New Nullification
On July 1st, 2015, 32 year old Kathryn Steinle was shot and killed walking on Pier 14 in the Embarcadero district of San Francisco. Her killer was a convicted criminal and a five-time deported illegal alien from Mexico, Jose Zarate. Zarate first claimed that he had fired at a sea lion but later changed his story and said that the gun had gone off when he picked it up after finding it wrapped in a cloth beneath a bench on which he was sitting at the time. The shot ricocheted off a piece of concrete and struck Steinle in the back; she died two hours later of her injuries.
The case was a sensation containing as it did all the necessary factors: a criminal and many-times deported “illegal alien,” a young and innocent victim and, of great interest in these days of demands for gun control, a mysterious hand gun. Further, this “gun crime” was committed in a state and city with very strict—some say unconstitutionally so—gun laws. Zarate was tried for second degree murder, considered an “overreach” by the San Francisco prosecutor given the ricochet nature of the wound! He was found not guilty. Since the trial, the Federal Government has sought custody of Zarate to prosecute him on any number of secondary crimes, but as a “city,” San Francisco is decidedly unwilling to cooperate with the Department of Justice. It is said, however, that prosecution for violations of the city’s and state’s gun laws is in the works. But whether or not Zarate ever pays for his crimes—and they are many—nothing will restore life to Kathryn Steinle.
As a final “icing” on this wretched cake, California and the City by the Bay have proven more hostile to President Donald Trump’s condemnation of the crime and the criminal than they ever were against Zarate, especially given his numerous convictions and insistence on returning to the United States to commit further mayhem. After the murder and while much of the country was mourning Steinle’s death as an unnecessary tragedy, California ensured that there will be more such incidents by doubling down on its madness by becoming a sanctuary state.
What the eventual outcome of the matter will be is unknown because Zarate is now in federal custody awaiting charges. But as long as large cities and even a very large state are determined that the laws of the rest of the country do not apply to them, we may consider Kate Steinle the first of many casualties resulting from the insanity that grips this country. While in Chicago, legal citizens—doubtless with illegal guns—kill more people in a year than are killed in many small wars, our broken immigration system simply opens the floodgates for more killings while “law enforcement” and local and state governments protect and serve not their citizens, but the criminals involved for the simple reason that they represent first, liberal ideology and second, the next wave of liberal Democrat voters. Read more