Karen Bass Gets a Criminal Education

Yet Ms. Bass has often seemed disconnected from the dangerous reality that Angelenos experience on the streets every day. Asked in a debate this spring to rate how safe she felt walking around her neighborhood on a scale from one to 10, she replied: “I would say a 10.” This month after her home was broken into, she walked that back.

“I did feel safe until my safety was shattered, like so many Angelenos,” she told a local news station. The burglars ransacked her home and stole two handguns, which she said were registered and locked in a safe box hidden in her closet. Strangely, the criminals didn’t take cash, electronics or other valuables.

Though she’s a gun-control advocate, Ms. Bass said she kept the “guns for personal safety, as do many people. I think that gun control is extremely important. But I have never believed that people—if they wanted to have guns—should not have them.” She can thank the Supreme Court’s Heller decision for protecting her Second Amendment right to protect herself.

Two men were arrested last week for the break-in and, for a change, they are being held in jail rather than released to quickly rob again. One reason L.A. like other big cities has become more dangerous and disorderly is because criminals often aren’t apprehended, and, when they are, they are released back on the streets. Ms. Bass’s website says “we’ve tried arresting our way out of the problem before—it doesn’t work.” Actually, it does.