Posted on 06/23/2002 3:35:15 PM PDT by tarawa
Destroying gun used to kill Selena blames an inanimate object By J.R. LABBE Fort Worth Star-Telegram
The .38-caliber Taurus revolver that was used to kill Tejano music sensation Selena lies in pieces at the bottom of Corpus Christi Bay.
Thought to be lost after the 1995 trial of Yolanda Saldivar, the singer's former fan club president who is serving a life sentence for shooting the Grammy-winning artist, the gun was found last month in the Harris County home of the court reporter who worked the trial.
State District Judge Jose Longoria ordered the destruction of the handgun on June 10; it was sawed into bits on June 11 and then ferried aboard a patrol boat to the site where the Nueces County sheriff scattered the fragments in the water.
Such ceremony for a supposedly reviled object. The mixed message is perplexing.
The judge, Selena's father and many of her loyal fans so hated what the gun stood for that it had to be destroyed, yet its remains were treated to the last rites often given the ashes of departed loved ones.
Chopping up the gun was almost as senseless as what occurred when Saldivar used it to murder the 23-year-old "Mexican Madonna" in a Corpus Christi motel room on March 31, 1995.
A historical artifact is lost, and the responsibility for a heinous crime has been shifted from where it belongs — the person who pulled the trigger.
"This is traditional logic for gun control advocates. Blame the implement," said Keeva Segal, firearms industry marketing consultant and the Webmaster for Women and Guns. "He effectively had the gun drawn and quartered."
In defending his decision to dismantle the gun and forever remove it from the possibility of public view, Longoria said that it was "an instrument that was used to destroy her."
That part the judge got right. It was an instrument — but it was misused by a twisted individual to cause the death of an exceptional young talent.
For people who fear guns instead of respect them, it is difficult to make the argument that they are tools, not unlike baseball bats or kitchen knives.
Enthusiasts of shooting sports get hours of enjoyment out of perfecting the necessary eye, hand and breath coordination needed to consistently hit a clay pigeon or the bull's-eye of a paper target.
Wild game gourmets salivate at the thought of that white-tailed deer they see through their Leupold scopes turned into venison backstrap on the grill, lightly basted in garlic butter and heated to a pinkish perfection.
Used correctly, firearms can make life enjoyable and even put food on the table. In many cases, they can save lives.
But the stories of citizens successfully thwarting crime by the use of guns — often without even firing a shot — rarely make the papers. Why? If there's no crime, there's no story.
Beyond the misdirection of responsibility, the judge's ruling was a disservice to history and posterity.
It's a fact, albeit an ugly one, that Selena Quintanilla Perez was killed with a .38-caliber revolver. It's a fact that President John F. Kennedy met his untimely death at the hands of a lunatic using a bolt-action Mannlicher-Carcano carbine.
No one would think of destroying that gun.
"She was an inspiration to many of our children in our community, our state and our world," Longoria said. "I did this so the children can remember her as she was."
The fact that Selena did have such tremendous influence on so many people in her short life is the very reason why the historical artifact should have been preserved.
Does the judge think that Kennedy's memory is tainted — or that of his brother, Robert, or civil rights activist Martin Luther King Jr., or President Abraham Lincoln — because of the tools used to kill them?
Ethnomusicologist Manuel Pena of Fresno State University, who has written three books on Mexico and Mexican-American music, was disheartened by the judge's limited vision.
"How often do historians wish they had evidence of things that happened one hundred years ago?" Pena asked The Associated Press on June 10.
Little pieces of steel now lie in watery repose, never to serve as a tangible history lesson for future generations on the short but spectacular life of the symbol of Tejano pride.
It belonged to the murderer.
Isn't this method of destruction of a gun unusual? Isn't a gun usually just bent, broken, or cut in half?
It was purchased by Yolanda Saldivar. It was not stolen property. I especially don't think that the murderer should be able to profit by selling it. I would conceed that a stolen weapon should be returned to its righful owner, but this was not a stolen weapon. It is not a particularly noteworthy weapon except for the connection with this case. I very seriously doubt that any of Saldivar's next of kin would want to even claim to be next of kin much less try to claim the weapon. There was another Yolanda Saldivar (unrelated) listed in the local phone book who received numerous death threats in the weeks just after the murder.
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