In the not-too-distant future, it may well be against the law to have your car stolen in Escondido. Or your home burglarized.

Clearly, you didn't take the proper steps to secure your vehicle. Or valuables.

And the good Lord help you should you be assaulted. Why you ever thought you had some God-given right to venture out from the safety of your home …

It used to be only rape victims were blamed for the acts of the criminals who preyed on them. She asked for it, you know, wearing that dress, walking with that hitch in her giddy-up. Why, it wasn't his fault at all - couldn't help himself. She only got what she had coming.

Now it appears that we're extending that blame-the-victim mentality to businesses that are victims of theft.

Of course, by "we" in the above sentence, I really mean the Escondido City Council, which has passed a law prohibiting not the theft of shopping carts, but allowing your shopping carts to be stolen. Said law is now in the early stages of preparing for enforcement.

It's the businesses' own fault, of course, having those sleek, silver conveyances, all that gleaming chrome seducing passers-by. How could you possibly want to blame the poor people who take them? What choice do they have when Escondido's merchants tease them by having those seductive carts all over their stores?

Anyway, you can't blame the city, really. I mean, how are the cops supposed to know if a shopping cart is being stolen? It's not like you can set up roadblocks everywhere and pat down pedestrians to see if they have a shopping cart stuffed down their trousers. The man hours that would be lost in trying to spot shopping cart thieves are unimaginable. The training we'd have to put them through to be able to spot a shopping cart on our city streets would be both expensive and time-consuming.

So the city has no choice but to punish miscreant merchants whose shopping carts are stolen through fines, and, if they persist in being victimized, jail time for the store managers.

Besides, enforcing laws against stealing would be discriminatory in the case of shopping carts as, presumably, most of the people stealing said carts are poor. Many may even be Latino.

So it's pretty obvious the city's hands are tied on this issue. I mean, what is the city supposed to do? Work with the transit district to get more bus routes? Sit down and have a rational discussion with area merchants about a subsidized shuttle service for those without a car of their own?

Maybe enforce existing laws regarding theft?

Please.

If these greedy corporate barons are going to have the audacity to bring this modern pestilence of the shopping cart into Escondido, the City Council has to act - has to - to protect us. The best thing that could come out of all this would be for the grocers and other merchants to simply get rid of grocery carts. Do our health some good hauling those bags out to our cars anyway.

You'll excuse me now. I need to go clean out my garage so I can get my car back in there. Can't afford a stint in jail should my Taurus wagon get hot-wired.

- Contact columnist Jim Trageser at (760) 631-6628 or jtrageser@nctimes.com.