When Self Defense Makes No Sense
You may have heard by now that a 17 year-old inexplicably crossed state lines with an assault rifle and shot three people and got away with it. Shaila Dewan and Mitch Smith of The New York Times wrote the article “When it comes to self-defense, the prosecution has a heavier burden.” The laws regarding self defense butt up “against the state’s open carry law, which allows for situations like the one at issue in the trial, where numerous strangers were armed and had taken it upon themselves to maintain order.”
I will not address how angry I am, or how senseless this situation is, nor the dangerous precedence this sets, or the history behind these attacks. Michael Harriot has done in this Twitter thread.
My aim is to address how to think about self defense with guns. Let’s frame my thoughts on the Constitution, then get to the other points I want to make.
The Second Amendment says: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” When you look at that, your rights to a gun aren’t really for self defense again protesters IN ANOTHER STATE. If an angry mob starts breaking down your door at YOUR HOUSE, that’s different.
Now, you might say, ‘I’m going somewhere, and there might be trouble.’ Huh? Like, do you NEED to go to a rally across state lines? If you’re that afraid of the event that it requires YOU to carry a firearm, DO NOT GO TO THE EVENT. Period.
To really have self-defense with a firearm, you have to have clean hands. Per the Legal Information Institute, “[t]he purpose of the doctrine is to prevent a party from obtaining relief when that party’s own wrongful conduct has made it such that granting the relief would be against good conscience.” Is crossing state lines with a loaded automatic weapon wrongful conduct?
And most importantly, a gun owner has a higher duty to protect the others around them. When the Constitution was written, armies and laypeople were using single-shot muskets. You had to load the gun and powder, shoot, then manually reload the gun.
In contrast, today “AR-15 has become the umbrella term for a range of semi-automatic rifles made by a host of gun makers” per NPR’s “A Brief History Of The AR-15” by GREG MYRE. These weapons of mass destruction have been used “in most all of the deadliest shootings in this decade.”
So, why are you even using it for self defense? You can’t anyway unless you can open carry. And there are many places that you can’t bring a gun to…like an airport. See “A passenger’s weapon accidentally discharged at the Atlanta airport, causing panic and halting flights” by Dakin Andone, Keith Allen and David Williams, CNN.
What does a ‘higher duty’ even look like? For doctors, they “must not only act as a reasonable person would under the circumstances, but must also act with the skill and professionalism that a similarly-trained doctor would exhibit under the circumstances” per “What is the “Duty of Care” in Personal Injury Law?” by Andrew Suszek of alllaw.com.
Militaries around the world have rules of engagement. According to The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica, these rules “refer to the orders issued by a competent military authority that delineate when, where, how, and against whom military force may be used, and they have implications for what actions soldiers may take on their own authority.”
If professional, well-trained soliders need rules to determine when to shoot, what chance do regular people have? They will shoot if they are scared or frightened. One example from the New York Times article:
During the unrest he was pursued by a man, Joseph Rosenbaum, who Mr. Rittenhouse said he feared would wrest control of his gun. Mr. Rittenhouse shot and killed him. That, according to evidence presented at the trial, caused members of the crowd to perceive Mr. Rittenhouse as a dangerous aggressor.
One man, Anthony Huber, used a skateboard as a weapon against him. Mr. Rittenhouse shot and killed him before facing off with a third man, Gaige Grosskreutz, who had pulled out a handgun.
One more example from another case, via “Closing arguments begin in the trial of 3 men accused of murdering Ahmaud Arbery” by JOE HERNANDEZ of NPR:
She also suggested the defendants had little evidence to believe Arbery had committed a crime before they initiated what they claimed was a citizen’s arrest under Georgia law. Defense lawyers have stated that their clients suspected Arbery after recent thefts in the neighborhood, though there has been no evidence presented that he stole anything.
“All three of these defendants made assumptions, made assumptions about what was going on that day,” Dunikoski said. “And they made their decision to attack Ahmaud Arbery in their driveways, because he was a Black man running down the street.”
Three people are dead in these two cases because:
- People had guns and discharged them at people who DID NOT possess firearms
- These people did not have the experience or training to determine when to use deadly force
- The law in some jurisditions allow people to abuse the concept of self defense
In thr future, I want to see a citizens’ rules of engagement. Who, when and where can you shoot someone and claim self defense? When should a seventeen year old be allowed to shoot someone? When can you even shoot an AR-15? Seriously. You gonna shoot deer with a semi-automatic weapon? It sounds pretty simple that you can use it to defend your home, that is, to keep someone IN your home from harming you. There are other cases, certainly. They are need to be closely defined and codified into law.
Another issue is open carry. I want only qualified and very well-trained professionals to open carry. That’s soliders, police officers and security professionals. Otherwise, as you can see in the Ahmaud Arbery case, people will impersonate cops and kill under the guise of fake investigation and illegal detainment.
