Starts well, ends badly

Thomas A Bowden gives us his take on the Second Amendment as it relates to the Heller Case:

First, the robber hit Willie Lee Hill more than 50 times with a can of soda, knocking him unconscious. Later, the 93-year-old victim awakened, covered with blood, to find his 24-year-old assailant ransacking the bedroom. When Hill pulled out a .38-caliber handgun from near his bed, the robber lunged at him. Hill stopped his attacker with a single bullet to the throat. “I got what I deserved,” the robber told police afterward.

That episode happened in Arkansas last July, but similar acts of self-defense occur by the thousands all across America every year. Overwhelming historical evidence and common sense demonstrate that guns--often called the “great equalizer,” for obvious reasons--are a powerful method of self-defense in the precious minutes before police can arrive.

In the District of Columbia, however, citizens may not lawfully possess a handgun for self-defense, even in the home...at least, not yet. The Supreme Court has heard oral argument in D.C. v. Heller, which is expected to determine whether such a blanket ban violates the Second Amendment. But regardless of how the Court may interpret the Constitution, citizens deserve a legal right to own a handgun for self-defense.

As the Declaration of Independence recognizes, governments are created to protect our individual rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. The right of self-defense is included and implied in the right to life. In forming a government, citizens delegate the task of defending themselves to the police. But to delegate is not to surrender. Each citizen retains the ultimate right to defend himself in emergencies when his appointed agents, the police, are not available to help.

So far so good. If Mr. Bowden had stopped here all would be well. However in a sort of writer's version of the Peter Principle he felt the need to keep typing until he had reached his level of incompetance:

But what constitutes an emergency? What acts of self-defense are permissible in such a situation? And what tools may private citizens own for emergency self-defense? The law’s task is to furnish objective answers to such questions, so that citizens may defend their lives without taking the law into their own hands.

An emergency, properly defined, arises from an objective threat of imminent bodily harm. The victim must summon police, if possible. An emergency ends when the threat ends, or as soon as police arrive and take charge. During that narrow emergency interval, a victim may defend himself, but only with the least degree of force necessary under the circumstances to repel his attacker. A victim who explodes in vengeance, using excessive force, exposes himself to criminal liability along with his assailant.

This is mostly true, except that the trend in self defense law is heading in the direction of allowing people broader latitude in when they may use deadly force. For example Mr. Bowden asserts that the police must be called if at all possible. It is a good idea to summon the police, if only to go on record with the fact that you felt yourself under threat and attempted to bring in the authorities to handle the situation for you. However taking the duty to summon the police if at all possible to its logical conclusion could very well imply a duty to retreat.

For example if you are watching TV in the living room and hear someone trying to break down the front door a duty to call police if at all possible would imply that you are bound by law to grab the phone and run to the rear of the house or upstairs and lock yourself in the bedroom or bathroom and dial 911. The direction which the law is heading in most states is to enact so-called "castle doctrine" laws which eliminate the need to retreat when one is on one's own property. I believe that the law will continue to evolve in this direction due to the fact that almost all states currently have "shall issue" laws to any citizen who is not disqualified by a criminal record, mental illness and who can meet certain minimal training requirements.

The trend throughout history is that bearing arms and political power go hand in hand. In societies where only one class of people have the right to bear arms that is the class which will hold the political power. In European history you can see the rights of the common people grow in conjunction with the loss of the monarchy and aristocracy's exclusive right to bear arms.

In the United Kingdom we have seen over the past decade changes in the House of Lords which have removed nearly all the final vestiges of power held by the hereditary lords at the same time as the government has extended the UK's strict gun control laws to shotguns. Shotguns are the weapon most associated with the gentry in that society (because hunting was almost exclusively the right of the upper class). It is simply no accident that the British aristocracy lost its last bit of political power at the same time as it lost its right to bear arms.

Mr. Bowden goes sharply downhill from this point:

Many objects commonly owned for peaceful purposes can be pressed into service for emergency self-defense. But unlike kitchen knives or baseball bats, handguns have no peaceful purpose--they are designed to kill people. The same lethal power that makes handguns the most practical means of self-defense against robbers, rapists, and murderers, also makes handguns an essential tool of government force. Handguns are deadly force and nothing but--a fact that gives rise to legitimate concerns over their private ownership in a civilized society.

I'm sure that the bullseye shooters, the cowboy action shooters, the handgun hunters and metallic silhouette shooters will find it a surprise that their guns are only designed to kill people and that they are "deadly force and nothing else". I'm also surprised that handguns are an essential tool of government force. After all when the British Empire was at its absolute zenith in the Late Victorian period the police were armed with wooden clubs and the citizenry could carry revolvers.

These concerns can be resolved only by laws carefully drawn to confine private use of handguns to emergency self-defense, as defined by objective law. Such laws must also prohibit all conduct by which handguns might present an objective threat to others, whether by intent or negligence.

Again it will come as a surprise to the above mentioned sporting community that their handguns must be restricted to emergency self-defense. There goes that bowling pin match I was going to shoot Saturday. Of course it is necessary to criminalize the criminal misuse of firearms. Just as the criminal misuse of kitchen knives, baseball bats and the odd bit of steel pipe are all illegal.

Contrary to an often expressed worry, therefore, a right to keep and bear arms in no way implies that citizens may stockpile weaponry according to their arbitrary preferences. Cannons, tanks, and nuclear weapons have no legitimate use in a private emergency, and their very presence is a threat to peaceful neighbors.

The people who live in the housing development across from the Carter Co., TN chapter of the VFW will be surprised to know that their lives are in imminent peril from the two howitzers sitting out in frot of that private organization's building in Elizabethton. All the private collectors who own fighter planes, tanks and artillery pieces will be as surprised as the cowboy action shooters to learn that their very presence constitutes a threat to their peaceful neighbors.

If handguns are confined to emergency self-defense, no legitimate purpose is served by an outright ban such as the District of Columbia enacted. Even if such laws actually deprived criminals of guns (which they don’t), they would infringe upon a law-abiding citizen’s right in emergencies to repel attackers who are wielding knives, clubs, fists--or cans of soda.

With the aid of his handgun, Willie Lee Hill survived that violent home invasion last July. Self-defense was his right, as it is ours. A proper legal system recognizes and protects that right, by permitting private ownership of handguns under appropriate limits.

You see Mr. Bowden you have made the same mistake that the DC city government has made and has asked the Supreme Court to make. You have assumed that the matter of owning handguns is a matter of public safety. The District says that people are safer without them and you say that they are safer with them. You are correct in that point but that is not the basis of the American citizens right to keep and bear arms.

It is a constitutional right, Mr. Bowden. That means that the Framers recognized that the right to own and carry weapons comes to us from our Creator and they determined that the government they were creating would not take to itself the power to interfere with that God-given right. Human beings have a natural right to own and carry (keep and bear) weapons for whatever purpose they choose except to use them to deprive another of their own God-given rights.

Neither my guns nor my speech nor my religion has to pass your test of appropriateness - or the Supreme Court's or Congresses or anybody else's either! The government may use its power to deprive me of the free exercise of my natural rights but it cannot take away those rights.