Category: Carrying / Self-Defense

Gun rights are in decline, and there are fewer gun owners that ever. Americans are losing interest in guns. Really. Just ask Baghdad Bob.

The Washington Post pens a piece that shows the number of justifiable homicides are up in the wake of Stand Your Ground laws. A few questions:

• During this period, the number of people who have concealed carry permits has risen significantly. Could this be a greater contributing factor?
• Why is this necessarily a problem? It would seem to me that more people defending themselves successfully is going to be a consequence of more people having firearms. I don’t view this as a social negative.
• Many of the states listed here have always had no duty to retreat. There are missing states as well. California has no such duty, and neither does Virginia. It seems to me in order for this to be accurate, you’d need to eliminate states that have traditionally had no duty to retreat, which is probably 1/3rd to 1/2 of the states on their list. There are also a number of states which require no duty to retreat when attempting to stop the commission of a forcible felony.

I think if the media are going to go the route of justifiable homicides being a social plague, they aren’t going to find much reception among the public. One reason CD and SYG have been so easy to pass is because politicians are afraid to tell people they can’t defend their homes, conveyances, and have to surrender a place they have a legal right to be in order to be able to claim self-defense. As has been mentioned here numerous times, CD and SYG don’t honestly change much, and in most states, is just adjusting the statutes to match what juries will routinely decide in most of these cases.

The black man doesn’t get arrested. Where’s the media, Jesse, and Al?

The Democrats are already getting to work in Florida to repeal Stand Your Ground. The Republicans seem to be taking a wait and see approach, but don’t count on them. At least one columnist for the Palm Beach Post thinks repeal is unlikely. Meanwhile, a Democratic State Representative is assaulting our considerably more limited SYG law, and it’s abundantly clear he knows nothing about self-defense law either before or after castle doctrine passed here.

We must never allow another state-sanctioned tragedy like this. Pennsylvania must revisit its Castle Doctrine law and take steps to get guns off our streets.

Prior to Gov. Tom Corbett signing the legislation into law last year, Pennsylvania allowed citizens the right to use deadly force, if necessary, against introducers in their “castle” or home.

The new law allows the use of deadly force in other places, such as a car or public street, and does not require the person to retreat before shooting.

I find it terrifying that we have enacted legislation that condones untrained civilians shooting someone in our streets. It’s the wrong direction for Pennsylvania.

So according to Rep. Waters, Pennsylvanians should have no right to self-defense anywhere but in the home? Even the United Kingdom doesn’t go so far in its deviation from traditional common law on this matter. The Pennsylvania constitution, which is the title of our blog, protects the right to bear arms in defense of self, one wonders whether Rep. Waters believes that constitutional provision, which he took an oath to uphold, ought to have any meaning at all. He’s not the only one, however. The York Daily Record is also editorializing:

Florida law allows people to use deadly force – with no responsibility to try to retreat to safety if possible – if they feel threatened.

This is a blatant falsehood. One wonders whether this editorial was written by the Daily Record, or submitted to them by MAIG or CeaseFirePA. They go on to suggest that it couldn’t happen here, but fail to acknowledge that Zimmerman would still have a self-defense claim here, even under the pre-Castle Doctrine law. Philadelphia Weekly has an interview with Rep. Metcalfe on Castle Doctrine. I’m surprised by even how much of the case he gets wrong. Pennsylvania Castle Doctrine wouldn’t protect Zimmerman based on the facts that we know about the case, no matter who’s claim you believe. The thing is, Florida SYG/CD has nothing to do with this case either. It does is not relevant based on the facts.

To the credit of the authorities, they didn’t pursue gun charges, but the 81-year old man who had his firearm seized after defending his home says he’ll just get another one. They note the 81-year old had a theft charge 22 years ago, but that doesn’t sound like a disabling offense. He had a weapons charge in 1994, but given that Chicago’s laws are unjust, that doesn’t mean anything to me.

Dave Kopel publishes in the Washington Times, debunking the notion that the Zimmerman case has anything to do with Florida’s stand your ground law. He does not go easy on the media, nor should he. They’ve been carrying a false narrative for people who are deceptive if I’m in a charitable mood, or outright liars and charlatans if I’m not.

Your first call should be to your lawyer. Reading over this post over at Tam’s, one thing strike me: if there’s one lesson to learn from the Zimmerman case, your next call should probably be to a PR firm. We’ve seen two cases recently, Gerald Ung and now George Zimmerman, where the parents of the shootee have hired PR firms and made life a living hell for the the shooter.

They used to say the first person to call 911 is generally the victim. Now it’s probably accurate to say the first person to hire a PR firm to start setting the narrative in the media is probably the victim.

Bill Quick over at Daily Pundit has been blogging for as long as I can remember. He’s a clear thinker, so when he offers a criticism, it’s something I take seriously, such as this:

OTOH, your personal approach gives you no standing to trash those who take a different approach. At least Sebastian is willing to admit he might have been a bit…ah…premature. Good on him!

If George Zimmerman were the only one on trial, I might be more forgiving of him taking a different approach. But anyone who holds a permit or straps on a firearm for self-defense is now on trial, as are the laws we’ve advocated to support that endeavor. Because of that, I think advocating smart practices in this area is important. Certainly I’m not going to come be anyone’s mommy, and follow them around to make sure they always do the smart thing, nor am I going to advocate laws that could punish someone for not adhering to best practices. But I am definitely going to advocate for those practices as others have advocated them to me.

Jeff Cooper’s advocacy of four simple rules for gun handling, which were spread by folks like gospel through advocacy, have reduced shooting accidents substantially over the past several decades. Shooting accidents are now a far weaker argument for the opponents of gun ownership now than they were in the 1970s, thanks to Cooper and a lot of evangelism for a culture of safety in the shooting sports. I believe in that kind of advocacy, and the Zimmerman case has been useful in pointing out mistakes he made and talking about smarter practices. I don’t think it’s so much a priesthood of self-defense, so much as the fact most of us realize we all have to be evangelists for what the community generally accepts as smart practices that will keep people out of trouble.

I think most of us understand that self-defense situations are not cut and dry, and real life situations are always a lot more complex than the classroom or shooting range. I think we’ve all been willing to give Zimmerman the benefit of doubt on his self-defense claim, even while simultaneously being critical of him for failing to practice avoidance.

The one conclusion I’ll admit was premature on my part was concluding his motivations for finding Matin suspicious were racial, and couldn’t have been objective. Now that more information is coming out that Martin may have been involved with drugs, if he was on drugs that night, that could have provided an objective basis for Zimmerman’s suspicion. But I stand by my assertion that this killing was unnecessary. Had Martin been approached by someone in uniform, it’s likely we never would have heard about this, and both Zimmerman and Martin could have their respective lives back. But whether it was unnecessary or not is a completely different matter than whether it’s legally self-defense. I’ve never been willing to convict Zimmerman on that count, and believe his claim is plausible based on the evidence we’ve seen in the public. But I don’t think it’s wrong or elitist to advocate for smart practices that are taught by most self-defense instructors around the country, especially when the consequences of not advocating good practices is that we all risk getting put on trial.