LETTER TO THE EDITOR
By:
Some months ago, a U.S. Circuit Court tribunal struck down a Washington, D.C., gun law that required "long guns" to be kept disassembled or trigger-locked, and banned handguns.
The city’s request that the full Circuit Court re-hear the case was denied, and the city has given notice that it will appeal the case to the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS).
The question at law, whether the Second Amendment’s "right to bear arms" language refers to a government right or an individual right, is important and deserves full, public debate; but here, I will concentrate on another point of more visceral concern. If you don’t think private citizens should be allowed to "keep and bear arms," even in public, you need to learn the story of Jessica Gonzales.
Jessica Gonzales, of Castle Rock, Colo., had a temporary restraining order (TRO), or Order of Protection, against her ex-husband, who violated that order and murdered their three children. The Supreme Court case can be found on the Internet (under docket #04-278), showing that, over some 6 hours, Ms. Gonzales begged the police half a dozen times to enforce the TRO.
It shows that Ms. Gonzales went to the police station and begged an officer at the desk who, rather than help her, went to dinner instead. Ms. Gonzales sued the Town of Castle Rock and, ultimately, lost her case for damages in the Supreme Court.
Why Ms. Gonzales lost her case is a more compelling argument for citizens to be armed than anything the NRA could have dreamed of. "Go along to get along" people, comfortable in the delusion that the police are there to "Serve and Protect" them, will not believe what I am about to write.
I don’t ask them to: let them read SCOTUS’s decision, then ask a police officer if I’ve written the truth.
Ms. Gonzales’s case argued she had a "property right" in her TRO. A property right is legalese for the notion that you’ve suffered damage if you can’t use something you have as it is customarily meant to be used. Ms. Gonzales had the TRO, but she couldn’t use it to protect and save her three daughters: SCOTUS ruled that she didn’t have such a property right, so, legally, she suffered no damage when her three daughters were murdered, her TRO against her husband notwithstanding.
It isn’t the property right, itself, that is most important in this case, but SCOTUS’s reason for denying that Jessica had a property right. SCOTUS based its ruling on the principle of police discretion, the right of police to decide which calls they will answer, and which calls they will not answer.
Regardless of the call or of the outcome, SCOTUS ruled that no individual citizen has a right to expect the police to answer their call.
SCOTUS justified this ruling on two grounds: 1) there simply aren’t enough police resources to answer every call, so that even laws that appear to take away police discretion and compel them to act don’t actually do so; and, 2) the police don’t exist to serve the individual, in the first place, but exist to represent the laws of the state, generally, essentially to give the impression of a lawful society.
So, when you go to bed tonight, peacefully secure in the thought that, if an armed intruder breaks into your house to rob or rape, a speed-dial call to 9-1-1 will save you, think of Ms. Gonzales’s dead children, and the ruling that said she suffered no harm because the police used their discretion not to answer her call.
You have no legal claim to police protection: shouldn’t you have, at least, a legal claim to the means of protecting yourself?
This is the question SCOTUS will very likely answer for us. Let’s hope they don’t decide to leave us out as sheep to the wolves.
Many police departments and individual officers would move heaven and earth to help any citizen in need. Their honor and integrity is not, however, an adequate substitute for a citizen’s lawful right to self defense and the means of self defense.
Blackpoint Road