When you don’t need a gun (update)

This article appeared in this morning’s Post and Courier. Apparently South Carolina is one of the best states to live in if you plan on taking care of your own law enforcement problems; state law allows a home owner to protect not only his life but his property, and not just in her home but in her car, business, a campground, etc. Law enforcement and prosecutors have apparently interpreted the law quite liberally, too, including declining to prosecute a man who fatally shot a would-be thief in the back as he ran away after failing to steal a bicycle. One problem some have identified with this state of affairs is that private citizens have greater leeway in using guns than even law enforcement officers, who are allowed to use deadly force only when it is reasonable to suspect that a person’s life is in imminent danger – not to protect property. Charleston County Sheriff Al Cannon told the reporter that this discrepancy makes sense because law enforcement officers are trained to make these distinctions whereas private citizens are not. Fair enough – and I’m all for giving someone the benefit of the doubt when it appears he reasonably believed himself or his family to be in danger. But when a gun owner admits to using his or her gun for the express purpose of preventing damage or loss to property, I think it’s time to rein in the posse and give citizens an incentive to let the police do their jobs.

- KPE

When you don’t need a gun

Recently, I read about yet another probably unnecessary discharge of a firearm. In a neighborhood on James Island, between Harbor View and Fort Johnson Roads, that has been unnerved by a series of break-ins, a man fired five bullets at a man he says was trying to break into his truck and steal his stereo equipment. The target claims he was doing no such thing, but instead was going through the shooter’s trash. One of the shots grazed the target’s head.

Let’s bracket for a moment the question of which party was engaged in criminal behavior. (After all, it’s not exactly okay to be rummaging through someone’s trash in the middle of the night.) The gun owner was understandably concerned about his property – his truck and the $2000 worth of stereo equipment he says was inside. We have property rights in this country, and that’s a good thing. But I want to ask the question, just hypothetically – what would the owner of the truck have done if he hadn’t had a gun?

I’m guessing he would not have confronted the man allegedly breaking into his trunk. He probably would have stayed inside (or retreated to the house or another safer vantage point if he was already outside) and called the police. Observed the suspect. Taken note of a vehicle tag if the suspect had one. Unless the suspect had any designs beyond just breaking into the truck (or looking through the trash, as the case may be), neither the property owner nor his family would have been in any danger necessitating the use of a gun.

Let’s look at an even clearer example. Last fall, a Charleston-area business owner shot and fatally wounded a man who was breaking into his truck, which was parked behind his store. As it turned out, the thief was unarmed, but when the business owner confronted him, he had reached into his pocket as though about to pull a gun. The businessman thus shot in defense of his life, not just his property. He was not charged with any violation, since it was determined that he acted reasonably in self-defense. But again – what if the business owner had not had a gun with him? My guess is that he would not have confronted the thief, that he would have stayed inside his store and called the police, not walked out into the parking lot. Last week, in West Columbia, a homeowner discovered a man trying to break into his truck in the middle of the night and shot him, fatally, as he was riding away from the scene on a bicycle. Obviously that wouldn’t have happened if he hadn’t had a gun.

I’m not for outlawing all ownership of guns by civilians. Hunting is a sport with a proud heritage in the U.S. (especially the South), and if is practiced (as it often is around here) with respect and care for nature, and in conjunction with good conservation practices, I don’t have a problem with it. And certainly there are situations in which guns, wielded by brave and responsible citizens, have saved lives that were truly in danger. There really is something to the gun lobby’s reminder that the bad guys carry guns, and so “good guys” who are unarmed are at a real disadvantage.

But at the same time, it seems from news reports such as the above that having a gun makes you take risks you wouldn’t take without one. As Michael Westen said so brilliantly in one of the early episodes of Burn Notice, “Guns make you stupid. Duct tape makes you smart.” In other words, it’s easy for a person with a gun to feel safe, invincible, powerful, able to handle a situation by himself. And that can make gun owners do stupid things. If all you’re armed with is a roll of duct tape, you’re going to be a little more cautious.

Now, I get that for some people there’s something deliciously macho and empowering about being able to take care of a problem yourself, without calling the police and hiding while some crook runs off with your stuff. But our society, like so many others, has made a conscious decision to be a nation of laws and “official” law enforcement. Throughout our history we have gradually turned away from vigilantism. Even the Wild West became less wild in part because of the wishes of the people who lived there; law and order were not just imposed from outside. Taking the law into your own hands makes for an exciting movie but in daily life begets an existence that is dangerous and uncertain, where it’s hard to start a business or start a family with any confidence and where one doesn’t know whom to trust. It’s all well and good to use your gun to chase away a burglar, until someone else decides you need to pay for allegedly looking at his wife the wrong way. Laws and law enforcement must be predictable to a decent extent if our society is to function. Yet the gun lobby frequently seems to endorse do-it-yourself law enforcement, when they push for more lenient penalties (or no penalties) on gun owners who take matters into their own hands when their lives were probably not at risk. Again, it’s tough to say whether or not one’s life was at risk in a given situation, or what the gun user knew at the time. But it’s clear that people often get into these murky situations in the first place because they feel able to defend themselves.

It’s legal to use force – even lethal force, if necessary – to defend one’s self. As it should be. But self-defense needs to be self-defense. Or defense of another vulnerable person. Not defense of your stereo system. Otherwise, where do we draw the line? Is it permissible to discharge your weapon to keep someone from stealing your $20,000 car? Your $2000 sub-woofer? Your $200 Wii? Your $50 pair of sneakers? If so, then we’ll be back to the state of nature; the strong (and the armed) defend themselves, and the weak make do. Surely few gun owners think this is a good idea. And yet we need to draw a line somewhere. Restrictions on and barriers to gun ownership are part of that, as is prosecution of firearms violations when the situation warrants it.

One person’s chance at proving his or her manhood or womanhood with do-it-yourself law enforcement may be a neighbor’s reason to fear going out of the house. Or the needless death of a kid gone astray who might come out of a few years in Juvenile Justice and be a productive citizen. In the rush to make sure citizens can buy guns to defend themselves and their families, we must remember that our ancestors deliberately and with good reason built a country in which there are processes for judging and sentencing suspected criminals.

- KPE