The New American Right of Self-Offense

“I got a job to do — protect these people. That’s it.” 

AR-15-armed vigilante Erik Jordan outside Kenosha Courthouse after the Rittenhouse Acquittal.

"We fight like hell. And if you don't fight like hell, you're not going to have a country anymore." 

Donald Trump to the crowd just before they attacked the Capitol on January 6th.

“Based upon current information, we assess the greatest threat of lethal violence continues to emanate from lone offenders with racially or ethnically motivated violent extremist ideologies and [domestic violent extremists] with personalized ideologies.” A June 2020 FBI, Department of Homeland Security and National Counterterrorism Center Bulletin to law enforcement & intelligence agencies.

It used to be our obsession – stories of the wild west in the 19th century. Gunslingers. Highway, railroad and bank robbers. Bounty hunters. Sheriffs, marshals and Texas Rangers with quickdraw skills and hair-trigger guns. Pinkertons. Private armies protecting rich ranchers. Movies. TV shows. Western art. Every man (and few women) had a rifle holster for their Winchester strapped to their horse, a six-shooter in their side-holster(s) and perhaps a shotgun or even a sawed-off rifle at the ready. There was short reprise of this violent era in the early part of the 20th century rising slightly after WWI, but by the 1920/30s, this violence returned, this time primarily relegated to the Mafia and a few bands of legendary Tommy-gun-wielding criminals. Ordinary people did not carry guns around except for hunting.

Decades later, when the Vietnam War ended, the demand for small arms that kept our nation’s gunmakers rolling in military profits slackened. These manufacturers suddenly found themselves hovering near (and sometimes crossing over into) bankruptcy. That’s when they approached the National Rifle Association to create a separate gunowner lobby, aimed at normalizing gun ownership for everyone and pressing courts and legislatures to lift restrictions on who could own and carry a gun and how lethal that weapon could be. Boy was the NRA successful! Until 2008, there really was no recognition of a uniform right for anyone to own or carry a gun. Then the NRA, aided by a Supreme Court Justice determined to rewrite the plain meaning of the Second Amendment, changed all that forever. See my November 8th How Time and a Highly Politicized Supreme Court Repealed and Replaced the Second Amendment  blog for the ugly details.

Today, all across the United States but particularly in red states, carrying a gun in public is old news. Increasingly, gun owners don’t even need a permit to carry a concealed pistol in some states. Morgan Lee, writing for the November 22nd Associated Press, explores the expanding gun permissiveness that is rapidly gaining national acceptance: “As Kyle Rittenhouse was acquitted in two killings that he said were self-defense, armed civilians patrolled the streets near the Wisconsin courthouse with guns in plain view.

“In Georgia, testimony in the trial of Ahmaud Arbery’s killers showed that armed patrols were commonplace in the neighborhood where Arbery, a 25-year-old Black man, was chased down by three white men and shot.

“The two proceedings sent startling new signals about the boundaries of self-defense as more guns emerge from homes amid political and racial tensions and the advance of laws that ease permitting requirements and expand the allowable use of force… Across much of the nation, it has become increasingly acceptable for Americans to walk the streets with firearms, either carried openly or legally concealed. In places that still forbid such behavior, prohibitions on possessing guns in public could soon change if the U.S. Supreme Court strikes down a New York law.” See also, my Vigilante Justice an American Tradition November 20th blog. Republican Congressmen turned Rittenhouse – who openly showed his support for the right-wing Proud Boys militia – into a national hero. “They stand by Rittenhouse as a patriot who took a stand against lawlessness and exercised his 2nd Amendment rights…

“The Rittenhouse verdict arrived as many states are expanding self-defense laws and loosening the rules for carrying guns in public. Gun sales and gun violence have been on the rise… At the same time, six more states this year removed requirements to get a permit to carry guns in public, the largest number in any single year, according to the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence. In all, 30 states have enacted ‘stand your ground’ laws, which remove a requirement to retreat from confrontations before using deadly force…. Gun-rights advocates seeking greater access to weapons and robust self-defense provisions argue that armed confrontations will remain rare. 

“Discord over the right to carry guns in public places spilled over into state legislatures in the aftermath of a 2020 plot to storm the Michigan Capitol [see above photo], the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol and other threats. States including Michigan and New Mexico this year banned guns at their capitols, and Montana and Utah shored up concealed-carry rights… At the Supreme Court, justices are weighing the biggest guns case in more than a decade, a dispute over whether New York’s gun permitting law violates the 2nd Amendment right to ‘keep and bear arms.’” Lee.  For the Arbery defendants, the video evidence and the failure to yell, “citizen’s arrest” were sufficiently and unavoidably damning so as to result in a murder conviction.

Are the Arbery and Milwaukee police officer Derek “I Can't Breathe” Chauvin murder of George Floyd verdicts exceptions to the “be a vigilante” lesson of Rittenhouse? Or was the lesson, when shooting someone you do not like, to avoid CCTV cameras and folks with smart phones pointed at you. Don’t smirk, California residents, because even that liberal state has a provision for citizen’s arrest. But has murder with a “he-said, he-said” self-defense ploy just part of the escalation and legitimization of political violence reset the American norm?

As threats of violence against members of Congress (mostly who oppose Trump or his wishes) have tripled, clearly, anything goes. And for every left-of-center domestic extremist group, there are seven right-wing well-armed organizations pledged to violent vigil. Beware of the word “patriot.” “Stand back and stand by.” The wild, wild west is back… on a much bigger plain! 

I’m Peter Dekom, and if letting anyone go out with a high-powered weapon to shoot up folks that they believe might be breaking the law, right or wrong, is our goal, we are definitely headed there.