A Grave Accusation

The only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is good guy with a gun. National Rifle Association Executive Vice President, Wayne LaPierre, after the 2012 serial killings at Sandy Hook Elementary School. It is a most interesting sentence. Even if you accept the notion of a “bad guy” as a diabolical felon, there’s a whole lot more in that sentence that merits examination in light of the Ferguson, Missouri police-killing and subsequent riot-control methods applied by the “good guy” police.

Good guys, armed with military hardware and armored personnel carriers, arresting journalists, slamming heads against the glass store windows, basically resulting in the Governor of Missouri taking alarming steps to rein in a mostly white police force that many have seen as having gone rogue in what is mostly an African American community. “To the rest of the world, the images of explosions, billowing tear gas and armored vehicles made this city look as if it belonged in a chaos-stricken corner of Eastern Europe, not the heart of the American Midwest. As a result, a broad call came from across the political spectrum for America’s police forces to be demilitarized…

“‘At a time when we must seek to rebuild trust between law enforcement and the local community,’ Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. said, ‘I am deeply concerned that the deployment of military equipment and vehicles sends a conflicting message.’…” New York Times, August 14^th.  Even in socially conservative Missouri, the Ferguson police excess became a public relations nightmare that had to be contained. “Good guys” who seemed out of control.

“The Missouri State Highway Patrol will take over the supervision of security in the St. Louis suburb that's been the scene of violent protests since a police officer fatally shot an unarmed black teenager, the governor announced [August 14^th].

“Gov. Jay Nixon said security will be overseen by Capt. Ron Johnson of the Highway Patrol. Johnson, who is black, said he grew up in the community and ‘it means a lot to me personally that we break this cycle of violence…. Ferguson will not be defined as a community that was torn apart by violence but will be known as a community that pulled together to overcome it’…" Huffington Post, August 15^th.

But if the cops are not necessarily the “good guys,” how in the world are we going to trust civilians to make life and death decisions under what seem to be a new, unbelievably subjective and individual perceptions-driven “feelings” that now constitute “justifiable homicide”? The “stand your ground” statutes and egregious “open carry laws,” which bring guns into almost every nook and cranny of public life with a very loosey-goosy right to use them, have accelerated questionable deaths across the land.

On August 15^th, the relatively neutral American Bar Association (and yes, I am a member), through its ABA National Task Force on Stand Your Ground Laws issued a report, summarized in the ABA Journal (August 15^th), on the obvious. Here are some of those findings:

“Stand-your-ground laws are currently in effect in some form in 33 states. [See above map] The stand-your-ground laws eliminate the duty to retreat if individuals reasonably believe they are facing an imminent threat of bodily harm, and allow them to use force-including deadly force-without being found criminally liable. Some states also provide civil immunity to people who act pursuant to stand-your-ground laws. The terminology entered the mainstream lexicon when George Zimmerman shot and killed an unarmed Trayvon Martin in 2012 in Florida. Zimmerman was found not guilty of murder in July 2013.

 “The task force conducted five regional hearings throughout 2013; performed a 50-state survey; and cited empirical and statistical evidence gleaned from four different studies conducted around the country.

“Task force member David Harris, a professor of law at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law, pointed to a 2012 Texas A&M study by Mark Hoesktra and Cheng Cheng which found that in states that had enacted a stand-your-ground law, homicides actually increased by eight percent…

“States that had stand-your-ground laws also often applied them inconsistently, according to their findings. Task force member Joshu Harris, an assistant district attorney at the Norfolk County District Attorney's Office, cited numerous cases where individuals not only stood their ground but actively pursued and shot other individuals, even if there was no threat of imminent harm. ‘Prosecutors and victim rights advocates in our hearings confirmed the assertion that most [people who were killed in stand-your-ground cases] were unarmed,’ said Joshu Harris.

“Stand-your-ground laws vary greatly among states, and the task force found that police officers and prosecutors uniformly expressed confusion over how to enforce these laws. Harris noted that some laws define ‘imminent threat’ differently from others, while some states have different rules and requirements depending on where the altercation took place. Another task force member, Joseph J. Vince, a former officer in the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, stated that there was widespread opposition from law enforcement personnel towards stand-your-ground laws.

“‘Instead of encouraging peaceful resolution through the rule of law, stand-your-ground laws encourage violent actions," said Vince. "They place police officers at risk and give criminals an automatic defense.’…

“The task force recommended that states either repeal stand-your-ground laws or refuse to enact them. Additionally, it encouraged the ABA to adopt an educational initiative to provide accurate information about these laws, as well as to correct the misconception that these laws provide carte blanche for people to use deadly force in public areas.

“‘We've heard nothing good about stand-your-ground laws,’ said [task force co-chair Jack Middleton. ‘In fact, the more you look at them, the more problems you find. It's our hope that the ABA as a whole will take a position against these laws." Effectively, we’ve created a giant hole in the definition of murder. And in situations where there are no real witnesses, convicting a person relying on the “stand your ground” defense becomes really difficult. Facts can be recreated after the fact, and who will be the wiser? Most professional law enforcement professionals severely oppose these new statutes; it makes their work a whole lot more difficult.

Why do we trust these individual decisions instead of relying on a much more legally defensible history of what constitutes justifiable homicide? Other than crazies who cherish guns over human lives, enjoying twisting and distorting the obvious plain meaning of the Second Amendment, and the politicians who owe their political lives to that constituency, what exactly is the benefit to creating additional justification to what used to be down and dirty “murder”? There are people (and they’re neither cops nor military) out there with legally-purchased assault rifles and large-capacity magazines, walking around with their weapons in intimidatingly plain view. In stores, restaurants, government buildings, universities, etc.

When we think that the NRA of just a few decades ago stood as the benevolent force to insure gun safety and proper gun-use training has become the malevolent mouthpiece, distorter of the Second Amendment, lobbyist and sales representative for the U.S. gun manufacturing industry that provides so much of their financial support, it should make our stomachs turn. Since the days of the wild, wild West, it has never been easier to kill someone in the United States and legally get away with it. So many of these deaths are directly attributable to policies fomented by the NRA. And let’s get back to another word in Mr. La Pierre’s statement. “Only.” No other ways, eh? Think about a society that really applies that philosophy! Really? But try and get real with gun laws… and watch even liberal elected officials run for the hills, avoiding the wrath of a gun-industry lobby with seemingly more force than Congress itself!

I’m Peter Dekom, and somehow we are becoming the most violent nation in the developed world and getting worse by the day.