The Guilty Victims

The debate is on again.  Who is responsible for an individual's safety?  And what is the agent of threat that puts us at risk?  The rhetoric is swirling around us as fast as the 7/24 news cycle can invent more controversy.

The logic is more frightening than the rhetoric in this case.  Logic leads to conclusions that are hard to accept and blame covers those who were previously considered "the blameless."

The dead and injured are first, and foremost, responsible for their plight.  And the grave offers no recompense.

 

The Courts

On June 27th of 2005, in a case seeking redress for the failure of the police to protect a woman who had obtained a restraining order against an abusive spouse, the Supreme Court of the United States stated the following [1]:

It is perfectly clear, on the one hand, that neither the Federal Constitution itself, nor any federal statute, granted respondent or her children any individual entitlement to police protection.

Many pundits and commentators gasped when this was written.  This shows the pitiful understanding of liberty by today's populace -- and worse, by it's experts.

In this case, and many others[2] the courts have agreed that there exists no police responsibility for individual safety. In one[3] the courts said,

"Law enforcement agencies and personnel have no duty to protect individuals from the criminal acts of others; instead their duty is to preserve the peace and arrest law breakers for the protection of the general public.".

 

The Police

Some places are more dangerous than others.  Philadelphia has recently seen more crime than Chicago.  That alone is a staggering feat.  One reason for this crime extravaganza in Phily is described by one statistician in the following way[4]:

So why are Philadelphia's crime rates increasing so dramatically? To put it bluntly, the city isn't doing a very good job at law enforcement. While the arrest rate for violent crimes such as murder has fallen across the state, arrest rates have plummeted in Philadelphia.

So when the police are criticized for huddling behind brick walls and trees while shooters rampage their way through hallways and offices filled with terrified victims, who is to blame?

 

The Individual

Thomas Paine wrote that an individual's natural rights are retained, even when the aggregate of rights are combined to give governments their just civil authority.  Individuals retain their individual rights, even if a society or government has been created by a group of individuals to exercise those duties more completely.[5]

The natural rights which he retains are all those in which the Power to execute is as perfect in the individual as the right itself. Among this class, as is before mentioned, are all the intellectual rights, or rights of the mind; consequently religion is one of those rights. The natural rights which are not retained, are all those in which, though the right is perfect in the individual, the power to execute them is defective. They answer not his purpose.
[...]
That the power produced from the aggregate of natural rights, imperfect in power in the individual, cannot be applied to invade the natural rights which are retained in the individual, and in which the power to execute is as perfect as the right itself.

Some of Mr. Paine's language may require translation.  His meaning is clear, though.  An individual retains all his rights, even if they are collectively exercised in a society or a government where the exercise is better performed or more justly exercised by the aggregate.  Examples of such rights are the right to justice.  As Mr. Paine says, the individual retains the right to judge, but may not be competent to gain redress unless he relies on society or the government to support that redress.

Individuals, therefore, retain all their rights, regardless of the exercise or expansive use of those gathered rights by society or by government.  Individuals can empower a third-party to exercise a right, but can never echew the right -- regardless of the number of third-parties who engage it.

John Stewart Mill said it a little differently.[6]

[T]hat the rights and interests of every or any person are only secure from being disregarded when the person interested is himself able, and habitually disposed, to stand up for them.
[...]
[H]uman beings are only secure from evil at the hands of others in proportion as they have the power of being, and are, self-protecting; and they only achieve a high degree of success in their struggle with Nature in proportion as they are self-dependent, relying on what they themselves can do, either separately or in concert, rather than on what others do for them.

Mr. Mill recognized the fundamental truth of security: that no one else cares as much for the individual as himself.  This may seem obvious.  It may even seem trite, but in light of the recent occurrences of general slaughter in plain view, the searchlight of blame has been casting back and forth.  As in any case of logic, before blame can be placed, responsibility must be deduced.

 

Analysis 

Who is responsible for individual safety?

The courts have spoken.  Mr. Mill has written.

The courts have extended the umbrella of protection, not to the individual, but to the members of government -- to protect them from tort or responsibility.

Police huddled behind brick walls and tree trunks while Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold took the rest of their lives to end a whole bunch of others.  The police are not to blame.  At least that's what the courts said [7] 

The parents of Richard Castaldo, a student injured in the Columbine shootings, presented this evidence of the pre-April 20 warnings in a lawsuit alleging that both law enforcement and school officials had breached a duty of care to their son and violated his constitutional rights to be free from bodily harm by not taking steps to prevent the Columbine tragedy. The federal district court in Colorado dismissed their claims, stating that even if they were negligent, both law enforcement and school officials had such high social utility that to impose a duty on them to act affirmatively to prevent violent acts would undermine their usefulness to society as a whole.[ed. emphasis added] Affirming the general rule that compulsory attendance laws do not impose on schools an affirmative constitutional duty to protect students from harms imposed by others at school, the court rejected Castaldo's Section 1983 claim.

Now we know who isn't responsible for the safety of the individual -- or even the safety of minors placed in the direct care of governmental institutions charged with their (corporate) well-being.  It isn't the responsibility of the school, the police, or any other governmental organization.

And don't look to one side or the other for help.  Long-established common law holds that no individual has a "positive obligation" to act, even when that action can be of benefit to another or the failure to act would bring harm to another.

 

The Conclusion

You are on your own.  We are all on our own.

The individual is responsible for his or her own safety.  Government is not responsible.  The police are not responsible.  The schools are not responsible.  Friends and bystanders are not responsible for someone else's safety.

 

The Perpetrators

Engaging in just a hint of philosophical speculation, since there are no handguns, long-guns, bazookas, or tanks currently sitting in prison, a broad conclusion can be reached that the courts do no hold guns responsible for assaults, rapes, robberies, or even murders. 

The men and women who used those firearms, bats, knives, bathtubs, bricks, and fists to assault, rape, rob, and even murder folks are in prison.  This is another hint at the court's perception of the real responsible parties.

 

Perpetrator Control

Given that the courts and society agree that it is people who commit these crimes against other people, the concept of gun control is as misguided as blaming fifty pounds of clay when an art class creates fifty pounds of ash trays.  It isn't the clay's fault that it was poorly used.  Similarly, liberal do-gooders would be just as mistaken to outlaw the possession of clay just because they don't like ashtrays.

The perpetrators of crime are criminals.  Criminals are regular people who have committed a crime.  Criminals all started out pretty much the same way.  The difference between a law-abiding citizen and a criminal is a single act. 

The law is no help in preventing or stopping crime.  The law defines which acts, committed by a formerly law-abiding citizen, will automatically transform him into a criminal.  But it cannot prevent the act.  It cannot determine, beforehand, which normal individuals will become criminals.

Families and neighbors cannot determine, beforehand, which normal individuals will become criminals. 

"He was a good kid."  That's what the neighbors of all the vilest criminals always say.  And those dispassionate observers could very well be right.  It only takes a single act to become a criminal.  At the same time, one is not a criminal until the commission of that single act.  Everything that precedes that act is a normal, boring, life history.  Everything that follows is a process of justice (a topic much too large for this treatise).

Even when there are clues, like some psychologists suggest about Harris and Klebold and about Cho, there may be no crimes with which to charge those individuals; nor might there be statutes with which to hold them.  And most of the time, unlike Harris and Klebold and Cho, there may not be visible, audible, apparent signs that good kids are going bad.  Not all children on anti-depressants are depressed and not all of them will become criminals.  There is only an occasional relationship and not a causal one.

 

Suggestions

After the commission of a terrible crime, everybody plays expert.  The number of people who have suggestions as to how this particular crime could have been prevented seem to crawl out of anonymity and grab for that 15-minutes of fame.  It all boils down to the same things.

When guns are involved the same cast of characters comes out of the shadows and suggest that society can eliminate guns, thereby eliminating the threat of guns.  As has already been shown, the threat is not from guns.  The threat comes from people.

The same suggestion loses it's appearance of reasonableness when applied to the real cause of crime and violence.  Banning people will have a definite effect on crime.  No people: no crime.  People: crime.  It seems so simple.  Maybe, someday, someone will actually try it.

Research into exile would suggest two possible scenarios.  The first is that people have already been exiled.[8]

The second possible scenario begs the question, "if all people are exiled, won't we just be in exile together?"  This points back to the first scenario and the probability that exile is no safer than what we have already.

 

Situational Analysis

Admittedly, the individual is in a tough spot. 

Nobody is looking out for anybody else.  The government, that takes so much and offers so much, delivers so little.  The police cower behind walls and tree trunks and wait until the shooting stops before they screw-on enough courage to come take witness statements.

The individual is alone.  (If only....)

Almost SIX BILLION PEOPLE are surrounded by almost SIX BILLION PEOPLE.  (The math would suggest that there are more than six billion people, but that's not right.)  And each and every one of those Six Billion People could, at any moment, begin their individual journey into crime with a spree, starting their lives as criminals.  Each and every individual could, at any moment, be a new criminal's first victim.

The police aren't obligated to provide individual protection against any of these Six Billion potential criminals, and the government is not in the business of protecting the people who empower it, and schools put up signs and pretend to be safe and NOBODY IS SAFE, what can the individual do?

Handgun Control, Inc. says, "Get rid of handguns."  This has already been debunked.  Handguns don't go off on their own and clay doesn't organize itself into an ashtray.

Legislators say, "Make more laws."  Laws only make something illegal.  No law every impeded a criminal from committing the crime.

Malls, schools, shops, colleges, and municipalities put up signs.  (There exists a paradox in this solution.  Researchers are aware of a correlation between crime and illiteracy.  What if the criminals can't read the signs?)  Regardless, it seems that signs are ignored (or unread).

Some people go to the draconian lengths to actually arm themselves in preparation to mount an armed response to an armed attack.[9]

 

Who stands in the Gap?

Nobody.

There exists no active, responsible, person or agency with a positive obligation to protect the individual.  There is no cover.  There are no harbors in the storm.

Dismissing for the moment that the criminal (or soon-to-be-criminal) rejects the personal responsibility to maintain the safety of the intended victim, there remains no one else who can protect the intended victim. The individual to whom the criminal's intent is currently and immediately focused, the victim, is the only remaining party present who is responsible for the individual's safety.

Some of those intended victims have resorted to picking up handguns to counter the criminal threat.  And they've been rewarded for it.[10]

We now have at least 10 years of actual evidence ... regarding perhaps as many as 1 million permit holders carrying their weapons for hundreds of millions of man-hours. The results are in, and they show unequivocally that ... some permit holders have used their guns to defend themselves and others.

Others have dismissed both the risk of living amongst six billion potential criminals and their own responsibility for individual safety and have not armed themselves, or have failed to learn how to otherwise effectively counter the threat of an armed and criminally-dangerous individual like Harris, Klebold, or Cho.

We reward them with the title, "The Honored Dead."

 

The Blame Game

Accepting that the criminal would be the only person in the jail cell -- the only prisoner with a needle in his arm during execution -- were he caught for the crime of murder or mayhem, does the victim still bear any responsibility for their situation or their injuries?

Absolutely!

Especially where there are one or two violent criminals in a group of placid victims (Columbine and Virginia Tech come to mind), every one of the victims who died or were injured carry some responsibility for multiple failures. 

Ø They failed to prepare. 

Ø They failed to fortify. 

Ø They failed to observe. 

Ø They failed to react. 

Ø They failed to defend.

The courts have ruled that no one else is responsible for the individual -- even if the individual is a minor.  Who, then, can even bear the individual responsibility for safety besides the individual?

 

Victim Responsibility

This leads to the toughest conclusion imaginable: the victim himself (or herself) is complicit, at least, in their own victimhood.  Inaction, in the face of sole responsibility, is dereliction.

Individuals, living in dangerous times, have a duty to themselves to prepare and anticipate the possibilitiy of criminal threat.  Yet, few engage in preparation or bear the tools necessary to counter deadly violence. 

Knowing what everyone knows, this can only be dereliction, cowardice, mental defectiveness, or incompetence.  None of those speak well of the next victim, or the last.

None of those are complimentary epitaphs.

 

---

Footnotes:

[1] SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES, No. 04-278, June 27, 2005

[2]ØRichard W. Stevens. 1999. Dial 911 and Die. Hartford, Wisconsin: Mazel Freedom Press.
ØBarillari v. City of Milwaukee, 533 N.W.2d 759 (Wis. 1995).
ØBowers v. DeVito, 686 F.2d 616 (7th Cir. 1982).
ØDeShaney v. Winnebago County Department of Social Services, 489 U.S. 189 (1989).
ØFord v. Town of Grafton, 693 N.E.2d 1047 (Mass. App. 1998).
ØWarren v. District of Columbia, 444 A.2d 1 (D.C. 1981).
ØRiss v. New York, 22 N.Y.2d 579,293 N.Y.S.2d 897, 240 N.E.2d 806 (1958).
ØLynch v. N.C. Dept. of Justice, 376 S.E. 2nd 247 (N.C. App. 1989)

[3] Lynch v. N.C. Dept. of Justice, 376 S.E. 2nd 247 (N.C. App. 1989)

[4] Hiring More Police is the Real Answer, John Lott, Jr., September 26, 2006, Philadelphia Inquirer (and on Mr. Lott's web site)

[5] The Rights of Man, Thomas Paine, 1791-1792

[6] Representative Government, John Stewart Mill, 1861

[7] Bullying and Harrassment: A Legal Guide for Educators, Chapter 6. Student Threats and Violence in Schools, Kathleen Conn, 2004, Association for Supervisionand Curriculum Development

[8] Genisis 3:24

[9] Wikipedia, Concealed Carry

[10] Fighting Back: Crime, Self-Defense, and the Right to Carry a Handgun, Jeffrey R. Snyder, CATO Institute, Cato Policy Analysis No. 284, October 22, 1997