Illegal Alien Invaders and the Falling Dollar

The ongoing illegal alien invasion continues.  At the same time, the banks who granted home loans to people who, ten years ago, would not have qualified for a loan because of their income, employment history, or immigration status, are now foreclosing on those loans.  The illegal alien invaders, many of the American poor who were granted inappropriate home loans, and the rest of us, suffer as those borrowers default on these inappropriately approved home loans.

And the Dollar is on a downward slide that only Six Flags would think fun.

This is the same Dollar that these illegal alien invaders take to Bank of America (Banco de America, for those in Mc Allen) and transfer back south, across the Rio Grande -- never to be seen by American merchants again.

At what point will the illegal alien invaders -- benefactors of our liberal left's noblesse oblige, spearhead of the left's attempt to extend credit where credit was never due, who send an estimated $20 Billion back to Mexico every year -- start complaining that their US Dollars don't go as far in Mexico as they once did?

And, once that happens, how long will it take the New York Times before they write a column decrying the need for the North American Union, with a common currency, as a remedy for this travesty?

Not long.  Not very long at all.

This Just In

This just in:

http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=58836

Someone had a plan to kill President Kennedy in November of 1963.  The Secret Service foiled that one.

Pity that government agents were as incompetent in 1963 as they are today.  They missed the one a few weeks later in Dallas.

I wonder.  You can't teach that kind of incompetence.  It must come natural.

 

With a Gun

In transgressing the law of nature, the offender declares himself to live by another rule than that of reason and common equity, which is that measure God has set to the actions of men, for their mutual security; and so he becomes dangerous to mankind, the tye, which is to secure them from injury and violence, being slighted and broken by him.
~~ John Locke, 1690

With a Gun

Jack LeMoult, writing as a guest columnist for the Xenia Daily Gazette, wrote:

A gun is like a pair of elevator shoes. It confers artificial stature. [1]

Using this partial, inappropriate, misleading, and fanciful lead-in, Mr. LeMoult rants about all the ways he would infringe the U.S. Constitution and the rights of almost 300 million people in America so he could feel safer at Virginia Tech, a place that everyone knows, by now, was a gun-free victim zone, and against a man everyone now knows was a psychopath.

He then asks the most important question in the entire debate of safety.

Would America be a safer place if every university, college, technical school, high school, home, and workplace bristled with people armed to the teeth?[2]

He answers in the negative, without any analysis whatsoever.

Ignoring the real Constitutional prohibition against ANY infringement on the right to keep and bear arms (as that is what liberals, social engineers, and tyrants are wont to do), answers to that question are imperative to learning why the Second Amendment’s enumeration of the right is so very important to the individual sovereignty of United States citizens; and provides an opportunity for an overt challenge to Mr. LeMoult's ad-hominem attack on the stature of firearm owners that is pleasingly easy.

John Locke (quoted above), if anyone cares to do the math, lived long before the Constitution of the United States and it’s Fourth Amendment (the first two were rejected and lost to the minds of modern America) were penned. Yet, his writings underpin some of the most important philosophies of the founding fathers and our days.

Mr. Locke spoke of the laws of nature and of reason. He also acceded to the knowledge that there are some among us who do not abide by either the laws of nature or the laws of reason. (Mr. Locke would also chastise were these laws presumed to conflict with one another. He would, most probably, argue that they are and remain the same laws.)

Acknowledging this class of people, these criminals, may do harm, Mr. Locke continues

[…] the execution of the law of nature is, in that state, put into every man's hands, whereby every one has a right to punish the transgressors of that law to such a degree, as may hinder its violation: for the law of nature would, as all other laws that concern men in this world 'be in vain, if there were no body that in the state of nature had a power to execute that law, and thereby preserve the innocent and restrain offenders. [3]

The right to property, to liberty, and to security belong to every man. This was true in 1690, well before the American Revolution, well before the Continental Congress, well before the drafting and adoption of the amendments that became our Bill of Rights. As a matter of fact, since these rights pre-existed the historical roots of the United States, and the historical roots of John Locke’s philosophy, they can be shown to preexist the first government and be shown to exist, even in the first man. How far back must an inquisitive mind seek for the origins of our rights?

If the mere name of antiquity is to govern in the affairs of life, the people who are to live an hundred or a thousand years hence, may as well take us for a precedent, as we make a precedent of those who lived an hundred or a thousand years ago. The fact is, that portions of antiquity, by proving everything, establish nothing. It is authority against authority all the way, till we come to the divine origin of the rights of man at the creation. Here our enquiries find a resting-place, and our reason finds a home. If a dispute about the rights of man had arisen at the distance of an hundred years from the creation, it is to this source of authority they must have referred, and it is to this same source of authority that we must now refer. [4]

The Rights of Man, to coin the title from which this quote originates, are universal, pre-existent, and pre-eminent to man. They, like the breath that gave us life, are a gift from the Creator (or if you are a heathen, from something even bigger than the entirety of the population on earth -- if a heathen can imagine that).

The origin of all of our rights cascaded down, not from history, but from authority. The same Creator who imbued Adam with his rights, individually imbued each human creature with his own, individual, independent, personal rights.

Among those, the right to self-defense may be among the first order of rights. The right of self-defense may not be the first right, but it is among the first rights.

John Locke stated that the first right of all men is the right of property. He stated, too, that the most important property that any man holds is himself -- his person; his life.

Though the earth, and all inferior creatures, be common to all men, yet every man has a property in his own person: this no body has any right to but himself. The labour of his body, and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever then he removes out of the state that nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property. It being by him removed from the common state nature hath placed it in, it hath by this labour something annexed to it, that excludes the common right of other men: for this labour being the unquestionable property of the labourer, no man but he can have a right to what that is once joined to, at least where there is enough, and as good, left in common for others.[5]

The first and most principal right, therefore, is the right of property. The most important of all property, then, is the person himself. Without the security and safety of the person, no other possessions can be held and no other rights enjoyed. The property of one’s life is established, then, as the most important right an individual can bear. It is the right of control of that property that our prisons revoke. It is the right of possession of the property of life that is taken during execution.

Abraham Maslow, in his 1943 paper, A Theory of Human Motivation, said that physiological needs take precedence over all other needs. "Physiological" is an insecure person’s word for "life." Even Maslow got it right when he placed security as the second most important need.

Maslow would hardly approve of his name in a treatise like this. However, his work is included to point out that a broken clock is even right twice a day.

Establishing that we have a right to property, and chiefly to ourselves, logical thought supports the ideas that we can defend ourselves from those who would want to harm us -- to take our property.

Early Christian thought supports the right of individual self-defense.

[…] for as no power given to man to murder his brother is of God, so no power to suffer his brother to be murdered is of God; and no power to suffer himself, a fortiori, far less can be from God.[6]

From the book of Genesis to the present day, man has suffered unjust death at the hand of the brother and the criminal alike. Yet, no jurisprudence or logical thought defends the right of the murderer to murder. To the contrary, from early history to the present day, the right to self-defense is established and incontrovertible.

John Stewart Mill stated that all men have the power to force others to do our will, but that our power was only justly exercised in self-defense.

That principle is, that the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.[7]

With that prohibition established against any arbitrary use of violence, the right still pertains. An individual has a right to self-defense; even if it comes at the injury or further harm to the one who initiated the attack. Further, Montesquieu declared that self-defense is a duty.

Who does not see that self-defence is a duty superior to every precept?[8]

Individuals have not only the right to self-defense, but a duty to defend themselves and their families and their communities. There exists a responsibility of the moral individual to bear the burden of defense. Yet, our current society passes that duty to others.

The idea that we should let professionals protect us is a relatively recent philosophy, and would never have been considered at the time of the drafting of the Constitution or the inclusion of the Bill of Rights. Self-defense and defense of the community was judged a moral trait, and was honored in early America.

The notion that the truly civilized person eschews self-defense, relying on the police instead, or that private self-protection deserves the public interest, would never have occurred to the Founders since there were no police in eighteenth century America and England. In the tradition from which the second amendment derives it was not only the unquestioned right, but a crucial element in the moral character of every free man that he be armed and willing to defend his family and the community against crime. This duty included both individual acts and joining with his fellows in hunting criminals down when the hue and cry went up, as well as the more formal posse and militia patrol duties, under the control of justices of the peace or sheriffs.  In this milieu, individuals who thwarted a crime against themselves or their families were seen as serving the community as well.[9]

With all the above supporting evidence, the right and the duty of self-defense is firmly established. It is necessary to establish this right (and its duty) before we can justly consider whether gun ownership and carry is even legally plausible.

Having established this just right and duty, Mr. LeMoult's question remains. Does an increase in the presence and availability of guns make a community, a society, or a nation safer?

Looking at two aspects of the gun-possession scenario, one where firearm possession (by lawful citizens) is ubiquitous and one where firearm possession (by lawful citizens) is forbidden, the numbers and histories are chilling for societies where guns are strictly controlled or limited. They are very promising for societies when guns are widely available.

A 1997 Justice Department report on murders in the U.S. shows that our country has a murder rate of seven victims per 100,000 population per year. There are a number of well-known examples of countries with more liberal gun laws and lower murder rates than the U.S. One is Finland, with a murder rate of 2.9. Israel is another example; although its population is heavily armed, Israel's murder rate is only 1.4. In Switzerland, gun ownership is a way of life. Its murder rate is 2.7.

By contrast, consider Brazil. All firearms in Brazil must be registered with the government. This registration process can take anywhere from 30 days to three months. All civilian handguns are limited in caliber to no more than 9mm. All rifles must fire handgun ammunition only. Brazilians may only buy one gun per year. At any one time, they may only have in their possession a maximum of six guns: two handguns, two rifles and two shotguns. To transport their guns, citizens must obtain a special police permit. CCW permits are available but are rarely issued.
[...]
Guns are effectively outlawed in Russia. Private handgun ownership is totally prohibited. A permit is required to purchase a long gun. All guns are registered with authorities. When transporting a long gun, it must be disassembled. Long guns may only be used for self-defense when the gun owner is on his own property. By the way, Russia's murder rate is a staggering 30.6.[10]

Considering that the comparative number to which Mr. Rabb refers is the number of murders-per-100,000 population, the multiplication is amazing. Extrapolated to the population of the United States, America would suffer under a murder rate of almost 130,000 per year if we lived under the rule of law in Russia. And that rule of law forbids personal firearm possession or use.

The other nations in the study that had high rates of personal ownership of firearms had very low incidences of murder. The inverse correlation stands in this analysis: it is safer to live in a nation where more people carry firearms than in a nation where fewer (law-abiding) people carry firearms.

Obviously, the criminals will ignore both the prohibitions against firearm ownership and those prohibitions against other sins, like theft, rape, assault, murder, and jaywalking. It matters not whether prohibitions exist, so long as there is no resistance or deterrent, criminals will be criminals (as they say).

The only thing criminals fear is the armed, more powerful citizen.

Research conducted by Professors James Wright and Peter Rossi, for a landmark study funded by the U.S. Department of Justice, points to the armed citizen as possibly the most effective deterrent to crime in the nation. Wright and Rossi questioned over 1,800 felons serving time in prisons across the nation and found:

81% agreed the "smart criminal" will try to find out if a potential victim is armed. 74% felt that burglars avoided occupied dwellings for fear of being shot. 80% of "handgun predators" had encountered armed citizens. 40% did not commit a specific crime for fear that the victim was armed. 34% of "handgun predators" were scared off or shot at by armed victims. 57% felt that the typical criminal feared being shot by citizens more than he feared being shot by police.[11]

Those are conclusive numbers and concrete evidence that the armed citizen prevents crime -- just by the threat and possibility of resistance.

Were every citizen armed, that would translate from a possible risk to the criminal into a certain risk to the criminal. If he committed a violent crime in the presence of just one other person, and that person was not an accessory to the crime, the criminal would certainly face armed resistance.

Projecting further without any basis except optimism, were everyone armed, our natural suspicion of others could be lowered. We would all know that we could return force for force -- even the smallest or weakest person becomes a physical force that criminals will avoid.

Were everyone armed, there would be no blood in the street. Contrary to the unfounded fears of the gun-control crowd, as more and more studies show, this does not happen. Even further, armed societies have lower murder rates than "unarmed" societies. Were everyone armed, there would be no stigma, no feeling of helplessness in schools and malls and offices. Empowerment is liberating.

Were there universal gun ownership and possession -- if every school and workplace bristled with people, armed to the teeth -- it would be a pretty nice place.

 

---

[1] Guns and masculinity, Jack LeMoult, Xenia Daily Gazette (online), May 10, 2007, www.xeniagazette.com
[2] Ibid.
[3] The Second Treatise of Government, Chapter 2: Of the State of Nature, John Locke, 1690
[4] The Rights of Man, Part the First, Thomas Paine, 1792
[5] The Second Treatise of Government, Chapter 2: Of Property, John Locke, 1690
[6] Lex, Rex,or The Law and the Prince; Rev. Samuel Rutherford, Printed for John Field, October. 7, 1644
[7] Modern History Sourcebook: On Liberty, CHAPTER I, John Stuart Mill, 1869
[8] THE SPIRIT OF LAWS, Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu, 1752
[9] THE SECOND AMENDMENT AND THE IDEOLOGY OF SELF-PROTECTION, Don B. Kates, Jr, 9 Const. Comm. 87-104 ,1992
[10] The Numbers Speak For Themselves, John Hay Rabb, Guns & Ammo, (unknown date)
[11] 10 Myths of Gun Control, Institute for Legislative Action, 1996

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