The Right to Self-Defense
By Wendy McElroy
On June 27, in the case of
Castle Rock v. Gonzales, the Supreme Court found that Jessica Gonzales
did not have a constitutional right to police protection even in the presence
of a restraining order.
By a vote of 7-to-2, the Supreme
Court ruled that Gonzales has
no right to sue her local police department for failing to protect her
and her children from her estranged husband.
The post-mortem discussion on
Gonzales has been fiery but it has missed an obvious point. If the government
won't protect you, then you have to take responsibility for your own
self-defense and that of your family. The court's ruling is a sad decision, but
one that every victim and/or potential victim of violence must note: calling
the police is not enough. You must also be ready to defend yourself.
In 1999, Gonzales obtained a
restraining order against her estranged husband Simon, which limited his access
to their children. On June 22, 1999, Simon abducted their three daughters.
Though the Castle Rock police department disputes some of the details of what
happened next, the two sides are in basic agreement: After her daughters'
abduction, Gonzales repeatedly phoned the police for assistance. Officers
visited the home. Believing Simon to be non-violent and, arguably, in
compliance with the limited access granted by the restraining order, the police
did nothing.
The next morning, Simon
committed "suicide by cop." He shot a gun repeatedly through a police station
window and was killed by returned fire. The murdered bodies of Leslie, 7,
Katheryn, 9 and Rebecca, 10 were found in Simon's pickup truck.
In her lawsuit, Gonzales claimed
the police violated her
14th Amendment right to due process and sued them for $30 million. She
won at the Appeals level.
What were the arguments that won
and lost in the Supreme Court?
Winners: local officials fell
back upon a rich history of court decisions that found the police to have no
constitutional obligation to protect individuals from private individuals. In
1856, the U.S. Supreme Court
(South v. Maryland) found that law enforcement officers had no
affirmative duty to provide such protection. In 1982 (Bowers
v. DeVito), the Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit held, "...there is no
Constitutional right to be protected by the state against being murdered by
criminals or madmen."
Later court decisions have
concurred.
Losers:
anti-domestic violence advocates and women's groups, such as the
National Association of Women Lawyers, failed to establish that restraining
orders were constitutional entitlements. If they had succeeded, the enforcement
of such orders would have been guaranteed by due process. Failure to enforce
them would have been grounds for a lawsuit against the police, a precedent that
local officials feared would flood them with expensive litigation.
Public analysis of Rock v.
Gonzales has been largely defined by these two opposing positions.
A third position cries out:
Given the court's position that the police are not obliged to protect us,
responsible adults need the ability to defend themselves. Thus, no law or
policy should impede the access to gun ownership.
Responsible adults – both
male and female – have both a right and a need to defend themselves and
their families, with lethal force if necessary. If domestic violence advocates
had focused on putting a gun in Jessica's hand and training her to use it, then
the three Gonzales children might still be alive. After all, Jessica knew where
her husband was. Indeed, she informed the police repeatedly of his location.
Of course, the Gonzales case
– in and of itself – presents difficulties for the use of armed
force by private citizens. Would the same police who believed Simon Gonzales
was not dangerous have believed Jessica to be justified in picking up a gun to
protect her children from him? Would the police have charged her for use of a
weapon? Regardless, these sticky debates would probably be taking place in the
presence of three living children and not three dead ones.
Nevertheless, most anti-domestic
violence advocates strenuously avoid gun ownership as a possible solution to
domestic violence. Instead, they appeal for more police intervention even
though the police have no obligation to provide protection.
When groups like the National
Organization for Women (NOW) do focus on gun ownership, it is to make such
statements as, "Guns and domestic violence make a lethal combination,
injuring and killing women every day."
In short, NOW addresses the
issue of gun ownership and domestic violence only in order to demand
a prohibition on the ability of abusers – always defined as men
– to own weapons.
That position may be defensible.
But it ignores half of the equation. It ignores the need of potential victims
to defend themselves and their families. Anti-domestic violence and women's
groups create the impression that guns are always part of the problem and never
part of the solution.
The current mainstream of
feminism – from which most anti-domestic violence advocates proceed
– is an expression of left liberalism. It rejects private solutions based
on individual rights in favor of laws aimed at achieving social goals. A
responsible individual holding a gun in self-defense does not fit their vision
of society.
In the final analysis, such
advocates do not trust the judgment of the women they claim to be defending.
They do not believe that Jessica Gonzales' three children would have been safer
with a mother who was armed and educated in gun use.
The clear message of Gonzales
bears repeating because you will not hear it elsewhere. The police have no
obligation to protect individuals who, therefore, should defend themselves. The
content of state laws does not matter; by Colorado State law, the police are
required to "use every reasonable means to enforce a protection order." The
Supreme Court has ruled and that's that.
In the wake of Gonzales, every
anti-domestic violence advocate should advise victims – male or female
– to learn self-defense. They should lobby for the repeal of any law or
policy that hinders responsible gun ownership.
The true meaning of being
anti-domestic violence is to help victims out of their victimhood and into a
position of power.
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