Guns and the Natural Right to Self Defense

As philosopher John Locke explained, people have an inherent “natural” right to defend themselves.    That right to self-defense was described as the first natural right of humans.  Locke is fairly described as the single most important philosophical “Father” for the views of many of the founders of the United States.  His numerous works had a profound impact on the design and aims of the American political experiment even though today’s typical American is unlikely to have any awareness of who he was.  Locke’s analysis of the natural right of self-defense precedes even the Second Amendment’s right to bear arms and also limits the power of the State in a nation in which certain fundamental rights are said to be reserved to the people.  The “natural right to self defense” justifies “trumping” laws against gun ownership when it can be shown there is a need and that the legal institutions charged with the duty to provide security fail to do so effectively as is so often the situation.

When it comes to many violent crimes the understaffed, undertrained and underfinanced police forces are reactive rather than preventative.  How many women and other vulnerable people have sought to obtain police protection only to hear the response “I’m sorry.  We can’t do anything until something actually happens”.  In such a situation, and urban dwellers and vulnerable visitors to cities often find themselves caught up in that unfortunate dilemma, people have the right to possess the tools needed to protect themselves and others.  When the violent predators are armed with guns, and the police are mostly an “after the fact” system that investigates once the irreversible harm has been be done, potential victims have the natural right to possess the means to counter that threat.

I once lived in a city where gun ownership was prohibited.  Ironically, it was also a city where killings and robberies were rampant.  The criminals all had guns even though it was against the law.  If you are willing to rob, rape and murder, laws against gun possession aren’t that much of a deterrent.   In this city I had one colleague who was killed in a home invasion and another who had been robbed at gunpoint on its streets and pistol-whipped.  The sister of another colleague had been raped.  The house where I was living had its door kicked in by an individual who decided it wouldn’t be a good idea to proceed with his plan when he heard my shotgun being “jacked”.  My children and I were caught up in the midst of an armed robbery in a grocery store with guns pointed at us and the other customers.  The manager was nearly killed.  I walked across a bridge with a man who came up to me and after a pleasant discussion he said, “I was going to rob you” and I replied, “I know.  I was going to throw you off the bridge if you tried.”  There were nights I went to sleep to the “music” of handguns being fired in close-by alleys.  So did I have an illegal firearm for defense in violation of the jurisdiction’s law?  In the immortal words of a former vice presidential candidate, “you betcha!”  Self-defense is not a hypothetical myth but a factual necessity.