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Woman-writing-300x265One of the benefits of friendship is friends often cause us to reexamine assumptions; they inspire us to think, and so to resolve matters of importance. So it is with my friend Bookworm—if she’s not a daily stop on your “to-read” list, she should be–who often inspires me to write on a variety of topics, and so it is with her latest missive:

I have been engaged in a running battle . . . er, discussion with a Progressive acquaintance about the Castle Doctrine.  This is the doctrine derived from the ancient Anglo-Saxon principle that ‘a man’s home is his castle’ and he has a right to be safe within its walls.  In practice, the Castle Doctrine means that, if someone breaks into a home, that person is presumed to have lethal intent, giving the homeowner the right to use lethal force in his defense.

As I detailed in an earlier post, my Progressive acquaintance simply can’t wrap his mind around the whole notion of ‘presumption.’  To him, it means ‘permission’ and, flowing from that gross mis-translation,  he interprets this permission to mean that, in Castle Doctrine states, a homeowner can, with impunity, shoot anyone on his property.

credit: inpublicsafety,com

credit: inpublicsafety,com

Bookworm continues to write that she provided a recent news story about a 14-year old boy that saved his life and that of his grandmother by shooting an 18-year old burglar in the process of breaking into their home. The burglar was on pre-trial release for—you guessed it—burglary. His 22-year old fellow burglar/brother was also arrested. I’m sure you also guessed the Progressive could not accept the very concept of self-defense inherent in that case, and sided with the dead recidivist burglar.

I should, at this point, provide a bit of necessary background information. Bookworm is an attorney—I love her anyway—who was once as progressive as her friend, but her legal mind, which recognizes the realities of law, and accepts that words actually have specific meanings, and forced to confront a variety of other experiences, transported herself up and out of progressivism into the real world where law is law, physics is physics, and people’s actions speak louder than florid words or good intentions. Unfortunately, Bookworm’s body continues to reside, with her family, in Marin, California. We met through her growing interest in firearms and related issues, the beginning, as Humphrey Bogart said, of a beautiful friendship. From the unfathomable depths of flyover country, I continue to provide a digital lifeline in her times of need.

Bookworm also provided the recent story of an 11 year-old girl who, relentlessly chased through her home by adult burglars and cornered in a closet, saved her life and set the thugs to flight by pointing a shotgun at one of them (she didn’t shoot). Bookworm’s progressive friend replied:

Homeowners shouldn’t have license to kill people in their home.

She continued:

This running ‘gun battle’ with my Progressive acquaintance popped into my head when I read the follow-up to a story about gun rights here in Marin County.  Almost a month ago, I wrote about something amazing that happened in our Superior Court:  the judge ruled against a prosecutor who sought a judicial indictment against James Simon, who had shot William Osenton when the latter followed Simon’s car for miles and then, after Simon pulled into his own garage, followed right into the garage after him, got out of the car, and headed for Simon’s house.  Despite Simon’s warnings (both verbal and a warning shot), Osenton was undeterred, so Simon shot him twice in the stomach. Osenton survived the shooting.

The Prosecutor’s take in the preliminary hearing was the same as that advanced by the Progressive:  With a scary guy chasing you right into your garage, and then getting out of the car and storming towards the house, all that you are allowed to do is hide in the house, call 911, and hope that the police come in time.

We can call the Progressive’s and the Prosecutor’s take the anti-Castle Doctrine:  Seconds may count, but you better politely wait several minutes until the police arrive, based upon the gun-grabbers’ unswerving presumption that anyone threatening you and/or trying to break into your house is, more likely than not a pacifist who wants to sit down with you and discuss world peace through disarmament.

Unfortunately for Dr. Simon, the prosecutor didn’t let the matter rest after the judge said no.  Instead, he decided to bring out the heavy guns [pun intended], and have a grand jury decide whether to indict Simon.  The grand jury did, which isn’t very surprising given that the prosecutor had before him 19 upstanding Marin County residents:

Prosecutors could have refiled the case and brought it before a different judge. Instead, they took it to a grand jury comprised of 19 residents, which heard the prosecution’s case without rebuttal or cross-examination by the defense.

This was obviously a case of a prosecutor getting an indictment for a ham sandwich. There are a great many problems with this situation, but among the most serious is that of intention. How does a homeowner facing an attack know what their attacker intends?

Incidentally, no one knows what Osenton’s motives were when he followed Simon home and stormed his house. Even Osenton claims not to know, saying that his last memory is of having a medical procedure done earlier in the day. What we do know, though, is that California law (strangely enough given that this is, after all, California) still allows the presumption that anyone breaking into someone else’s home is up to a bit of no good.  Should someone get hurt subsequent to that break-in, it’s better that the person doing the illegal breaking and entering be the one to get hurt, rather than the homeowner.

The above statement is not, as my Progressive acquaintance keeps insisting, a blank check for homeowners to shooting anyone and everyone who dares to get near their property. It is, instead, a careful, and time-tested, allocation of the risk when two people find themselves in the same house — and one of them is there legally while the other is not.

Quite so. Those of us that have been involved in the battle to preserve the Second Amendment inevitably deal with this kind of argument. By all means, take the link and read Bookworm’s entire article; it’s very much worth your time, as is all of her writing. I’ll add only a few additional comments to supplement her observations.

Castle Doctrine laws, in effect, put the burden on criminals. It is thugs illegally in the very homes of the innocent that must bear the burden of their actions. If they fall down and injure themselves, or if they meet with a baseball bat to the head or a number of high velocity projectiles, too bad, so sad, it’s their fault. To argue otherwise gives them carte blanche to go wherever they choose to go and do whatever they choose to do.

To people not intellectually limited to progressive ideology, the idea that a career felon that appears in one’s bedroom in the middle of the night has any “rights” or privileges, or is due any consideration whatever is the height of insanity, but not so to the progressive, whose concern for the miniscule or non-existent humanity of such creatures far surpasses their concern for their innocent victims.

If a criminal that illegally enters one’s home cannot be legally presumed to be there for evil purposes, if deadly force cannot be used against them, when and where, pray tell, could that presumption ever exist? If our homes cannot be a safe zone, a place where we can reasonably expect to let down our guard and have some small expectation of privacy and safety, aren’t we actually living in Hobbe’s state of nature where life is “nasty, brutish and short,” even in our kitchens?

Here the progressive would likely claim–if they acknowledge any right to self-defense whatever–that we have a duty to call the police, negotiate, engage in conversation, appeal to the thug’s humanity, do anything except harm them. More rational progressives would demand that we be absolutely certain that we are in imminent deadly danger before doing anything at all, and even then, we should never actually harm someone trying to kill us. Perhaps we can fire warning shots–into our own homes–or shoot them in the leg or shoot their knife or gun out of their hand? Of course, this is moot as progressives would not allow us to have guns in the first place.

All of this is the underlying principle of all progressive disarmament arguments. I am putting aside, for this article, the ever-present statist desire to absolutely control the populace, which must always require that citizens be disarmed and that the government have a complete monopoly on the means to apply force, and its application. That principle is simplicity itself: there is no such thing as a right to self-defense, natural or otherwise.

Progressives tend never to admit the inevitable and obvious implications of this belief: individual lives have no inherent meaning and value. They have only the value assigned them by the state, and such value almost always depends entirely on their utility to the transitory goals of the state. Instead, Progressives endlessly speak of their great desire to empower “the people,” except that “the people” are an abstraction, a political construction, as any one of “the people” will discover when they try to assert rights other than the privileges extended and withdrawn by the state.

Or when they dare to presume their life means anything and try to defend it against an attacker.

How else can the belief be reconciled that innocent citizens attacked in their homes must have no legal protection when forced to defend their lives or the lives of those they love? Only if their lives mean nothing and may be forfeit to any the state deigns to have its permission to rape and rob and kill, whether such permission be awarded by specific fiat, mere indifference or perverse ideology.

Would such progressives apply this reasoning to those they love? To their spouses and children? Would they so willingly sacrifice them to the tender mercies of rapists, robber and killers? Many would, but would never make such admission, dissolving first into rage and name-calling, all the while accusing those of daring to introduce them to the very real consequences of their beliefs of all manner of bad will, evil and stupidity.

For such people, no progressive policy can ever be wrong. Therefore, opposition to progressive policy cannot be merely mistaken; it must be evil. This is the only recognition of evil progressives allow themselves: resistance to progressive policy. Because progressive policies are infallible, there is no need to debate them, and when in conflict with progressive policies, individual lives just don’t matter.

Adherence to the progressive mindset also requires the belief that words have no set, commonly understood meanings. The law exists only to serve progressive goals, and when the law is inconvenient–progressive goals frequently change–it is ignored or rewritten. This is how Bookworm’s friend can be show the law, can read the words on the page, yet completely reject them.

Castle doctrine and stand your ground laws are an absolutely necessary, logical outgrowth of natural law because, particularly when one is confronted by an intruder in their bedroom in the middle of the night, it is impossible to accurately gauge their intent. Is the hulking burglar lunging toward your 5’2” 110 pound wife planning to rape her? Beat her unconscious? Kill her to ensure she can’t identify him? Or is he only rushing to pick up that pair of jeans left on the floor so no one will trip on them in the dark?

In such circumstances–which are far more common that progressives will ever admit–by the time the intent of the attacker is clear, the thrust of the knife or pull of the trigger have already begun. There will be no time to dodge, duck, block, or call for Chuck Norris. There will be no time to call the police, nor can they possibly arrive in time to do anything but call the coroner and pick over what’s left of your home and body waiting for him to arrive.

The real world is very different than progressive utopia. Without the right, means and legal ability to defend one’s life, we really do live in a state of nature, and the last seconds of the lives of the innocent will be nasty, brutish and short.

The greatest cognitive dissonance of all is this: it can–and does–happen to progressives. By then, of course, it’s a bit late to change one’s mind.

WELCOME TO BOOKWORM ROOM READERS!