Whose Job Is It?

There is a tenet in law, repeatedly restated in courts, that says that the police are not responsible for your individual safety.  To make sure we are clear, the point of the courts is that if a criminal attacks you, the police can not be held accountable that 1) there are criminals on the street, 2) that one attacked you and 3) that you were hurt.  The police provide security to the society, they act as a deterrent to criminal behavior writ large, and they investigate crimes and arrest those believed responsible for crimes.  But they are not responsible for protecting you specifically and individually.

That makes some sense, whether we like it or not.  The police can’t be everywhere and they can’t prevent someone from doing violence to you, no matter where you are or what time it is.  So, to repeat, the police are not responsible for your individual security.

So who is?

I ask this simple question in light of the evil acts of some gunman in Denver and the tragedy he caused.  Simply put, who was responsible for safety and security of those in that movie theater?  The courts will provide one definitive answer: the police weren’t.

Now, an argument can be made that the answer then is to disarm everyone.  That may sound good, but the track record of that kind of behavior isn’t good.  In those societies where there is little private weapon ownership – say Western Europe – the result has been a significant increase in violent crime.  One of the clever half-truths of some in the media when they talk about this kind of thing is to report the murder rate in the US and compare it to the murder rate in Europe – the US rate is higher.  But what they leave out is that the violent crime rate as a whole is much higher in Europe then in the US, ranging from roughly 20% higher to more than 400% higher, depending on which country you pick.  This is true across all of Europe – including Scandinavia, usually the darling of those calling for change in the US.  Only in Switzerland can you find consistently lower murder and violent crime rates over the years.  And Switzerland is the land where every home is armed.

The economist John Lott has produced a study on the effects of handgun ownership (More Guns, Less Crime), chock full of statistics.  No one has made any serious effort to refute his statistics or his analysis.  Simply put, when people are armed, crime rates drop.  The more who are armed, the lower the crime rates.

So, back to the question at hand: who is responsible for protecting you?  The answer is simple: you are – and no one else.

These two trains of thought – the Police are not responsible, private firearm ownership reduces crime – need to be brought together.  This is an unpleasant idea to some and probably will raise some eyebrows.  But simply ask yourself this question: would 14 people have died in that theater last night, and would another 50 have been injured, if half the adults in that theater were armed and knew how to use their pistols?  The same can be asked about other public shootings, such as the shooting of Congresswoman Giffords on January 8^th, 2011, during which 6 people were killed and another 13 wounded.

No firearms law in the world would have prevented the evil creeps in either case from starting the shootings.  The courts have made it clear that the police cannot be expected to be everywhere and stop every criminal before he acts.  But an armed citizenry could be expected to act.  It might also give criminals a bit more to think about if, when they look down a street, they knew that essentially every one of their potential victims was armed.