The night I would have killed (Do not read while eating)

On Saturday, it will be 15 years since I wanted to kill. If I'd had a gun the night of Aug. 24, 1987, at least one man-perhaps two-would have died.

I had just moved into a new apartment here in Boulder that day and was starting classes at CU after a year's maternity leave. My baby was 9 months old and had just taken his first steps. The world seemed full of possibility and promise.

But that night, two young men armed with switchblades nearly put an end to any possibility. They broke into my apartment, using the backs of their knives to shatter the glass of my kitchen window. Had I not gotten a call off to the police, I would have been raped at knife-point and perhaps killed. Who knows what they would have done to my little boy.

CU Police Officers Gary Arai and Tim McGraw arrived in time to prevent a tragedy. As they investigated the crime scene and did paperwork, I wanted to be as close to them as possible because they made me feel safe.

It wasn't their brawn I was thinking of, though I'm sure they're both formidable. It was the semi-automatic in their holsters.

I visualized myself doing just that-holding the gun, firing at the filthy, leering smirk on the men's faces, watching their heads split like melons.

Not long after the break-in, I shared those thoughts with a former professor of mine, now a friend and mentor.

While sympathetic and full of compassion, she wasn't impressed, so I explained further.

Her response, to the best of my recollection, was this: "Certainly it would be horrible if they had done what they wanted to do, but if you had shot them it could have cost you your soul."

What was I supposed to do? Invite the attackers in so they didn't have to risk cutting themselves on glass, allow them to assault me, then offer them cigarettes?

The right to defend oneself against violent criminals is etched into the American psyche. In Colorado, the "Make My Day" law allows citizens to shoot with impunity anyone who breaks into their homes if they have a reasonable belief that the intruder is going to commit a crime in their home or harm them in any way.

Had I blown their heads off, the law would have granted me immunity from prosecution. The men had taunted me from outside before breaking into my apartment, and their intent was clear on their faces. Reasonable belief? I knew what was going to happen if they managed to get a hold of me just like I know my own name. And even though they never laid hands on me, I received minor injuries from glass shards, which cut my legs.

I had no doubt at the time that I would have been justified had I blasted them into oblivion. No one would have blamed me, except perhaps the men's mothers. But then there was my mentor.

Gary and Tim still work for the CU Police Department, and I'm eternally grateful to them. The image of the two of them running full-tilt across an open field to get to me in time is forever set in my memory, along with the sound of my own screams. They put themselves in harm's way-one of the attackers turned on Tim, his knife drawn-for a stranger.

Spirituality is a personal thing, so I won't bore readers with the minutiae of my own perceptions. But the past few years have shown me that death is the last thing human beings should fear. Instead, we should fear the ways in which we fail to live up to our spiritual potential. Worst for us are those times when we deny the humanity of others, whether they be jerks weaving in traffic, thugs intent on harming us, or even terrorists in airplanes.

While I might have kept myself physically safe by shooting those men, I would have been placing my life and happiness above theirs. I would have been falling prey to the lie that they had the ability to harm me in any real way. I would have been forgetting the spiritual truth both about my attackers and about myself.

That truth, as far as I've been able to discern (and I do not claim to be an expert or have the inside line), is that in dying, we risk nothing. We lose nothing. All that we are, all that we've done, all that we love stays with us. When we kill, however, we negate the value of others and put our souls at risk.

This is a recent revelation. It doesn't explain why I never bought a gun, despite the years of nightmares and the paralyzing fear of being alone at night that plagued me for years after the break-in. That choice had to do with my children and my fear that they'd find the gun and become statistics.

The nightmares have ended, as has the fear of being alone. The desire to buy a gun passed long ago. But I've never written about the handgun issue because in so many ways I'm a fence-sitter.

If someone tried to break into my house again, I'd probably still call the guys who pack heat for a living. I won't carry a gun. I let them carry one for me. Second Amendment supporters would say that makes me a hypocrite or even unpatriotic.

And although I consider myself a pacifist, I know what it's like to look at a man's face and see that he's actually happy and excited about his plans for hurting you. I'm not going to tell people, women in particular, that they shouldn't defend themselves just because I believe such-and-such.

Ultimately, the decision to kill in self-defense-or for any other reason-is a personal one. Each person makes his or her choice. As with all other choices we make, we pay the spiritual consequences.

So finally, after 10 years of writing columns, I speak out on the gun issue. And the only thing I really have to say is this: Our anger and fear do more harm to us than those who make us angry or fearful. When we meet darkness with darkness, some of that darkness enters and stays inside us.

PART II

The Unarmed Life

When columnist Carl Rowan preaches gun control and uses a gun to defend his home, when Maryland Gov. William Donald Schaefer seeks legislation year after year to ban semiautomatic "assault weapons" whose only purpose, we are told, is to kill people, while he is at the same time escorted by state police armed with large-capacity 9mm semiautomatic pistols, it is not simple hypocrisy. It is the workings of that habit of mind possessed by all superior beings who have taken upon themselves the terrible burden of civilizing the masses and who understand, like our Congress, that laws are for other people.

The liberal elite know that they are philosopher-kings. They know that the people simply cannot be trusted; that they are incapable of just and fair self-government; that left to their own devices, their society will be racist, sexist, homophobic, and inequitable -- and the liberal elite know how to fix things. They are going to help us live the good and just life, even if they have to lie to us and force us to do it. And they detest those who stand in their way.

The private ownership of firearms is a rebuke to this utopian zeal. To own firearms is to affirm that freedom and liberty are not gifts from the state. It is to reserve final judgment about whether the state is encroaching on freedom and liberty, to stand ready to defend that freedom with more than mere words, and to stand outside the state's totalitarian reach.

The Florida Experience

The elitist distrust of the people underlying the gun control movement is illustrated beautifully in HCI's campaign against a new concealed-carry law in Florida. Prior to 1987, the Florida law permitting the issuance of concealed-carry permits was administered at the county level. The law was vague, and, as a result, was subject to conflicting interpretation and political manipulation. Permits were issued principally to security personnel and the privileged few with political connections. Permits were valid only within the county of issuance.

In 1987, however, Florida enacted a uniform concealed-carry law which mandates that county authorities issue a permit to anyone who satisfies certain objective criteria. The law requires that a permit be issued to any applicant who is a resident, at least twenty-one years of age, has no criminal record, no record of alcohol or drug abuse, no history of mental illness, and provides evidence of having satisfactorily completed a firearms safety course offered by the NRA or other competent instructor. The applicant must provide a set of fingerprints, after which the authorities make a background check. The permit must be issued or denied within ninety days, is valid throughout the state, and must be renewed every three years, which provides authorities a regular means of reevaluating whether the permit holder still qualifies.

Passage of this legislation was vehemently opposed by HCI and the media. The law, they said, would lead to citizens shooting each other over everyday disputes involving fender benders, impolite behavior, and other slights to their dignity. Terms like "Florida, the Gunshine State" and "Dodge City East" were coined to suggest that the state, and those seeking passage of the law, were encouraging individuals to act as judge, jury, and executioner in a "Death Wish" society.

No HCI campaign more clearly demonstrates the elitist beliefs underlying the campaign to eradicate gun ownership. Given the qualifications required of permit holders, HCI and the media can only believe that common, law-abiding citizens are seething cauldrons of homicidal rage, ready to kill to avenge any slight to their dignity, eager to seek out and summarily execute the lawless. Only lack of immediate access to a gun restrains them and prevents the blood from flowing in the streets. They are so mentally and morally deficient that they would mistake a permit to carry a weapon in self-defense as a state-sanctioned license to kill at will.

Did the dire predictions come true? Despite the fact that Miami and Dade County have severe problems with the drug trade, the homicide rate fell in Florida following enactment of this law, as it did in Oregon following enactment of similar legislation there. There are, in addition, several documented cases of new permit holders successfully using their weapons to defend themselves. Information from the Florida Department of State shows that, from the beginning of the program in 1987 through June 1993, 160,823 permits have been issued, and only 530, or about 0.33 percent of the applicants, have been denied a permit for failure to satisfy the criteria, indicating that the law is benefitting those whom it was intended to benefit -- the law-abiding. Only 16 permits, less than 1/100th of 1 percent, have been revoked due to the post-issuance commission of a crime involving a firearm.

The Florida legislation has been used as a model for legislation adopted by Oregon, Idaho, Montana, and Mississippi. There are, in addition, seven other states (Maine, North and South Dakota, Utah, Washington, West Virginia, and, with the exception of cities with a population in excess of 1 million, Pennsylvania) which provide that concealed-carry permits must be issued to law-abiding citizens who satisfy various objective criteria. Finally, no permit is required at all in Vermont. Altogether, then, there are thirteen states in which law-abiding citizens who wish to carry arms to defend themselves may do so. While no one appears to have compiled the statistics from all of these jurisdictions, there is certainly an ample data base for those seeking the truth about the trustworthiness of law-abiding citizens who carry firearms.

Other evidence also suggests that armed citizens are very responsible in using guns to defend themselves. Florida State University criminologist Gary Kleck, using surveys and other data, has determined that armed citizens defend their lives or property with firearms against criminals approximately 1 million times a year. In 98 percent of these instances, the citizen merely brandishes the weapon or fires a warning shot. Only in 2 percent of the cases do citizens actually shoot their assailants. In defending themselves with their firearms, armed citizens kill 2,000 to 3,000 criminals each year, three times the number killed by the police. A nationwide study by Kates, the constitutional lawyer and criminologist, found that only 2 percent of civilian shootings involved an innocent person mistakenly identified as a criminal. The "error rate" for the police, however, was 11 percent, over five times as high.

It is simply not possible to square the numbers above and the experience of Florida with the notions that honest, law-abiding gun owners are borderline psychopaths itching for an excuse to shoot someone, vigilantes eager to seek out and summarily execute the lawless, or incompetent fools incapable of determining when it is proper to use lethal force in defense of their lives. Nor upon reflection should these results seem surprising. Rape, robbery, and attempted murder are not typically actions rife with ambiguity or subtlety, requiring special powers of observation and great book-learning to discern. When a man pulls a knife on a woman and says, "You're coming with me," her judgment that a crime is being committed is not likely to be in error. There is little chance that she is going to shoot the wrong person. It is the police, because they are rarely at the scene of the crime when it occurs, who are more likely to find themselves in circumstances where guilt and innocence are not so clear-cut, and in which the probability for mistakes is higher.

Arms and Liberty

Classical republican philosophy has long recognized the critical relationship between personal liberty and the possession of arms by a people ready and willing to use them. Political theorists as dissimilar as Niccolo Machiavelli, Sir Thomas More, James Harrington, Algernon Sidney, John Locke, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau all shared the view that the possession of arms is vital for resisting tyranny, and that to be disarmed by one's government is tantamount to being enslaved by it. The possession of arms by the people is the ultimate warrant that government governs only with the consent of the governed. As Kates has shown, the Second Amendment is as much a product of this political philosophy as it is of the American experience in the Revolutionary War. Yet our conservative elite has abandoned this aspect of republican theory. Although our conservative pundits recognize and embrace gun owners as allies in other arenas, their battle for gun rights is desultory. The problem here is not a statist utopianism, although goodness knows that liberals are not alone in the confidence they have in the state's ability to solve society's problems. Rather, the problem seems to lie in certain cultural traits shared by our conservative and liberal elites.

One such trait is an abounding faith in the power of the word. The failure of our conservative elite to defend the Second Amendment stems in great measure from an overestimation of the power of the rights set forth in the First Amendment, and a general undervaluation of action. Implicit in calls for the repeal of the Second Amendment is the assumption that our First Amendment rights are sufficient to preserve our liberty. The belief is that liberty can be preserved as long as men freely speak their minds; that there is no tyranny or abuse that can survive being exposed in the press; and that the truth need only be disclosed for the culprits to be shamed. The people will act, and the truth shall set us, and keep us, free.

History is not kind to this belief, tending rather to support the view of Hobbes, Machiavelli, and other republican theorists that only people willing and able to defend themselves can preserve their liberties. While it may be tempting and comforting to believe that the existence of mass electronic communication has forever altered the balance of power between the state and its subjects, the belief has certainly not been tested by time, and what little history there is in the age of mass communication is not especially encouraging. The camera, radio, and press are mere tools and, like guns, can be used for good or ill. Hitler, after all, was a masterful orator, used radio to very good effect, and is well known to have pioneered and exploited the propaganda opportunities afforded by film. And then, of course, there were the Brownshirts, who knew very well how to quell dissent among intellectuals.

Polite Society

In addition to being enamored of the power of words, our conservative elite shares with liberals the notion that an armed society is just not civilized or progressive, that massive gun ownership is a blot on our civilization. This association of personal disarmament with civilized behavior is one of the great unexamined beliefs of our time.

Should you read English literature from the sixteenth through nineteenth centuries, you will discover numerous references to the fact that a gentleman, especially when out at night or traveling, armed himself with a sword or a pistol against the chance of encountering a highwayman or other such predator. This does not appear to have shocked the ladies accompanying him. True, for the most part there were no police in those days, but we have already addressed the notion that the presence of the police absolves people of the responsibility to look after their safety, and in any event the existence of the police cannot be said to have reduced crime to negligible levels.

It is by no means obvious why it is "civilized" to permit oneself to fall easy prey to criminal violence, and to permit criminals to continue unobstructed in their evil ways. While it may be that a society in which crime is so rare that no one ever needs to carry a weapon is "civilized," a society that stigmatizes the carrying of weapons by the law-abiding -- because it distrusts its citizens more than it fears rapists, robbers, and murderers -- certainly cannot claim this distinction. Perhaps the notion that defending oneself with lethal force is not "civilized" arises from the view that violence is always wrong, or the view that each human being is of such intrinsic worth that it is wrong to kill anyone under any circumstances. The necessary implication of these propositions, however, is that life is not worth defending. Far from being "civilized," the beliefs that counterviolence and killing are always wrong are an invitation to the spread of barbarism. Such beliefs announce loudly and clearly that those who do not respect the lives and property of others will rule over those who do.

In truth, one who believes it wrong to arm himself against criminal violence shows contempt of God's gift of life (or, in modern parlance, does not properly value himself), does not live up to his responsibilities to his family and community, and proclaims himself mentally and morally deficient, because he does not trust himself to behave responsibly. In truth, a state that deprives its law-abiding citizens of the means to effectively defend themselves is not civilized but barbarous, becoming an accomplice of murderers, rapists, and thugs and revealing its totalitarian nature by its tacit admission that the disorganized, random havoc created by criminals is far less a threat than are men and women who believe themselves free and independent, and act accordingly.

While gun control proponents and other advocates of a kinder, gentler society incessantly decry our "armed society," in truth we do not live in an armed society. We live in a society in which violent criminals and agents of the state habitually carry weapons, and in which many law-abiding citizens own firearms but do not go about armed. Department of Justice statistics indicate that 87 percent of all violent crimes occur outside the home. Essentially, although tens of millions own firearms, we are an unarmed society.

Take Back the Night

Clearly the police and the courts are not providing a significant brake on criminal activity. While liberals call for more poverty, education, and drug treatment programs, conservatives take a more direct tack. George Will advocates a massive increase in the number of police and a shift toward "community-based policing." Meanwhile, the NRA and many conservative leaders call for laws that would require violent criminals serve at least 85 percent of their sentences and would place repeat offenders permanently behind bars.

Our society suffers greatly from the beliefs that only official action is legitimate and that the state is the source of our earthly salvation. Both liberal and conservative prescriptions for violent crime suffer from the "not in my job description" school of thought regarding the responsibilities of the law-abiding citizen, and from an overestimation of the ability of the state to provide society's moral moorings. As long as law-abiding citizens assume no personal responsibility for combatting crime, liberal and conservative programs will fail to contain it.

Judging by the numerous articles about concealed-carry in gun magazines, the growing number of products advertised for such purpose, and the increase in the number of concealed-carry applications in states with mandatory-issuance laws, more and more people, including growing numbers of women, are carrying firearms for self-defense. Since there are still many states in which the issuance of permits is discretionary and in which law enforcement officials routinely deny applications, many people have been put to the hard choice between protecting their lives or respecting the law. Some of these people have learned the hard way, by being the victim of a crime, or by seeing a friend or loved one raped, robbed, or murdered, that violent crime can happen to anyone, anywhere at anytime, and that crime is not about sex or property but life, liberty, and dignity.

The laws proscribing concealed-carry of firearms by honest, law-abiding citizens breed nothing but disrespect for the law. As the Founding Fathers knew well, a government that does not trust its honest, law-abiding, taxpaying citizens with the means of self-defense is not itself worthy of trust. Laws disarming honest citizens proclaim that the government is the master, not the servant, of the people. A federal law along the lines of the Florida statute -- overriding all contradictory state and local laws and acknowledging that the carrying of firearms by law-abiding citizens is a privilege and immunity of citizenship -- is needed to correct the outrageous conduct of state and local officials operating under discretionary licensing systems.

What we certainly do not need is more gun control. Those who call for the repeal of the Second Amendment so that we can really begin controlling firearms betray a serious misunderstanding of the Bill of Rights. The Bill of Rights does not grant rights to the people, such that its repeal would legitimately confer upon government the powers otherwise proscribed. The Bill of Rights is the list of the fundamental, inalienable rights, endowed in man by his Creator, that define what it means to be a free and independent people, the rights which must exist to ensure that government governs only with the consent of the people.

At one time this was even understood by the Supreme Court. In United States v. Cruikshank (1876), the first case in which the Court had an opportunity to interpret the Second Amendment, it stated that the right confirmed by the Second Amendment "is not a right granted by the constitution. Neither is it in any manner dependent upon that instrument for its existence." The repeal of the Second Amendment would no more render the outlawing of firearms legitimate than the repeal of the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment would authorize the government to imprison and kill people at will. A government that abrogates any of the Bill of Rights, with or without majoritarian approval, forever acts illegitimately, becomes tyrannical, and loses the moral right to govern.

This is the uncompromising understanding reflected in the warning that America's gun owners will not go gently into that good, utopian night: "You can have my gun when you pry it from my cold, dead hands." While liberals take this statement as evidence of the retrograde, violent nature of gun owners, we gun owners hope that liberals hold equally strong sentiments about their printing presses, word processors, and television cameras. The republic depends upon fervent devotion to all our fundamental rights.

Breathtaking stupidity, indeed! It is also incredibly selfish. I wonder if her kid would've been better off at age 9 months if he had witnessed Mommy being raped and killed, screaming the whole time. I wonder if he'd have been better off growing up without a mother. Maybe he'd have been so traumatized that he'd have ended up on drugs and killed someone by accident or to finance his habit? I wonder if the world is better off with those 2 scumbags still alive - if they've committed any crimes, especially violent ones, then the answer is certainly "no." Finally, using the infantile "reasoning" of this monumentally stupid woman, would the world be better off if she'd been raped and killed? Would the world be as well off without her (presumably decent) raising of a child (or several children), without any acts of charity that she's done, without the love and kindness that she's surely shown to her family and friends? And what if she had other kids after this incident - without the timely appearance of the police officers that saved her life, those kids and all of their descendants would never exist. All of their good deeds wouldn't ever take place. This woman clearly hasn't thought this through very much, despite having had 15 years to do so.

When we meet darkness with darkness, some of that darkness enters and stays inside us.

It may enter you, but it stays only at your sufferance. I would say that the contrary is true. I'd say that the soul of a good person who was challenged or tempted by evil, and who successfully resisted it, is better off than if the challenge or temptation had never occurred.

It doesn't explain why I never bought a gun.... That choice had to do with my children and my fear that they'd find the gun and become statistics.

Well, maybe she's right here. Someone so stupid as to not know how to lock up a gun probably shouldn't have one.

If someone tried to break into my house again, I'd probably still call the guys who pack heat for a living. I won't carry a gun. I let them carry one for me. Second Amendment supporters would say that makes me a hypocrite or even unpatriotic.

Well, patriotism has nothing to do with protecting yourself from criminals (except the 9/11 variety, but that's a different issue), so I wouldn't call her unpatriotic. I would call her a hypocrite, since that is exactly what she is. How is it OK for someone else to defend her, to place their life on the line, because she's chosen to be vulnerable? This is saying that she values their lives even less than her own.

This lady was extraordinarily lucky that the cops showed up in time, and probably won't be so lucky if a repeat of this incident occurs. If they'd been busy elsewhere when the call came, or if the perps had been smart enough to cut the phone line, then she and possibly her kid would be dead. She has taken this improbable gift and learned nothing from it. The central thing that she hasn't learned, and perhaps never will, is that evil triumphs if good people do nothing. Killing someone who has so few morals that they would rape and probably kill an innocent woman with a child is not something that loses you your soul - rather, it is a good deed that enhances the soul. This is not to say that one should go out and look to do this, but it is certainly an applicable principle if this choice is thrust upon you.

She's a hypocrite in another way, as well. She claims not to oppose the right of others to carry concealed or to use deadly force to defend themselves. However, her publishing of this article couldn't possibly have been intended to aid the cause of armed self defense in Colorado.

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