According to news reports, Howard Grant Jr. and Justin Berry were not only witnesses to a murder, but also victims of shootings as well.
Both men refused police protection. Both ended up shot dead on the streets of Baltimore earlier this month. No one knows why they didn’t take Baltimore police up on their offer of protection. Apparently, they didn’t take steps to protect themselves either.
You’ve probably guessed where I’m going with this, but I’ll make it clearer. Here’s how I would have played it if I were either Grant or Berry. If I EVER witness a murder in Baltimore and I can identify the perp, I WILL go to the police with my story.
If police offer me protection as a witness, then fine. But they won’t, not with the conditions I would insist on for that protection. I would demand a cop detail of no fewer than three officers, and they’d have to be the three best marksmen or markswomen in the department.
After Baltimore police rightfully turn down that request, I’d be left to my own devices. I’d have to protect myself. And I would.
I’d go to the nearest gun shop and buy that protection. I’d enroll in one of those gun courses sponsored by the much maligned but often correct National Rifle Association and learn how to responsibly and safely operate that weapon. Then I’d let the chips fall where they may.
You see, there’s only one way to react when criminals “wanna grab their guns and come and gitcha,” to quote the late rapper the Notorious B.I.G. in his quintessentially American song “Warning.” And that’s to get your own gun.
That’s the message advocates of Second Amendment rights have been trying to drive home to the gun banners and gun controllers for years. Strict gun control or gun-banning laws – like the one in the District of Columbia that a wise Supreme Court finally had the good sense to strike down – disarm law-abiding citizens and have no effect on criminals, who regard gun restriction legislation as just another body of laws they get to break.
But what about incidents like the one that happened at Virginia Tech, where some nut case got a gun and killed several people at once? That’s the typical lament of those in favor of more restrictive gun laws. (Actually, that characterization is way too kind; isn’t it about time these folks just admitted they want the Second Amendment repealed outright?)
Those incidents are the exception. The fact that they make big news when they do occur proves they are the exception. I’m one of those funny people who believes our laws should be based on the rule, not the exception. And what is the rule?
Florida State University criminology professor Gary Kleck and a colleague conducted a survey that found Americans used firearms 2.5 million times to defend themselves during the years 1988-1993. Kleck estimates that every 13 seconds, an American somewhere in this country uses a firearm for self-defense.
But now I’m doing just what I didn’t want to do: Debate the issue of guns, gun control and self-defense. Because here’s what the Second Amendment repealers do not understand, will never understand and, indeed, are cognitively incapable of understanding:
My right to self-defense is not up for debate; it’s not up for discussion; and it certainly is not up for their incorrect interpretation of the Second Amendment. Even if it does, as the gun banners claim, pertain only to a militia, I invite them to scroll down to the Ninth Amendment, where it says in plain, simple English that even they should be able to understand that “the enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.”
My right to self-defense has got to be somewhere in the Ninth Amendment, if not the Second. It’s one of those rights that should not be subject to the whims of state legislators, as Sen. Barack Obama, likely our next president, said to Sen. John McCain in their last debate.
Obama doesn’t know Maryland. Either that, or he meant what he said to pertain only to the “right” to slice and dice an unborn child, not own a gun for self-defense.
Gregory Kane is a columnist who has been writing about Baltimore and Maryland for more than 15 years. Look for his columns in the editorial section every Thursday and Sunday. Reach him at [email protected].
