# Self-Defense: the primary U.S. civil right



## elder999 (Mar 24, 2006)

So, do we save the Second Amendment for a rainy day when a despot reigns? Or do we use the Second Amendment for the tiny tyrannies that claim so many lives? The tyranny of criminal attack. When you are alone. When the speaking out on social policies doesnt matter. When all the voting and all the praying dont matter, as you catch a glint of your reflection on the blade of a knife wielded by an attacker. At the scene of this crime, as with most others, there are no police present. Just the victim and the predator. Just you and your attacker.

Heres a tiny tyranny that befell a Virginia woman about ten years ago. At three a.m., Rayna Ross slept with her infant child in her garden apartment. It was fitful slumber. In the past several weeks, her former lover had attacked her, held her against her will and threatened her with a weapon. Authorities held him, but later released him/ He stalked her, and, as he did, he wrote to her. His letters grew increasingly dark, foreshadowing what experts would later call an inevitable murder-suicide.

The authorities issued a warrant for his arrest. They couldnt post officers, or follow her to and from work. They just issued a warrant.

Because Virginia employed an instantaneous background check for gun purchases, Rosss gun purchase was immediate.

Rosss purchase was not just immediate; it was fortunate, because her attacker burst through the apartments patio door and went after her with a huge knife at three in the morning-three days * after * she purchased her gun. Had she been forced to wait longer, she and her child would probably be dead now. Another tiny tyranny, but maybe not so tiny to the victim.

Phillip Russell Coleman worked past midnight in a Shreveport, Louisiana liquor store, and feared criminal attack. He purchased a gun under a five-day waiting period. Unlike Rayna Ross, Phillip Coleman will never speak out against the waiting period. His gun purchase was approved August 15, 1995-three days * after * he was shot and killed at the liquor store in the dead of night. Another tiny tyranny, but, maybe, not so tiny to the victim.

In Monroe, North Carolina, in 1957, the Monroe chapter of the NAACP was under constant threat and harassment by the Ku Klux Klan. They were trying to exercise their constitutional rights to speak out, to assemble, to vote, to associate with one another, and the Klan were armed, and using those arms to illegally intimidate them. The Klan had set about driving through black neighborhoods and firing guns at homes.

So the Monroe chapter of the NAACP decided to exercise another of their civil liberties-the right to keep and bear arms. They received firearms training, and when the Klan came around again, they ran right into the Second Amendment. The Klan fired, and that fire was returned in a fight they had no stomach for. The terrorists failed, because one right prevailed.

Second amendment opponents and apologists, and citizens of certain European countries, offer grim statistics, and lay them at the foot of the Second Amendment. I, too, can offer those same statistics as gruesome proof of the failure of reliance on laws that do nothing more than restrict the rights of law-abiding people, and do nothing to disarm criminals or thwart criminal attack.

The tragedy of crime is not only the greatest threat to our life and property; it is one of the greatest threats to our civil liberties. Restrictions against Second Amendment rights wont restore morality, and ineffective schemes will only serve to enhance hopelessness-as we are seeing in England.

If we respect the lessons taught by the tiny tyrannies of our country-and theyre not so tiny, are they?-we will find ourselves shoulder to shoulder with our Founding Fathers. In the Second Amendment they lit a fire of freedom, and we can read by the light of that fire two lessons our Founding Fathers intended-power does * not * belong exclusively in the hands of the state, and self defense is the _* primary *_ civil right.


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## Phil Elmore (Mar 24, 2006)

I've written an extensive article on this same subject:

*Self-Defense: The Individual Right*


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## Don Roley (Mar 24, 2006)

elder999 said:
			
		

> Because Virginia employed an instantaneous background check for gun purchases, Rosss gun purchase was immediate.



When the debate about instantaneous background checks were being debated years ago, I remember one politician saying that he would rather have the police find out about a felon trying to purchase a firearm as it happened rather than a few days later.

I think it is a right for a person to defend themselves. I think that is just self evident. Anyone ever note that the last right Black Americans seemed to have gotten as the Jim Crow laws were struck down were the ones allowing them to own arms? For years as the KKK and others kept them down, they were denied the right to defend themselves.


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## Cruentus (Mar 24, 2006)

Denying someone the right to self-defense is denying someone of their humanity. Great points, guys...

Paul


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## elder999 (Mar 15, 2017)

Oh, yes, bump-just because it's been so long since we've heard from Mr. Janulis here....


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## JP3 (Mar 15, 2017)

elder999 said:


> Oh, yes, bump-just because it's been so long since we've heard from Mr. Janulis here....



Elder, I agree witht he O/P so well put together more than 10 years ago in all but one thing.  The right of free speech is the primary right of free peoples everywhere, and that has been proven time and time again throughout history.

But... I can see where the argument that being able to speak out with what you want to say takes an immediate back seat when a baddie bursts in and all you've got is your ceareal spoon in hand, so the perspective you drafted is very valid.


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## drop bear (Mar 15, 2017)

And yet you lose a batch of school kids to gunmen a couple times a year. 

Which a pretty big price to pay so that you dont have to epend any effort or forethought in defending yourself.


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## elder999 (Mar 15, 2017)

JP3 said:


> Elder, I agree witht he O/P so well put together more than 10 years ago in all but one thing.  The right of free speech is the primary right of free peoples everywhere, and that has been proven time and time again throughout history.
> 
> But... I can see where the argument that being able to speak out with what you want to say takes an immediate back seat when a baddie bursts in and all you've got is your ceareal spoon in hand, so the perspective you drafted is very valid.





elder999 said:


> When the speaking out on social policies doesnt matter. *
> 
> In Monroe, North Carolina, in 1957, the Monroe chapter of the NAACP was under constant threat and harassment by the Ku Klux Klan. They were trying to exercise their constitutional rights to speak out, to assemble, to vote, to associate with one another, and the Klan were armed, and using those arms to illegally intimidate them. The Klan had set about driving through black neighborhoods and firing guns at homes.
> 
> ...


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## elder999 (Mar 15, 2017)

drop bear said:


> And yet you lose a batch of school kids to gunmen a couple times a year.
> 
> Which a pretty big price to pay so that you dont have to epend any effort or forethought in defending yourself.





elder999 said:


> *
> Second amendment opponents and apologists, and citizens of certain European countries, offer grim statistics, and lay them at the foot of the Second Amendment. I, too, can offer those same statistics as gruesome proof of the failure of reliance on laws that do nothing more than restrict the rights of law-abiding people, and do nothing to disarm criminals or thwart criminal attack.
> 
> The tragedy of crime is not only the greatest threat to our life and property; it is one of the greatest threats to our civil liberties. Restrictions against Second Amendment rights won't restore morality, and ineffective schemes will only serve to enhance hopelessness-as we are seeing in England.*
> ...


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## drop bear (Mar 16, 2017)

So you think laws don't work?


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## Jenna (Mar 16, 2017)

elder999 said:


> So, do we save the Second Amendment for a rainy day when a despot reigns? Or do we use the Second Amendment for the tiny tyrannies that claim so many lives? The tyranny of criminal attack. When you are alone. When the speaking out on social policies doesnt matter. When all the voting and all the praying dont matter, as you catch a glint of your reflection on the blade of a knife wielded by an attacker. At the scene of this crime, as with most others, there are no police present. Just the victim and the predator. Just you and your attacker.
> 
> Heres a tiny tyranny that befell a Virginia woman about ten years ago. At three a.m., Rayna Ross slept with her infant child in her garden apartment. It was fitful slumber. In the past several weeks, her former lover had attacked her, held her against her will and threatened her with a weapon. Authorities held him, but later released him/ He stalked her, and, as he did, he wrote to her. His letters grew increasingly dark, foreshadowing what experts would later call an inevitable murder-suicide.
> 
> ...


Perhaps more pertinent now than ever


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## elder999 (Mar 17, 2017)

drop bear said:


> So you think laws don't work?


Laws work, though not all the time. Laws certainly didn't protect the black citizens of Monroe, North Carolina in 1939.

That's why justice is depicted as blindfolded.

The highest law of _our_ land is the Constitution, which says that the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.

This last is a civics lesson-not a political viewpoint.

Our Supreme court, the highest arbiters of what is Constitutional and what is not, have ruled that it's an individual right.

This is also a civics lesson, and not a political viewpoint.


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## Kong Soo Do (Apr 7, 2017)

Laws work if they are obeyed.  Criminals, by definition don't obey laws.  Thus law-abiding citizens have the Constitutional right in this country to defend themselves.  Additionally, the 2A isn't just about lawful self defense, it allows the citizens to rise up against their own government in the advent that the government becomes a tyranny.


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## Buka (Apr 7, 2017)

Laws work if they are enforced.


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## Grenadier (Apr 7, 2017)

*Admin's Note:*

Folks, political discussion should be taken elsewhere.  There are other forums that are hosted by the Forum Foundry that are quite suitable.


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