The need for bearing arms in public is all about insurance
June 15, 2009

by Joseph P. Tartaro
Executive Editor

The Supreme Court’s decision in District of Columbia v. Heller finally put some real legal meat on at least part of the Second Amendment. The 5-4 decision made it clear that Americans have a right to keep commonly-owned arms in their homes for personal defense.

However, that ruling fell short of clearly parsing the right to bear arms in public.

As more and more suits are filed raising the issue of self-defense in public, perhaps the courts will offer more guidance. It sure is needed. In some states the issue is clearly spelled out with open carry or concealed carry licensing laws, and in several, by laws clearly allowing both.

But anti-gun theoreticians, stung by the Heller decision and the recent 9th Circuit Appellate Court decision in the Nordyke case incorporating the high court’s individual right ruling to at least those states within its jurisdiction, still insist that there is no reason to bear arms in public, either openly or concealed. They insist that police should be the only ones armed in, on or around public thoroughfares, never addressing the fact that the police cannot be everywhere and that they have no duty to protect any individual no matter how threatened the public may be.

In state after state where the right to carry has been under public debate in the legislatures, the anti-gunners keep arguing for prohibitions on arms in public, or at least in specific places, such as schools, churches, businesses, restaurants, saloons, sports venues, etc. Yet, as has been proven on more than one occasion, these are precisely the areas where good and decent people may suddenly have to defend themselves. You will find examples of successful defensive action with arms in newspapers, television, radio and Internet on almost any given day—on almost any day.

Surprisingly, these often come from foreign countries that aren’t supposed to a have a “gun culture,” which only shows that the need for armed, honest citizens in public is universal. For example, a Gun Week reader recently sent me a clipping from The Louisville Courier Journal that had three short paragraphs about a Palestinian who attacked a police car with a bulldozer in Jerusalem, Israel, in March of this year. Two statements in the brief story induced me to do some more thorough research.

The first was that the terrorist-type attack was thwarted in part with the held of bystanders on the street opening fire on the driver of the front-end loader with their personal arms before a policeman arrived and was able to kill the attacker. The second was that this was the third such attack with a bulldozer or front-end loader in Jerusalem within the past year.

When I searched further, I discovered that in at least one of the other two incidents that occurred in July 2008, armed civilians again played a role in ending the deadly attack. It is worth repeating for those who oppose the bearing of arms in public by private citizens that in two of the three such bizarre incidents, citizens armed, able and willing to intervene contributed to public safety.

In the most recent attack reported by The Courier Journal in March of this year, a Palestinian commandeered a front-end loader on a major road and swung a police car into the air, smashing it against a bus before bystanders opened fire on him and police finally shot him. Two of the policemen in the patrol car were injured and sent to hospital; many in the bus were injured.

The man—later identified as Mar’i al-Rdaidah, 26—reached the intersection near Teddy Stadium and managed to push the police patrol car for about 30 meters, police said.

“We stopped the police car and I ran toward the bulldozer, firing several shots at the driver from the vehicle’s left side until he slumped to the right. I then ran to the bulldozer’s other side and noticed (the terrorist) was trying to sit up, so I fired at him again. Several moments later another policeman arrived, and he fired three more shots at the driver with an M-16 rifle,” said one of the civilian interveners, according to a BBC report.

Of special note is the reported comment from Jerusalem District Deputy Police Chief Nisso Shaham at the scene of the most recent attack that, following the previous attacks in the capital, police had compiled a list of bulldozer drivers and owners in the city in order to identify possible attackers. But, he said, “this kind of attack cannot be anticipated and therefore it is impossible to prepare for it.” But apparently, the government did try to register bulldozer drivers and owners rather than gunowners, anyway, and still a third such attack occurred.

There were higher casualty tolls in the July 2008 attacks.

The first was on July 2 when a Palestinian man drove a bulldozer into a bus and several cars in Jerusalem, killing three people, before being shot dead.

Dozens of people were hurt, at least seven critically, in the rampage in the populous city center.

In that incident, a police officer shot the driver of the bulldozer dead after a struggle in the vehicle’s cab. Police told the BBC that the attacker, Hussam Dwayat, 30, had no known affiliations to militant groups.

The other 2008 bulldozer attack occurred a few weeks later on July 23. The Jerusalem Post reported that, once again, an Arab bulldozer driver from east Jerusalem rammed his construction vehicle into a city bus and several cars on a central thoroughfare in the capital, wounding 15 people before being shot dead by a Druse border police officer and a civilian passerby (italic is my emphasis).

That’s Israel, some might say, where constant conflict with Palestinian extremists is considered fairly common. That’s not what happens in the USA, they say, despite the constant stream of media reports of legally armed citizens defending themselves, family, friends and neighbors from criminal attacks. Prof. Gary Kleck of Florida State University and other academics have calculated that legally armed American may terminate as many of 2.5 million criminal encounters by displaying or firing guns.

Those are statistics, but from The South Bend Tribune and other Midwest media comes yet another report of successful armed intervention by a citizen. It involved a tragic incident that occurred in the city of Mishawaka, IN, in early.

Two sisters, aged 4 and 6, were run down as they crossed an intersection near their home hand-in-hand in the early evening after playing with neighborhood friends. The two were critically injured by a man driving a Chevrolet Lumina “at about 40 mph.”

After the car struck the two little girls, several neighbor witnesses reported that the driver accelerated as if to flee the scene.

However, that’s when another neighbor just down the block who had witnessed the event, Alan Knepp, drew his legal handgun and stepped into the path of the departing Lumina. Pointing his gun directly at the windshield, he forced the driver to stop.

“Approached by Knepp,” The Tribune reported, “the driver reportedly said the girls had jumped out in front of him. He then handed his keys to Knepp and stood silently next to his vehicle until police arrived.”

Two days later, 4-year-old Shyla Aston died and her 6-year-old sister was still in critical condition recovering at Memorial Hospital.

The driver was later identified, but all reports indicated that he would probably have “hit and run” unless Knepp had prevented him from doing so with his legal handgun.

These are just two more of a continuing string of reports that illustrate why good people need to be armed in public.
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