by Dave Workman
Senior Editor

The FBI says justifiable homicides by private citizens, as well as police officers, are on the rise according to 2007 data that shows more than 250 killings by armed citizens occurred that year.

It’s the highest number in more than 10 years.

Alan Gottlieb, co-author of America Fights Back: Armed Self-Defense in a Violent Age, said the increase is not surprising. His book examined self-defense by armed citizens.

“American citizens have realized that they are on the front lines of the war on crime, and the police cannot be everywhere, all the time,” he said. “Essentially, these citizens recognize they are responsible for their own safety, and the safety of their families, and they will not surrender without a fight.”

According to FBI data, there were 351 justifiable homicides by police last year as well.

USA Today noted that the FBI considers a homicide justified if a private citizen kills someone during the commission of a felony. Several states have revised their self-defense statutes in recent years, expanding the self-defense rights of private citizens.

Some criminologists have looked at the trend, according to USA Today, and suggest that the new laws have contributed to a greater willingness among armed citizens to shoot.

“Our society is returning to its self-reliant roots,” Gottlieb stated. “Armed citizens are the new ‘first-responders’ and since the 9/11 attack and Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath, Americans are facing the new reality that government cannot protect you, whether it be from natural disasters or neighborhood thugs.”

He suggested that Americans have grown weary of neighborhood crime, and realize that police are stretched thin. He said this report affirms the importance of last summer’s Supreme Court ruling in the Heller case that the right to keep and bear arms is an individual civil right, and that self-defense is really what the Second Amendment is all about.

“Now, perhaps more than ever,” he observed, “Americans realize the importance of the Second Amendment and the individual civil right it has always protected. This is not a new right, as the Supreme Court confirmed earlier this year, but one that pre-dates our Constitution. What this new data reflects is a renewed willingness to exercise that right and to change course on how we deal with crime and personal safety.”

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