Preserving the Second Amendment right to bear arms is critical for women in situations where they face life-threatening domestic abuse, argues a law professor at George Mason University.
Certainly it is difficult for a woman to adequately defend herself against a man, but when armed for her self-defense she has a chance to deter him and survive, Joyce Lee Malcolm, a Second Amendment Constitutional Law professor at GMUs Antonin Scalia Law School, wrote in a recent Liberty & Law Center Research Paper.
Restraining orders against abusive partners often fail to deter violence, she maintained, citing a study in the Journal of American Psychiatry and the Law, which found that out of nearly 36,000 cases where protection orders had been involved, 18 percent had been violated.
The study also found that 50 percent of those with a temporary restraining order reported unwanted contact in that time frame, while 75 percent of women reported some unlawful contact within the first year of the orders implementation.
In other words, Malcolm claimed, the police failed to protect the victim from their abuser, and many of them have lost their lives because of itbut she maintained law enforcement is not necessarily at fault.
The police simply cannot be on the spot, even when they have reason to know that a violent crime may occur, she wrote.
Malcolm used the example of domestic violence to counter some of the most common arguments against the right to bear arms, arguing that the right to self defense is unalienable, and shouldnt be ignored in this time of peril.
Noting that the claim that citizens dont need firearms because police offer sufficient protection, Malcolm argued that advances in police technology and stiff criminal penalties have not made people safer, according to Malcolm.
Malcolm called it a false belief that citizens licensed to carry a weapon are a danger to public safety and cause an increase in crime.
To support that claim, Malcolm compared FBI violent crime statistics to the timeframes when each state allowed open carry or concealed-carry permits.
From 1993, when violent crime was at its highest, to 2018, when serious violent crime fell 51 percent, Malcolm notes that nearly every state adopted some form of concealed or open carry legislation.
The Bureau of Justice Statistics also found that violent crime correlating with that same period of time fell 71 percent.
In short, the rate of violent crime plummeted at the same time that the numbers of Americans permitted to carry a gun soared, Malcolm explained.
Malcolm conceded that success has many fathers and that changes in the economy and approaches to law enforcement could have impacted the plummeting violent crime rates as well.
But she argued there is a connection between lawfully arming citizens and thousands of incidents where Americans were able to protect themselves and their families.
A 2013 report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found the number of times firearms were used for self-defense ranged anywhere between 500,000 times and 3 million times a year.
In another study, the authors point out that as many as 400,000 people a year claim not only to have used a gun to defend themselves, but have also used a firearm to defend others.
This has almost certainly saved lives, and cannot be dismissed as trivial, the paper said.
To offer another perspective about what America would look like if the right to self defense is taken away, Malcolm pointed to England, where, she claimed, the right to self-defense has been effectually removed.
Following World War I, the British Parliament required citizens to get licenses from their local police departments and fit a strict list of requirements that only got stricter as time went on.
However, Malcolm notes that criminals dont abide by the law; so they are not following these handgun outlaws, allowing them to be the only citizens in Britain with firearms.
Moreover, for even law abiding citizens in a state of crisis, Extreme force has been ruled unjustifiable when there was an attempt merely to attack or destroy property, including someone breaking into your house, Malcolm writes.
She continues, The public has been instructed to leave their defense to the police, and to walk on by and call the police if they see someone being attacked.
Not surprisingly, Malcolm writes, crime in Britain following these restrictions soared.
Nevertheless, Malcolms argument was countered by an assertion in the New York Times that gun deaths remain extremely rare in Britain, and very few people, even police officers, carry firearms.
To that end, Malcolm concludes, This British history eerily evokes the policy preferences of todays American progressives eager to take guns out of the hands of citizens in the name of public safety, leaving them to rely for protection on the police.
Malcolm quotes Supreme Court Justice ClarenceThomas, who once referred to the Second Amendment as a constitutional orphan.
If so it is an orphan neglected by the courts, but clung to by the people who are not waiting for the authorities to come by later to pick up the pieces, but who are prepared to defend themselves and their loved ones, Malcolm wrote.
Joyce Lee Malcolm is the Patrick Henry Professor of Constitutional Law and the Second Amendment at George Mason Universitys Antonin Scalia Law School.
The full paper can be accessed here.
This summary was prepared by TCR staff writer Andrea Cipriano
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