Defending the Right to Self-Defense

Here is a proposed law that I could support if the language was sufficiently clear.  If a business is going to ban guns on the premises, that business should be liable if a gun owner is injured or killed while obeying that ban.  The liability would be limited to things where a gun would have provided the opportunity of self-defense.  For instance, a crazed gunman on the premises would be covered, an earthquake would not.  If patrons are required to be disarmed, the business must take the responsibility to defend them should the need arise.

 

Of course, no matter how well-crafted the law, it will fall upon courts to decide.  Does a person who knowingly enters a gun-free zone forfeit a right to self-defense?  That could lead to every business being gun-free and the 2nd Amendment rendered largely moot outside the confines of private homes.  Do you always have a right to defend yourself?  As the law stands now, the answer is no.  Can a business, or even government, abridge the right to self-defense?  Currently, they can.

 

Whenever there is talk of gun rights, I think of this scene from Code of Silence.  Criminals hate it when their would-be victims can fight back.  Ever notice how there are no mass shootings where one of the victims shot back?  That's because those are the shootings that are stopped before the death toll can rise to the level of a mass shooting.