Last Sunday, an 11-year-old boy in Washington D.C. was reportedly attacked by three “pit bulls” and then rescued by a Good Samaritan, who shot one of the dogs, and a bike patrol officer who shot the other two. Now the Good Samaritan may face gun charges if you can believe it, courtesy of D.C.’s ridiculous gun law. Gee, didn’t District of Columbia v. Heller already address D.C.’s unconstitutional gun law and didn’t D.C. lose? And if the 2nd Amendment can be upheld for purposes of self-defense, then what about our moral obligation to protect others? Even the boy’s uncle said the Good Samaritan did the right thing.
Perhaps the prosecution is just posturing because the boy was accidentally shot in the foot (although I have yet to see the media say who shot the boy in the foot, the Good Samaritan, the police officer, or someone else). And I say the boy was “reportedly attacked” by “pit bulls” because lately when the media reports a “pit bull” attack, the dogs in question are often some kind of mastiff. See, it wasn’t enough for them to malign American Pit Bull Terriers, American Staffordshire Terriers, and Staffordshire Terriers, the dogs heretofore most commonly mislabeled “pit bulls.” No, now “pit bulls” have come to mean 80-100 pound mastiffs too.
Additionally, after reading several articles about the incident, I immediately thought: The gun-grabbers and the animal rights doggy killers must really be salivating over this one! They get to clobber both 2A defenders and the dog lobby over the head with one fell swoop. But maybe not since this is one of the comments under The Washington Post article about the incident:
KoryNParker
1:42 PM CST
As the highest court in the State of Maryland just ruled in 2012 that
pit bulls are notoriously more dangerous than other dogs, in holding
landlords’ strictly liable for civil damages caused by their tenant’s
pit bulls, I find it absolutely ridiculous that this situation should
take more than 24 hours for the U.S. Attorney’s Office to sign off on a
“Refuse to Charge” decision. As a supporter of 2nd Amendment rights
precisely for the need to defend people from pit bull attacks, any
charges in the case should be defended by the NRA. As an expert in the
legal justification for Pit Bull bans, I would offer to help financially
support his legal defense fund, and to testify as an expert witness in
any court hearing. ATTENTION FEDERAL PROSECUTORS: We are paying
attention to what you are doing here. This is NOT a good case for you to
prosecute; back away slowly and sign off on a “do not charge” form….
Oh no, has Kory Nelson, of Denver doggy-killing fame, reared his ugly head again? Is this him acknowledging that he was involved in the embarrassment that was that Maryland Court of Appeals kangaroo court ruling? You know, the ruling about that non-existent “breed” “pit bull” supposedly being “inherently dangerous” that is so asinine the Maryland legislature must now fix it? Well, it’s good to know ol’ Kory can see the rational basis for the constitutional right to keep and bear arms, even if he can’t lateralize to see that it is also a Constitutional right to keep that non-existent “breed” he erroneously calls “pit bull.” Were you absent that day in Con Law when they went over the Bill of Rights and Civil Rights? Oh and I should qualify that: By Con Law I mean Constitutional Law, not con, as in conning the public with hysteria, propaganda, and false statistics for which you’d be kicked out of a Statistics course. 😉 Denver so loves its fuzzy “stats” and its fuzzy “logic.” Just make sure you’re not sending out your propaganda on City letterhead again, ‘kay? The taxpayers generally don’t like it when City “officials” use their letterhead to kill innocent dogs.
And don’t mistake my tongue-in-cheekedness. I have every bit of sympathy for the boy who endured the horrific attack, which is why when I see calls for breed bans or breed-specific restrictions after incidents like these, I am so staunchly opposed. Why? Because we have decades of historical evidence proving breed bans and breed-specific restrictions don’t work. So, the dog lobby lobbies instead for legislation that we know works: Stiffer penalties for those with free-roaming dogs no matter what breed, escalating fines and even prison terms for those whose dogs hurt someone, and we still have to lobby for leash laws in some communities because believe it or not, some towns still don’t have them. Notice these types of measures, which have a long history of efficacy, focus on the owners, not specific breeds. These types of laws actually keep the community safer; they don’t simply offer a false sense of security like breed bans and breed-specific measures do.
I don’t mind writing about the D.C. incident either because it brings to the fore two issues — the constitutional problems inherent in both anti-gun laws and breed-specific legislation — that the anti-gun lobby and the doggy killers may try to muddle. In fact, gun grabbing and breed bans share many commonalities: 1) They’re both unconstitutional seizures of property without due process, 2) They’re both done under the pretense of safety, and 3) Neither gun bans nor breed-specific legislation make communities safer; in fact, quite the opposite.
Still, the press is just going to keep making a federal case out of any incident nationwide that involves anything having to do with a gun, including the D.C. incident which should illustrate why guns are needed for the protection of self and others, but which is instead being used to push more gun control. Ohwell, I guess the press has nothing better to do while waiting to write about Diane Feinstein’s federal anti-gun, gun-grabber bill, S. 150, which for some reason, they have delayed posting the text of at the Library of Congress site. Gosh, it’s almost as if they don’t want us to know what’s in the bill or something. I only bring that up because those who want to destroy the Constitution amendment by bloody amendment will use anyone and anything to do so. For instance, do younger generations know that Diane Feinstein was present the day Harvey Milk and Mayor Moscone were assassinated at San Francisco’s City Hall in 1978? The gun lobby should know this since the gun grabbers have been using Feinstein to milk, pardon the pun, that incident for anti-gun legislation ever since.
You’d think Feinstein would know better than to try to limit magazine capacities since Dan White, the man who shot and killed Moscone and Milk, reloaded his revolver inbetween the time he killed Moscone and Milk. You’d also think that since Feinstein was so rattled that day that she needed to be held up by the police chief in order to speak at the press conference announcing the horrific events, that she’d have been advocating for conceal-and-carry permits. Yes, there is evidence that armed, law-abiding citizens can stop crazed gunmen, like in the instance of the 2002 shooting at the Appalachia Law School in Virginia where students went to their cars, got their guns, and then subdued a crazed shooter. In such cases, casualties could be limited or altogether avoided.
And while the gun-grabbing thing may look like a digression from the D.C. story, it’s really not. The prosecution is still waiting to see what all the fallout from the D.C. “pit bull”/shooting incident will be before they’ll decide whether or not to prosecute the Good Samaritan on gun charges. Gee, they get you coming and going don’t they? If you don’t do something, you could be prosecuted under, ironically, a Good Samaritan law, made famous in the finale of Seinfeld where Jerry, George, Elaine, and Kramer all end up in jail because they refused to act — a violation of the ‘Duty to Rescue’ law — when a man was being carjacked, opting instead to film the incident and make fun of the man’s obesity. But then the Good Samaritan in the Washington D.C. “pit bull” incident did act and now he could face prosecution for discharging a handgun on a D.C. city street in defense of the boy. How do you win?!
Maybe that’s the point. Maybe you don’t win. Maybe you’re not supposed to win.
Related:
Dispelling “Pit Bull” Urban Mythology