Briefly, let me bring up the shootings that took place over this past weekend. A young man decided to take out his anger with Christians by shooting as many of them as he could. His first target was a missionary training center near Denver that he had been kicked out of “years before”. He killed two staff members there. 12 hours later, he targeted a “mega-church” in Colorado Springs. Perhaps different from most churches, New Life Church has a security guards. This is misleading though, as they are not actual “security guards” in the sense that they are licensed as such and employed in that fashion. They are simply serving in that capacity as a volunteer. As per Denver Channel 7:
New Life Church’s Senior Pastor Brady “Boyd said there are 15 to 20 security people at the church. All are volunteers but the only ones armed are those who are licensed to carry weapons. The security guards are members of the church who are screened and not "mercenaries that we hire to walk around our campus to provide security.” In other words, they are just like you and me. Those who carry don’t do so with a badge, but with a simple concealed carry permit. Instead of shunning them, the church welcomed them as someone to help guard the flock.
When this young man attacked the New Life Church, he fatally shot two girls in the parking lot and wounded their father. Upon entering the church, church patron and armed security volunteer Jeanne Assam[1] confronted him and stopped him. It appears that he used one of his own pistols to inflict the mortal wound, but the amount of ammunition on him (reported in the Denver Channel 7, over 1,000 rounds) would indicate that he didn’t intend to take his life so soon after entering the church.
In short, this church didn’t restrict its members from possessing and carrying firearms and thus there was at least one person present who was prepared to stop someone intent on harming those attending there.
Now I promised you this wouldn’t be a post about gun rights, but bear with me for one more minute as we contrast the Colorado Springs shooting with what happened earlier in the week.
On Wednesday, December 5th, another angry young man[2] decided to take out frustrations on innocent lives, intent on “going out in style.” In this case, no one intervened. He shot and killed 8 people before choosing to take his own life. Why wasn’t he stopped by someone? Well, no one can say for sure, but it should be noted that the mall he chose as the location of his attack had chosen to post signs in accordance with Nebraska state law to prohibit people legally carrying guns for personal defense from being able to do so in the mall. Put simply, the mall management made sure that all law abiding patrons were left defenseless. I phrase it that way as a laws only change the behavior of the law abiding and don’t affect the behavior of criminals[3].
As a patron of a mall or any other business that prohibits private, lawful concealed carry, you are now left wondering: if the mall isn’t safe (evidenced by Omaha), and I can’t defend myself (like Colorado Springs), shouldn’t the mall now have to protect me? Or to put it a bit more eloquently, can the mall be held liable “for harm caused by criminal conduct, when such conduct is wholly or partially enabled by limiting an individual's right or ability to self defense[4]?”
There are two conflicting schools of thought on this. The first is an answer of “no” and is expressed well by D.J. Tice, a columnist at the Minneapolis Star-Tribune made this comment, found at Captain’s Quarters:
“Doesn’t a property owner have a right to ban guns from his property, even if it is unwise to do so? And aren’t those who believe such a ban puts them at risk free not to enter his property? Aren’t customers assuming any risk, and waiving any right to recompense, when they knowingly and voluntarily enter a gun-free zone?The counter argument to the smoking comparison is an examination of lethality of short term exposures to the two items. It is generally agreed that a single exposure to a fired bullet is significantly if not exponentially more harmful than a single exposure to second hand smoke, thus one can establish liability for specific harm much more clearly and with much more ease in cases of shootings than smoking. And for those who don’t believe that a private property owner can be held liable for harm resulting from hazards that their property may contain, take a closer look at your homeowner’s insurance policy, let alone if you have an umbrella policy. It wouldn’t be in there if the insurance companies could reasonably not cover it.
“The situation seems roughly comparable to the debate over bar and restaurant smoking bans. Conservatives as a rule argue that smoking bans are improper because a property owner should be able to decide whether to allow smoking or not. People who fear secondhand smoke need not work there or take their leisure there — or so the conservative line usually goes.”
To move past the smoking comparison, the counter-argument simply notes that because the private property owner is keeping you from being able to defend yourself, they should then provide for your defense to protect you from any criminal acts you are now unable to defend yourself from. Thus, if they fail to do that and you are harmed by such a criminal act, you should be able to sue them to recover damages for that harm.
So where do I fall? I’m not sure. I choose to carry a firearm daily so that should the situation arise (and I thank God in Heaven every night that it hasn’t), I will have the means to defend my and my family’s lives. If I am legally prohibited from carrying my firearm, I tend to avoid shopping at those places. I don’t want to be without the means of defense and I don’t want to financially support those stores that don’t support my rights. With that in mind, I agree with the initial argument of supporting private property owners. However, I do see them as creating a hazardous area and endangering their patrons and consequently I find myself also agreeing with certain premises of the counter-arguement.
While I don’t know for certain where I fall, I do know where some of the legislators in Arizona fall where the Gun-Free-Zone Liability Act of 2008 has been proposed. The act states: “Any person, organization or entity, or any agency of government that creates a gun-free zone shall be liable for damages resulting from criminal conduct that occurs against an individual in such gun-free zone, if a reasonable person would believe that possession of a firearm could have helped the individual defend against such conduct.“ If passed, it may give pause to those who choose to restrict licensed concealed carry due to the liability it is opening up for them. Lawsuits on these property owners could easily reach into the multi-million dollar range.
It is interesting to note that the text of the bill would seem to cover schools as well as malls and businesses.
So the question is, where do you fall and more importantly, why?
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[1] Jeanne Assam, while at the church, was only acting as a private citizen. While it is true that she does have a law enforcement background, she did so for only four years between 1993 and 1997, over ten years ago in Minnesota. She is not a police officer in Colorado. The reason I am careful in how I term her position is that we are talking about laws that would restrict concealed carry by regular people, not off duty law enforcement. She was a regular person and thus laws restricting the regular person not employed as a police officer would have applied to her, and from what we can tell, every other member of the security team that church had put together, disarming all of them. Yes, her training and experience no doubt played a part in the successful confrontation, but to constantly refer to her as an armed security guard licensed to carry a gun leads one to believe that she is licensed in Colorado by the state to be an armed security guard, which if that was the case, I am sure it would have been made explicitly clear. So, by what we can gather, she was simply an armed churchgoer acting as security and consequently was subject to concealed carry laws.
[1] Part of this young man’s goal in committing this egregious crime was to become “famous.” I am not willing to help him in achieving that so I am not using his name. We know the incident. There is no need to spread his name so that everyone can remember it. I am not going to participate in this and would prefer commenters not use his name in their comments. “The Nebraska shooter” is more than sufficient to identify him.
[2] Jay over at Wizbang puts it very well: “Laws stop people who respect the law. They don't stop people who are bound and determined to break them. A fleeing bank robber will not stop for a red light, an arsonist will transport gasoline in an unsafe, illegal fashion, and someone determined to kill a bunch of people before ending his own life won't see a "GUN FREE ZONE" sign and decide he ought to go somewhere else. In fact, in each case the criminal won't even think twice about the lesser crime, because it simply makes getting away with the bigger one easier.”
[3] Quoted from heading of The Gun-Free-Zone Liability Act of 2008 from the State of Arizona.
