Stu Bykofsky: Your home, your castle ... so why hesitate shooting an intruder? Good question.
"GUN NUTS" and "gun-hating zealots" will be taking aim at each other before the Pennsylvania House Judiciary Committee today in Harrisburg (check your weapons at the door, please.)
"GUN NUTS" and "gun-hating zealots" will be taking aim at each other before the Pennsylvania House Judiciary Committee today in Harrisburg (check your weapons at the door, please.)
It's a public hearing for House Bill 40, which will "eliminate the duty to retreat" if you are confronted by an attacker, according to Dave McGlaughlin, deputy counsel to the committee, and a former Philadelphia defense attorney.
As another chapter in our society's clash of cultures, HB40 will drive most Philadelphians batty and be catnip to Pennsylvanians up north and out west.
The bill expands what's called the Castle Doctrine - the idea that a man's home is his castle and can be defended by any means necessary, up to and including lethal force. (In the 21st century, add "woman" to that description. The Castle Doctrine also applies to businesses.)
HB40 says that a citizen confronted by an attacker and fearing serious bodily harm, death, kidnapping or rape can draw and blast away without fear of prosecution. This is known as the Stand Your Ground Doctrine. Current law requires the victim to first attempt to safely retreat before shooting.
Realistically, it's rare for a district attorney to prosecute an honest citizen even without HB40.
This presents two questions:
1. Why is the law needed, if the above is true?
2. If the above is true, why not make it law?
Here's why not, according to anti-gun advocate Bryan Miller, co-founder of Heeding God's Call, and scheduled to testify today.
It's an unwelcome expansion of the Castle Doctrine, he says, "to everywhere - to churches, schools, malls, everywhere, so that someone can claim they were threatened and use lethal force against the person who they claim [threatened them.]
"Our name for it is Judge, Jury and Executioner," he says. Other critics have called it "Shoot now, ask questions later."
The right of self-protection already exists, Miller says, but he sees it as limited.
"Walking on a street or going through a shopping mall," he says, "we are protected by law and by law-enforcement officers," and that's preferable to giving lethal force to individuals.
The other side is expressed by Rep. Daryl Metcalfe, a co-sponsor of the bill who hails from Butler County, about 20 miles north of Pittsburgh.
He sees HB40 as merely reinstating "the common-sense right of a citizen" to defend himself against a threat to his life, kidnapping or rape without fear of being prosecuted or sued.
Metcalfe points to lawsuits that, outrageously, have been filed by perpetrators against "law-abiding citizens trying to defend themselves."
Miller is correct in saying that we have police to protect us, but the crime rate tells us that police aren't omnipresent.
HB40 "restores rights that have been eroded away by the current judicial system that's been giving preferential treatment to criminals," says John Hohenwarter, the National Rifle Association's director of government affairs for Pennsylvania.
In this state, the strongest opposition to guns comes from Philadelphia. Anything to limit or reduce guns in anyone's hands gets immediate applause.
HB40 aims to give the honest citizen added legal protection, and while I can see that a few villains might try to use the law for lethal, "legal" revenge, I can also see that district attorneys are not dense as cheesecake.
"This is not an open-door, green-light to shoot," says the NRA's Hohenwarter. "It still must be a justified self-defense case."
If HB40 passes, critics fear wild gunfire on the streets.
Don't we have that in Philly now?
We need criminal control more than gun control.
E-mail stubyko@phillynews.com or call 215-854-5977. For recent columns: