Anti-gun article in "Super Lawyers"

<Sigh... Don't suppose it'll accomplish anything, but I felt compelled to respond:>

Dear Editor:

The most recent edition of your magazine, Super Lawyers, includes an article by Mr. Jim Walsh entitled "The Peaceful Warrior - Windle Turley Fights for Gun Control." (http://www.superlawyers.com/texas/a...ior/0ca1bf2c-f7a7-40d7-91ff-112b2fc931a7.html)

I take issue with Mr. Walsh's casual statement, in the third paragraph of his article, that "Florida's so-called 'Stand Your Ground' law, which in essence gave Martin's killer, George Zimmerman, the right to shoot first and ask questions later, is being put to the test."

If this article had appeared in, say, Newsweek, I wouldn't have wasted my breath shouting into the hurricane. However, a publication such as Super Lawyers, whose audience is primarily attorneys, really ought to have some minimal standards regarding the representation of current laws as well as some basic regard for the intelligence of its readers.

The statute Mr. Walsh refers to is Florida Statute 776.013(3):

A person who is not engaged in an unlawful activity and who is attacked in any other place where he or she has a right to be has no duty to retreat and has the right to stand his or her ground and meet force with force, including deadly force if he or she reasonably believes it is necessary to do so to prevent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony.

As Mr. Walsh has snidely characterized the above statute as an open license for murder, I would very much like to see him cover this topic in greater depth. If he is correct, Floridians are now uniquely sanctioned to arbitrarily shoot each other down - presumably, this presages an imminent national emergency and would justify a full-length article in a future issue...?

I imagine Mr. Walsh would be eager to discuss at length the well-established common-law 3-prong reasonability standard for justified use of lethal force (i.e., ability, opportunity, and jeopardy) which places a far higher burden on a citizen who kills in self-defense than that of "shoot first and ask questions later." I would also very much like to hear Mr. Walsh draw a distinction between "Stand Your Ground" jurisdictions versus "Duty to Retreat" jurisdictions vis a vis individuals' propensity to use deadly force in self-defense situations. To my knowledge, there is no statistical basis to support the author's implication that "Stand Your Ground" jurisdictions - which are rapidly becoming the majority in this country - produce more bloodthirsty citizens than those in "Duty to Retreat" jurisdictions.

Furthermore, as far as I am aware, even "Duty to Retreat" jurisdictions impose the duty to retreat only in situations where the threatened individual can be certain of retreating with complete safety to his person. In other words, it is not so very different (regarding justifiability of shootings) from "Stand Your Ground" jurisdictions. If Mr. Walsh can offer a single instance in which "Stand Your Ground" legislation protected a shooter who would otherwise have been held liable under a "Duty to Retreat" regime, I'm eager to hear it.

"Stand Your Ground" legislation is not the product of some shadowy, NRA-backed conspiracy to legitimize otherwise unjust uses of lethal force; these laws are in place to protect innocent citizens from predatory civil suits. Pro-gun civil rights activists have fought long and hard to establish these protections so that individuals forced to defend themselves with deadly force can rely upon a determination of criminal justifiability to shield themselves from subsequent frivolous civil lawsuits.

I see from Mr. Turley's website that he seeks out clients for civil cases in which individuals have suffered personal injuries due to "[firearm] design or manufacturing flaws." I'm interested to know if he has pursued lawsuits against firearm manufacturers for the non-proximate use of their products by criminals. Does Mr. Turley consider the use of a gun in a violent crime to constitute an ipso facto flaw inherent to the design and/or manufacture of the firearm involved? If so, I would have far greater respect for his position if he would be more forthcoming with it. (Mr. Turley's oblique reference to the usefulness of "strict product liability laws" in pursuing firearm lawsuits suggests that faulty manufacturing is not the true object of his ire - but perhaps I am mistaken...?)

But most shocking of all is Mr. Turley's statement that he "came upon a theory that said... you balance the utility of a product against the dangerousness of the design... So I said, 'what's the utility of a small handgun and how dangerous is it?'"

I respect individuals who argue that the Second Amendment should be repealed. They are, or course, misguided. But at least they recognize that the Second Amendment says what it says, and if it is to be nullified, it must be formally repealed. But Mr. Turley is apparently unwilling to commit to such an unpopular position. He instead advocates some sort of "cost-benefit analysis" approach to the Second Amendment. I would like to know if Mr. Turley would apply a similar calculus to the First Amendment? After all, surely a crude, amateur videotape insulting the prophet Mohammed is not worth any loss of life - shouldn't free speech be consequently restricted in this instance due to the obviously limited utility of such speech versus its great potential risk to life?

In a final bit of irony, Mr. Turley blithely references the struggles of Dr. Martin Luther King (himself a gun owner) as well as Mohandas Gandhi (who once stated that "among the many misdeeds of the British rule in India, history will look upon the the act of depriving a whole nation of its arms as the blackest").

I welcome an educated discussion of gun-control issues in Super Lawyers - but "The Peaceful Warrior" is not it.

Kind regards,

DP

Hey all:

Yeah, I'm a lawyer - and I don't do much criminal defense. Most of my work is appointments handling Child Protective Services cases.

Which is a potential subject for another rant. When I go to a ramshackle trailer to do a home visit and questionable relatives are milling about, I at least have the reassurance of being armed.

However, many of my colleagues don't have the same luxury. Caseworkers (unlike myself, employees of the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services) are, for a variety of reasons, far more likely than I am to encounter violent responses. And although I haven't researched DFPS regulations regarding employee regulations, I've had multiple caseworkers tell me that the Dept directly prohibits them from on-the-clock concealed carry.

As a cynic, I can't help but believe that this is just another manifestation of the "delivery guy" employment philosophy:

You're CEO of Pizza Shack. You know your employees are every bit as likely to be shot down in the line of duty as a police officer or cab driver. However, if your employee is pushed to the gravest extreme and pulls a firearm, you know his use of deadly force will be submitted to a legal factfinder who will determine that your employee's actions were either justified or unjustified. If his response was justified, you have, at best, an employee who doesn't need to be replaced. If unjustified, you have a legal $*@!storm of monumental proportions on your hands.

However, if you do everything you can as an employer to disarm your delivery guy, you minimize all of those financial risks to your enterprise. If he is murdered over the thirty dollars in his pocket, well, it won't cost any more than that for Pizza Shack to send a condolence letter to his wife. And if he secretly arms himself, well, you can just wave a copy of the company policy in the jury's face as your attorney throws him under the bus.