Barbara Saldinger and her husband own some land out in the Santa Cruz Hills (I refuse to call them mountains) where they raise horses. The line between their property and their neighbors’ is marked by a bunch of evergreens, and there is no fence. Since there’s no fence, the exact line has been disputed since the Saldingers bought the land in 2004, and in 2006 this dispute got a little nasty.
The neighbor and a friend of hers were walking around in the trees and scaring the horses, according to Saldinger. Saldinger went over to the ladies with a BB gun and shooed them away from the property line. Saldinger got arrested, charged, and convicted for brandishing something that looked like a firearm.
Saldinger and her attorneys appealed this case all the way up, and now it’s headed for the California Supreme Court. The issue at hand is whether someone has the right to use a firearm, or something that looks like one, to defend what they think is their own property.
Even assuming the wooded area really is the Saldingers’, I would have to disagree with them. According to what the neighbors claimed, Ms. Saldinger’s BB gun looked like a gun, and made the women fear for their lives.
Ms. Saldinger used her BB gun in such a way that made the women feel their lives were threatened. When you use an object in a way that makes someone even think that their life is threatened, in order to incentivize them to act a certain way, then your use of that object is coercion that amounts to the same kind of coercion as pulling a loaded gun on someone. The ends and means in both are the same.
Threatening someone’s life, or making them feel that their life is threatened, is all fine and good when it is used against people who are posing a threat against the life of a non-aggressor. When the threat you’re trying to counter is only an infringement of property, then the use or threat of lethal force is disproportionate, and is thus an initiation of force. Killing someone merely for trespassing is a wrongful killing; threatening to kill a mere trespasser is aggressive in the same way; though maybe to a lesser degree.
Even if the disputed property belongs to the Saldingers, Ms. Saldinger still initiated force against her neighbor and her neighbor’s friend when she approached them with a BB gun in her hands. In other words, I don’t think the right to bear arms covers this.
If I were king (in a medieval Ireland or medieval Iceland way, of course), I would ask Ms. Saldinger to demonstrate that the tresspassing put her in such a position that she feared for her life, or her husband's life, or the lives of her horses, and that such a fear should be expected from any reasonable person put in such a position. If she does not convince me that she had such a fear and that it should have been expected, then I would have to rule that she was the aggressor.
I don’t want to see any comments from readers saying that I’m anti-gun. I firmly believe in the right to keep and carry lethal weapons. I don’t believe this right depends on your possession of a license (aka a certificate of a bribe). I believe you should be free to carry loaded weapons on your person, unconcealed, in public places. This right belongs especially to the most vulnerable in our society – which includes racial and ethnic minorities, women, sex workers, children, and convicted sex offenders. So don’t tell me that I’m anti-gun. I just believe that particular invasions merit only particular degrees of retaliation, and that retaliations that exceed the degree of invasion constitute their own invasion.
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About Me
- Isaiah
- I am a part-time philosopher and a former immigration paralegal with a BA in philosophy and a paralegal certificate from UC San Diego.
So, what do you think justifies a threat of force with a firearm? Most people who support gun rights (for anything except rifles used exclusively for sport hunting) do so because they are a deterrent to things like people breaking into one's home. But these are only a threat to one's property. And in fact, if one waited until an invader were threatening one's person, e.g. with a weapon of their own, then drawing a gun at that moment would make it *more* likely that the invader would try to injure, before the victim was able to do anything to retaliate.
ReplyDeleteOh, and just to clarify, I don't think merely walking onto someone's land, away from their home, and not threatening anything justifies the property owner drawing a gun. What I'm asking about is the suggestion that there needs to be an imminent threat of lethal force from another.
ReplyDeleteIn cases where the victim fears that the invasion may also involve an attempt on one's life, then confronting the trespasser with a firearm on one's person, and even unholstered, should be recognized as appropriate, since the victim is placed in the subjective situation of fearing for one's life. The Saldinger case is probably not one of those cases. I would like to read complaints, but I think the alleged invasion happened in broad daylight. The women alleged that Saldinger pointed the gun at them and yelled, threatening that if they ever come back she would shoot them. What it comes down to is whether women walking in the trees on the property line can make someone fear for their life. And I really don't know if Saldinger feared for her life.
ReplyDelete"This right belongs especially to the most vulnerable in our society - convicted sex offenders." So, the threat to a convicted sex offender is greater then them using a weapon to commit another crime? I don't see anyone hunting them down "Little Children" style. Why should someone who commits a violent act on another be allowed to own something that could be used to commit more violent acts on others?
ReplyDeleteSorry Andy, I hadn't read your second comment when I posted my response. I belive that an immanent lethal threat is necessary to justify a threat of lethal violence because I don't believe it can be legitimate to threaten something that would be illegitimate to commit.
ReplyDeleteYou're right, Octavia, we haven't heard of sex offenders getting hunted down just yet. But just the other night my closest acquaintance told me that he wouldn't mind killing a pedophile. And he said that without even drawing any distinction between people who violently raped children and people who just played with kids' private parts. He didn't even mention any distinction between pedophiles who were active and pedophiles who just look at teen porn. I think fear, misunderstanding, and hatred of certain sexual deviancies are so common that a witch hunt is very possible, especially since sex offenders' pictures, names, addresses, and maps of where they live are published online.
ReplyDeleteI also think there's a rights-based reason to allow all sex offenders, and not just non-violent pedophiles, to keep and carry guns after they finish parole. Once a criminal "pays their debt", they should be restored to complete rights-possession, which I believe should include the right to carry around loaded firearms. I think other people have the right to shun ex-cons, but the right to defend oneself cannot be permanently forfeited.
"we haven't heard of sex offenders getting hunted down just yet"
ReplyDeleteI once heard of an incident where an angry (and obviously deficient in brain cells) mob vandalized the house of someone after hearing that he was a pediatrician, because they confused "pediatrician" with "pedophile". I'm sure there have been many others, with true sex offenders. And that's some acquaintance, Isaiah--that probably made you cringe, even without being a sex offender.
And back to what we were originally discussing, doesn't your idea mean that every threat will end in a gun duel (if both have to be threatening each other's lives)? I am by no means in favor of (and in fact fearful of) unprovoked use of guns, I'm just applying logic.
I actually don't know whether my standard is more likely (than addressing any and every invasion with a loaded and pointed gun) to lead to a gunfight. You could tell I'm more of a deontologist than a consequentialist...
ReplyDeleteAnd yes, it did make me cringe. I introduced those distinctions myself, and went on to note that if I remember right the proportion of pedophiles is the same as that of gay men, and that's men who *prefer* children over adults, that the rate of men who can react to kids is much higher, and that out of the men in the room at the moment, at least one was likely to be a pedophile or at least able to be turned on by kids. Then he asked me if I'm trying to hide anything.
ReplyDeleteThanks for making me look up "deontologist". Before I just knew it as "the word that sounds like it has to do with teeth but obviously doesn't :-)"
ReplyDelete"Once a criminal "pays their debt", they should be restored to complete rights-possession, which I believe should include the right to carry around loaded firearms. I think other people have the right to shun ex-cons, but the right to defend oneself cannot be permanently forfeited."
ReplyDeleteDoes this apply to all ex-cons? Even people who have used weapons in burglary, rape, murder/manslaughter? I read a story about a man in Finland who was put in jail for murder and was let out about three years later. A couple of months after being on the outside he shot three people in a drive through over during a petty argument Maybe some people with violent personality disorders should not have guns. Neo nazis for one.
On another note I was reading an article about the "Grim Sleeper" who is a serial killer in the LA area. He had a criminal record but, none of his DNA was showing up on the registered data bases. The way the police found him was looking through other inmates DNA to see if there was any genetic link and found his son, who was in prison. Do you think this is legal? I've been reading mixed reviews on this, some saying it's an invasion of privacy and others saying it's an effective way to find criminals. It did take a mass murderer off the streets so that is a positive.
Oh wow, was he convicted of the murder? I'm surprised he got out in 3 years. I think an individual prohibition against keeping firearms can be written in as a condition of parole, which itself is still part of the "debt payment" process. I haven't yet gone into all the nitty-gritties about how well this accords with the title-transfer theory of contract...
ReplyDeletePart of the forfeit that criminals make when they aggress against others, out of simple necessity for "processing", is the surrender of certain information about themselves -- for instace, their name, date of birth, height, weight, hair color and eye color, and maybe (or especially) fingerprints. If keeping these kinds of records does not in and of itself prevent the ex-con from getting housing and a job (excluding shunning by individuals), then I don't see how gathering and keeping DNA records is a rights violation. Whether law enforcement in one jurisdiction should be allowed access to DNA records of a criminal in another jurisdiction is something I'm still mulling over in my head, but right now I'm leaning towards a yes. I'm more sickened by someone else being able to patent your DNA.
Now whether something is legal or illegal according to the government, that's a whole other issue, but I have a feeling that the courts wouldn't see much of a problem with it either.
"I'm more sickened by someone else being able to patent your DNA." Yes, the words "completely, fucking, outrageous" comes to mind.
ReplyDelete