Relevant to gun trusts and National Firearms Act (NFA} weapons, such as short barreled rifles, short barreled shotguns, silencers and machine guns), the hot issue today is a proposed change to ATF’s transfer rules.
Right now, a properly formed gun trust will allow a person to apply for ownership of an NFA weapon without first obtaining the signature of the chief law enforcement officer in that person’s jurisdiction. ATF has proposed to change that rule.
The new rule may go into effect as early as June. This will present a problem for people who want to legally possess an NFA weapon, but who don’t have easy access to their chief law enforcement officer—the police chief in a city or sheriff in a county.
As to stand your ground laws, I think the reporting on this issue has been somewhat misleading to the extent it suggests stand your ground can justify otherwise unreasonable violence. Regardless of stand your ground, the general rule of self-defense is you may use lethal force to defend yourself ONLY if you are in immediate and reasonable fear of grave bodily injury or death.
Stand your ground does not reduce this threshold requirement at all. Stand your ground just allows that if, and only if, you are in immediate and reasonable fear of grave bodily injury or death, then you may use lethal force to defend yourself without any obligation to retreat first. Stand your ground is not meant to justify or encourage violence in self-defense. It is meant to protect innocent victims.
I think of it in terms of the fight or flight response.
Imagine you are taking your trash out at night, and some mugger jumps out and takes a swing at you with a knife. Adrenaline will flood you system and your natural fight or flight response will kick in. I don’t know what you’ll do, fight or flee.
If you happen to fight, then your use of force is justified because you are in immediate and reasonable fear of grave bodily injury or death.
In a stand your ground state, such as Arizona, what you did is legal. But, in states that don’t have stand your ground, the law imposes a duty to retreat. In those states, even though you were being mugged at night with a knife, fighting back is not legal if you could run away instead.
I think we all ought to run away if we can. But I also think we ought to recognize that maybe when someone is trying to kill us, we may respond somewhat instinctually. I think stand your ground is meant to recognize that. It doesn’t allow you to go around “standing your ground” by killing people who throw popcorn at you or play music too loud.
But it does allow that, if someone actually tries to hurt you and you respond in kind, we won’t use hindsight to imagine how you could have retreated instead and then send you to prison.
Really, no matter where they live, the rule gun owners ought to live by is this: Don’t ever pull your gun unless you are willing to go to prison. I am not saying everyone who uses a gun will go to jail. But using a gun needs to be about staying alive at all costs. If you use your gun for something less than that, there is an excellent chance you are committing a crime regardless of stand your ground.
