Firearms

UPDATE: As of February 2007, castle doctrine lives in California. From the California Department of Justice:

No license or permit shall be required to possess keep, or carry a handgun openly or concealed in one’s home or place of business, including temporary residences and campsites.

You now can defend yourself using a firearm in your own home, at work or while encamped; there will be NO charges brought for using a weapon, as long as it’s registered. However, you better have a good lawyer because the perp’s family will likely sue you.

For historical purposes, the original article appears below.

“A man’s home is his castle,” is a metaphor often used to describe the way people feel about their domiciles. Whether you are the owner or are renting, you should be able to feel safe, comfortable and secure in your own space. You should also expect to assume the responsibilities to keep it that way. For example, you should be prepared to deal with any number of breaches to comfort and security — if the roof leaks or something breaks, you should be prepared for that — or — if there is an intrusion into your space by forced entry, you should be prepared to defend your property as well as your life.

In California, we can have hammers, drills, saws and wrenches to maintain our comfort by fixing most problems around the house. All you have to do is go the the home improvement center and purchase what you need. In California, it’s a completely different story when it comes to protecting your home with a pistol or shotgun. Our anti-gun legislature and left-leaning elected officials will not allow the honest law-abiding homeowner to go to the firearms dealer and get a weapon to maintain the security of the castle unless he or she endures a myriad of abusive procedures, delays, rules and restrictions. Moreover, even if we go through all the painful process to get a firearm, we aren’t protected from frivolous litigation if we use it to protect our home – which is NOT a castle in California.

Sadly, the left-coast demographic here will probably not vote the anti-gun politicians out of office. Because of that, the likelihood of a “Castle Doctrine” in California is virtually nil.

Fortunately, for many other states, Castle Doctrine progress is being made.

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Each year the anti-second-amendment folks at the Brady Campaign issue “grades” to each state in the union. This year, thirty-two states received a “D” or an “F” grade measuring their state’s gun laws. The Brady Campaign assigns this grade based on a state’s “Anti-Gun Violence Laws.”

Actually, that is a misnomer; they really should be called “anti-legitimate gun ownership laws.”

California gets an A- grade while nearby Arizona, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, New Mexico and Idaho all receive “failing” grades. The truth is that these other states know what California’s legislators seem not to know; anti-gun laws do not decrease a state’s crime rate. I suggest inverting the grades to get the real value from the Brady Campaign’s assessment; states like California and Massachusetts which get an A are really getting an F when it comes to protecting their citizens from crime.

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