"I just didn't hesitate." Cody Buckler explained while recalling an armed invasion of his home. He awoke to the sound of strange voices in the living room. Peering down the hall, he saw two masked men toting handguns. His girlfriend's young daughter confronted one of the men, who claimed to be a police officer. Buckler quickly returned to the bedroom for his 12-gauge shotgun. Police say he proceeded to the living room, spotted one of the suspects holding his television, and promptly shot him. That suspect fled, but his accomplice charged up the stairs. Buckler shot him, too, causing him to retreat to the basement and exit via a window. The suspects were found seeking treatment for gunshot wounds at the hospital. (The Gazette, Colorado Springs, CO, 01/22/08)

When a 51-year-old woman informed a man she didn't want to be his girlfriend, he committed a series of disturbing acts. Several police reports chronicle the incidents, which include break-ins, vandalism and even assaults at the woman's workplace. One day she found her home broken into, a clock-radio destroyed and undergarments missing. Two days later, she heard breaking glass and called 9-1-1. The entire chilling incident was recorded on 9-1-1 audio. "I'm so scared," she told the operator, who advised her to lock herself in a bedroom. She hid in the closet with a 9 mm pistol loaned to her by a friend. Police say the alleged stalker began kicking in the bedroom door. "What are you doing?" the woman screamed. "Stop it! Please stop it! Just stop it!" The man burst into the bedroom and began choking her. Gunshots rang out. The woman escaped while her assailant lay mortally wounded. (The Times, Munster, IN,01/10/08)

Alerted by the sound of screaming children, Paulo Jean stepped outside his home. "Trouble is out!" the children yelled. Jean was familiar with Trouble, an aptly named pit bull, and rushed to the scene. The dog immediately attacked, viciously biting Jean's arms and buttocks. Jean drew a pocket holstered .380-caliber handgun and fired three shots, killing the dog. (The Miami Herald, Miami, FL, 01/11/08)

Police were pursuing a suspect in an armed robbery. Meanwhile, George Richard heard a commotion outside and quickly armed himself with a firearm to investigate. Just outside the door, police say Richard found the robbery suspect hunched up and hiding. "Man, you need to get up and get out of here," Richard told him. "Somebody's trying to kill me," the suspect said. "Well, you still need to leave," Richard. replied. The suspect then tried to enter the home. "Man, don't come in. I'm gonna have to shoot you," Richard advised. With the gun in his right hand, Richard pushed the suspect with his left arm to prevent his entry. But the suspect forced a foot inside the door, and Richard was forced to shoot him. The homeowner phoned police, who found the wounded suspect nearby. (The Daily Advertiser, Lafayette, LA, 01/10/08)

Charlie Merrell was standing in a grocery checkout lane when a masked man leapt over a neighboring counter, pulled a gun on a store employee and demanded cash. Luckily for the store employee, Merrell, a right-to-carry permit holder, was not about to stand idly by. Police say Merrell drew his handgun and ordered the suspect to disarm. The suspect put down his gun, removed his mask and sprawled out on the floor. Merrell held the man at gunpoint for police. The suspect's gun was discovered to be unloaded. (WRTV6 News, Indianapolis, IN, 01/03/08)

Eighty-year-old Martha Smith says there was no time for fear when her border collie confronted a mountain lion near her home. "I could see the tail twitching, and he was snarling and spitting," she recalls. Smith shot at the cat with her .22-caliber rifle, but missed, and ran inside to dial 9-1-1. Informed help was a long way off, Smith decided she'd have to deal with the agitated cat herself. "I shot him in the light spot under his leg where I knew his heart would be," she explained. "You do what you have to do, you don't have time to be afraid." Smith has been versed in rifle craft since adolescence, when she herded sheep on the family ranch. "My sister and I were put on horseback with the lunch, the water canteen and a gun," she recalls. (Argus Leader, Sioux Falls, SD 01/09/08)

Self-Defense is a Basic Human Right

As the Supreme Court deliberates whether or not the District of Columbia's 30-year-old gun ban is unconstitutional under the Second Amendment, a deep background look is critical to understanding what is at stake in terms of our personal liberties and the rights that ensure them.

This case-District of Columbia v. Heller-is about whether the Second Amendment is an individual right. And it is about whether such an individual right can be abrogated by government to render it meaningless in word and in practice for individual Americans.

If peaceable citizens are disarmed of firearms, do they still possess a right?

For Americans who believe in the Second Amendment-especially for District of Columbia residents-the day of reckoning before the United States Supreme Court has been 30 years in the making.

The story of the plight of disarmed D.C. residents really begins on the night of March 16, 1975, when three women, sharing a townhouse, were awakened by the sound of their door being kicked in. This was no ordinary burglary or home invasion; this was a horrific, unspeakable crime.

Two of the three roommates had rooms upstairs. They were awakened by the screaming of their friend downstairs who was being beaten, raped and sodomized by two men.

Carolyn Warren called the police and was told help was on the way. She and her other upstairs roommate watched in horror as a police car passed their home, merely slowing down. They called the police a second time. This time, there was no response at all. After an hour, hearing no sounds from the floor below, they called down to their friend, but merely alerted the rapists to their presence.

After that, all three women were forced to endure 14 unspeakable hours of sexual torture.

The women sued the District of Columbia and after two years-during which time D.C. instituted its gun ban-they lost. The case is Warren v. District of Columbia.

The D.C. Superior Court ruled, " ... a government and its agents are under no general duty to provide public services, such as police protection, to any particular individual citizen." (Emphasis added.)

Thus the rule that the District had no duty to protect its individual citizens was in place when, in July 1976, the D.C. City Council' enacted its draconian gun ban.

If the lower court ruling in Ms. Warren's case was devastating to her and every law abiding resident of the District of Columbia, the ruling of the D.C. Court of Appeals, 444 A.2d l(D.C App. 1981), was worse:

"The duty to provide public services is owed to the public at large, and, absent a special relationship between the police and an individual, no specific legal duty exists." (Emphasis added.)

It begs the basic question: If the police have no duty to protect individuals in their homes, who does?

The individual does. You and I do. Average citizens.

That is why the Second Amendment has such deep relevance in modern times. There is nothing archaic and outmoded in the notion that people must have the means to defend themselves against violent criminal predators. Self-defense is a basic human right. It is the fundamental reason that countless tens of millions of Americans own firearms.

The protection of that bedrock human right-eviscerated by a tyrannical government-lies at the heart of the historic challenge to D.C.s gun ban supported by a host of civil liberties groups including the NRA, the oldest such organization in the nation.

Yet in the District of Columbia that right-for 30 years-has been denied to its law-abiding residents.

It is clear that the D.C. gun ban law denies that most fundamental basic human right of self-defense by criminalizing possession of handguns by peaceable citizens, and criminalizing armed defense in the home with any legally possessed, operable and ready firearm. Think about this. A disassembled or disabled gun is no gun at all, and that is what D.C. residents are "allowed" to possess in their own homes. (Emphasis added.)

The D.C. gun ban is, in essence and in fact, a ban on armed self-defense.

Under the D.C. law, registered long guns (and the few remaining legal handguns) must be broken down, unassembled, trigger-locked or otherwise kept inoperable at all times in the home. It is a crime to keep any firearm loaded.

As for handguns, the D.C. ban, in reality, banned compliance with the long-existing gun registration law. Under that ban, owners of registered handguns were allowed to re-register their arms by an absolute deadline-September 24, 1976. Thereafter, no handguns could be registered by honest citizens. Thus, by shutting the door on registration, new legal possession of handguns was banned.

During the short time when D.C.s law-abiding handgun owners could reregister their arms, many citizens believed the law was open for them to register their handguns for the first time. They· were turned away and told they would not be allowed to comply and that their guns would become contraband. If they kept those unregistrable guns, they could be tracked down and prosecuted.

But there is something else that made the D.C. ban even more evil: The D.C. gun registration law itself-under a 1968 U.S. Supreme Court ruling-Haynes v. U.S. (390 U.s. 85, 1968)-arguably exempted criminals. So, those under federal law prohibited from owning guns were exempt, while ordinary citizens could be punished for owning an unregistered gun. Under that decision-which many top legal experts tell me still applies in the District of Columbia-the court ruled:

"We hold that a proper claim of the constitutional privilege against self incrimination provides a full defense to prosecutions either for failure to register a firearm ... or for possession of an unregistered firearm ..."(Emphasis added.)

On top of all this, in 1994, the City Council made it a criminal act for anyone to carry a handgun in the home without a license. The D.C. registration law and the ban made potential criminals out of peaceable citizens, whose only relationship to criminal violence was being thrust into the role of unarmed innocent victims in their own homes.

Equally insane is the fact that, in the ensuing 30 years of ever-metastasizing criminal violence, D.C. officials have totally ignored the truly effective anti criminal tools at hand.

As violent crime by armed criminals has steadily escalated over the 30 years since the D.C. ban, District officials and the media have blamed what they have called the "lax" laws in neighboring states. Let me put that another way: They blame freedom of others for the failure of their tyranny. (Emphasis added.)

As for D.C.s armed criminal predators, as any NRA member knows, federal firearm law-then and now-provides harsh penalties for possession, acquisition, use, and interstate transportation of any firearm by violent felons and fugitives. However, the District has utterly failed to use that law to arrest, prosecute and jail armed predators. As a result, illegally armed criminals have continued to prey on the disarmed, innocent citizenry of our nation's capital.

But such prudent action by city officials would have destroyed their anti Second Amendment agenda.

We-the large community of pro-gun rights activists-have been preparing for the moment that is at hand. Whatever its outcome, American gun owners need to keep in mind that when we elect the next president, we will be shaping a Supreme Court that could reach 50 years into the future, and in that future hangs all the freedoms we hold dear.