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I didn't start carrying a gun right away after moving to Ohio for my surgery internship. It was only after living a few months on the border of urban danger that I discovered how treacherous my new neighborhood was. I was appalled by the violence whose wreckage I treated in the emergency room.
Tending to the wounds of crime victims taught me as much about human depravity as the mechanics of wound healing. And although many of the victims were also perpetrators, too many of the shot, slashed, and raped I saw were just innocents. I remember still the young girl whose angelic face I sutured back together, never again to be as pretty as before her "boyfriend" cut her.
The threat came close to home. My apartment building neighbors were burglarized. My casual resolve to avoid arming myself, made years before in safe detachment, was now put to the test. I refused to be a victim.
A friend referred me to an attorney. He was as new to lawyering as I was to doctoring. No problem, he smiled. If you have to use your gun in righteous self-defense Ohio law has this thing called an affirmative defense. You'll be okay. Lots of docs carry in your part of town.
Only years later did I learn the reality. If the police had discovered the .38 caliber revolver I carried, a recently overturned law stipulated that I would have to be arrested. Jail would have followed, and probably a felony charge—not exactly career enhancing moves for a young surgeon. Only when I came before a judge would I have been allowed to assert my "affirmative defense."
Although the state constitution's bill of enumerated rights leaves no doubt that "the people have the right to bear arms for their defense and security," the statutory law exacted a heavy toll from Ohioans who asserted that right.
In affirming a lower court's voiding of the law, the First District Court of Appeals explained the dilemma facing law-abiding Ohioans: "The practical effect of this statute is that any person carrying a concealed weapon is subject to arrest, incarceration, and indictment before being able to establish the legality of his or her actions. Thus, a legal action subjects an innocent person to prosecution for a felony. It is only later, at the peril of a trial, that innocence may be established. Guns or no guns, we know of no other situation where a citizen is guilty until proven innocent."
It is a sad irony that an honorable citizen of Ohio who defends herself against a violent criminal must then defend herself against a cruel justice system. That flawed system tantalizes by promising the right of self-defense, only to trap those who claim it. For now, the law has been struck down. A bill is already passed by the House and ready for a Senate vote to establish the right to carry in Ohio, as many other states have done. But until it passes Ohioans are in a perilous limbo, uncertain of their rights and with no law to protect them.
I often think of those crime victims who were among my first surgical patients—crippled in body or spirit. The police did not, could not, protect them. This is a trivially elemental truth, but it's one many people cannot accept. That is, they cannot accept its corollary, which is that we are responsible for our own defense.
America has come to a better understanding of human nature since I lived on the bad side of an Ohio town many years ago. More than twenty states have passed laws allowing qualified citizens to carry self-defense firearms. The experiment has been a success. Violent crime has dropped, and firearm carry license holders have proved themselves even more law-abiding than the general population.
But what hasn't changed is the character flaw that drives some humans to prey on the innocent. As long as we struggle with that sorrowful heritage, people simply must be allowed to protect life and limb, to preserve their dignity, from violent criminals. They must be allowed to carry a self-defense firearm, if they wish.
Ohio is now one of only six states that still denies its citizens the simple and decent right to defend themselves against criminal outrage. Let us hope that its legislature will soon make Ohio's constitutional right of self-defense the law of the land.
