Gun control for thee but not for me

A U.S. marshal protecting Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor ’s home shot an armed man attempting to carjack him on Friday. This instance is just one example of how guns used in self-defense can be vital for one’s safety, especially in Washington, D.C. Coincidentally, Justice Sotomayor has a history of opposing the right to bear arms for self-defense.

The would-be carjacker approached the marshal’s vehicle with a handgun. While he pointed his weapon toward the driver’s window, the marshal inside drew his firearm and shot the assailant. A second U.S. marshal also opened fire on the carjacker. The attacker was subsequently taken to the hospital with non-life-threatening wounds.

Washington has been suffering under a crime wave that has persisted since the pandemic. The city had the fifth-highest homicide rate in 2023 and is on pace to have a higher death toll in 2024. The arrest rate has been consistently low since before the pandemic, the police force is at a half-century low, and the legal system remains slow to prosecute.

This dangerous security situation means that personal defense is all the more important now in Washington DC. This self-defense can require gun ownership, as demonstrated in the confrontation outside Justice Sotomayor’s home.

But Justice Sotomayor does not look so favorably on the independent ownership of firearms for the sake of self-defense. She and Justice Ginsburg joined Justice Breyer’s dissent in McDonald v. Chicago . This dissent included the line, “the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of ‘substantive due process’ does not include a general right to keep and bear arms for purposes of private self-defense.”

Fortunately, McDonald was decided correctly. Following District of Columbia v. Heller , which protected the right to keep and bear arms for self-defense, McDonald extended this right’s federal protection to the state level.

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Normal people do not get security details like Justice Sotomayor. Unlike celebrities, political figures, and big stores, the people most vulnerable to violent crime must rely on themselves. Legal gun ownership and carry is a great equalizer between violent armed criminals and those they terrorize.

Thirty-two percent of American adults own at least one firearm. Personal protection is the top reason they give for their possession of a firearm. At a time when crime is still high and in a city that especially struggles with violence, the security of a firearm could prove to be life or death. For non-famous Americans, the inherent right to self-defense necessarily includes the right to keep and bear arms.