I covered this earlier when it was argued before the Delaware Supreme Court. Of course, the legal system in Delaware was arguing before the court that they couldn’t carry firearms. This exchange followed in deliberations, and then I asked a pointed question.
Valihura also pressed Durstein about an individual’s right to carry a gun for self-defense, which he argued is less acute in a park tent or cabin than in a person’s home. Durstein said the trade-off for banning guns is a commitment by the state to provide law enforcement in state parks.
“Your own regs state that camping is at your own risk, state forests are a public use area and there are no after-hours, nighttime or weekend security,” Valihura noted.
With no evidentiary record to draw on, Justice James Vaughn also wondered about the protection being afforded park visitors.
“We have no idea how much police security is actually provided in these state parks, do we?” Vaughn asked. “I’ve been in them. Occasionally you’ll see a ranger go by, something like that, but I don’t seen any police presence in there.”
I posed this.
Why the hell does the legal system keep promulgating this idiotic myth that the police are there to protect anyone? They aren’t, and they know it. And the police know it. The only people who don’t know it are the peasants who think the police will come to their rescue.
Remember. In the 1981 decision in Warren v. District of Columbia the D.C. Court of Appeals concluded that it is a “fundamental principle of American law that a government and its agents are under no general duty to provide public services, such as police protection, to any individual citizen.” In Castle Rock v. Gonzales (2005), the Supreme Court declined to expand any requirements for protection and ruled that the police cannot be sued for failure to protect individuals, even when restraining orders were in place.
Maybe the Supreme Court listened.
Delaware Supreme Court justices have ruled that a weapons ban in Delaware’s state parks and forests is unconstitutional.
As of 4 p.m. Thursday, it is now legal to bring firearms into state parks and forests. Since the 1960s, a ban on firearms has prohibited people, even those with a permit, to carry a concealed, deadly weapon on thousands of acres of state-owned parks.
A similar ban concerning state forests followed in the 1970s. Those rules did include exceptions for hunting, which did not apply to people carrying concealed weapons for self-defense.
Gun advocates who fought the ban are applauding the decision, which they say upholds a God-given right to bear arms.
“They did the right thing,” said Jeff Hague, one of several plaintiffs named in the lawsuit originally filed in Chancery Court in 2015. “This reaffirms the constitutional right that Delawareans have … to self-defense and the right to keep and bear arms, not just in hunting and fishing and sporting, but in defense of their family and home.”
Who knows. If I didn’t persuade them, I’m glad somebody did.
