At 1 p.m. on a weekday in Chicopee earlier this month, a 15-year-old boy accompanied by two friends was allegedly banging so hard on the triple pane window of a stranger’s door that it broke the first of three layers of glass.
The youth never made it through the door, which was locked. The homeowner, who was inside, fired a gun through the door, hitting the teen in the abdomen. The teenager, Dylan Francisco, is dead.
The man who shot him, Jeffrey Lovell, has been arrested and charged with murder. Lovell has pleaded not guilty and may use the state’s “Castle Doctrine” as a defense.
The law states a person lawfully occupying a house (i.e. his or her “castle”) is not required to retreat or avoid combat with an intruder if the occupant “reasonably” believes the intruder is about to inflict great bodily harm or death; and the occupant uses “reasonable” means to defend himself.
It seems to me that the definition of what constitutes a legal “reasonable” fear in America is out of control — and could get even more terrifying if the “law and order” presidential candidate Donald Trump wins the White House.
Under the illegal and political winds, Floridian George Zimmerman was “reasonably” scared when he got out of his truck and killed Trayvon Martin; the NYC police were “reasonably” scared when Eric Garner was placed in what eventually became a fatal chokehold; Ferguson, Missouri, officers were also “reasonably” fearful when they shot Michael Brown multiple times until the teenager died.
Chicopee police say Francisco and friends had been drinking alcohol at a nearby home. Francisco became confused when he left to find another friend’s home in the area and wound up at Lovell’s, according to news reports.
The facts of this case will be decided by the legal system. But in general, there is no good reason for an unarmed teenager to die on a summer afternoon. In most cases, one man’s fear should not trump another’s right to live.
The nation’s laws place the fears of some folks over the lives of others. Stand Your Ground, the Castle Doctrine, the seemingly automatic clemency granted to police who kill civilians — all are encouraged by a pervasive assumption that it is a man’s right to keep himself, the people he likes, and his property protected at all times regardless of the danger this poses to others.
This Got-To-Protect-Mine mentality is crippling America; it stymies progressive improvements on gun control, civil rights, the tax code, and the criminal justice system. And it ends lives.
The pervasive terror and mistrust of the people and places in our communities needs to be de-escalated. And good God! The way to de-escalate is not to arm every man, woman, and child living in the U.S. of A. — NRA, I’m talking to you here — with more guns. More weapons do not make people more safe. Studies show that the more people are armed, the higher the likelihood of mass shootings, homicide, and suicide.
The U.S. is the world leader in guns per person, with 89 guns per 100 people, according to the most recently available data, the 2007 Graduate Institute Small Arms Survey. The developed country with the next highest gun-to-people ratio is Switzerland with 49 guns per 100 people. America also has an astoundingly high firearm-related death rate with 10.2 fatalities per 100,000 people — for comparison, South Africa’s rate is 9.4 per 100,000 and the United Kingdom’s is 0.25 per 100,000.
The myth that guns equals safety has largely been debunked, most thoroughly so in a 2013 study funded by the American Journal of Medicine. A group of doctors from NYU Langone Medical Center, Columbia University and St. Luke’s Roosevelt Hospital looked at the gun ownership rates of 27 developed nations and compared that with the number of firearm deaths in the populations and found that more guns equals — wait for it — more death.
“Although correlation is not the same as causation, it seems conceivable that abundant gun availability facilitates firearm-related deaths,” the authors wrote. “Conversely, high crime rates may instigate widespread anxiety and fear, thereby motivating people to arm themselves and give rise to increased gun ownership.”
If America is to diminish this caustic fear and the needless tragedy it brings the availability of firearms has to be diminished. This strategy of reducing violence by restricting gun access works for every single nation on this planet — except, until we summon the courage, this one.
To give up fear, to increase safety for civilians and police officers, we need to give up our twisted romance with guns. And if the Second Amendment to the Constitution, which provides for the right to “keep and bear arms,” needs some amending, so be it. It is no insult to the Founding Fathers to say that reconsideration and action are required again.
If firearms are less available, they are also less likely to be the tool a person reaches for when a lost teen is banging on his door.
Contact Kristin Palpini at editor@valleyadvocate.com.
