BLUF:
In short, the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms is not only not anachronistic — it’s crucial. If the police are defunded or forced to stand down, the only way to protect oneself and one’s property will be to exercise one’s right to armed self-defense.

The Second Amendment is as necessary today as it has ever been

In the summer of 2020, riots and looting broke out across the United States. In cities from Seattle to New York, police were ordered to stand down and let the riots and looting take their course. The lesson from these events is that you cannot rely on the police to protect your life and property from criminal aggression. And that makes the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms more important than ever.

The right to defend oneself with firearms against criminal aggression dates back to the days before the U.S. became independent of Great Britain. While that right was often successfully defended in the political process, it took until 2008, in the landmark case of District of Columbia v. Heller, for the Supreme Court to hold that the Second Amendment guarantees against the federal government an individual right to possess firearms and to use them for self-defense within the home. Still, that right has been hanging by a thread because four justices dissented.

The Heller dissenters argued that whatever the original intent of the Second Amendment, the right is obsolete in modern society. They claimed that, while armed self-defense may have been needed when the U.S. lacked the infrastructure needed to provide security for the citizenry, the existence of modern professionalized law enforcement eliminates the need for armed self-protection.

Two years later, multiple large American cities unsuccessfully urged the Supreme Court to allow local and state governments to disarm citizens in McDonald v. City of Chicago. They argued that “in more urban areas that have the benefit of a concentrated and highly trained police force … the need for individuals to arm themselves for self-defense is less compelling.”

The riots of this summer undermine this claim. The country hadn’t seen such destructive violence in decades. For example, in Minneapolis, the killing of George Floyd sparked mayhem and lawlessness that resulted in two more deaths and at least $500 million in damage, the most destructive riots since 1992 in Los Angeles.

The chaos that followed Floyd’s killing touched off an unprecedented surge in Minneapolis crime the following month, including more than 1,500 shots-fired 911 calls — twice as many as the same period the year before. Homicides in Minneapolis went up 114%.

Second Amendment critics tell people to rely on the police for self-protection. Where were the police during this crisis? The mayor ordered them to stand down, leaving Minneapolis residents and business owners to their own devices. The same thing occurred during riots and looting in Chicago, Columbus, Louisville, and Portland.

The events of the summer of 2020 showed that urban areas are both especially vulnerable to large-scale violence and especially likely to be abandoned to that violence by irresponsible politicians who see political advantage in refusing to confront lawlessness camouflaged by concurrent political protest. Some cities are trying to make that irresponsibility permanent by defunding their police departments, leaving no viable law enforcement presence.

Ironically, some of the same voices from the recent past that told people to rely on the police for protection are now among the loudest advocates of the notion that the police are beyond redemption and should be defunded. We have already begun to see the effects of the defund movement and the anti-police sentiment, as demoralized police quit, call in sick, or are increasingly lax about their duties. As in Minneapolis, many cities have seen a spike in crime.

Given that urban political elites seem to be determined to leave their constituents at the mercy of violent mobs, Justice Clarence Thomas’ opinion in Peruta v. California seems especially topical. Speaking for himself and Justice Neil Gorsuch, Thomas advocated broadening the right to keep and bear arms beyond the home. “I find it extremely improbable that the Framers understood the Second Amendment to protect little more than carrying a gun from the bedroom to the kitchen,” Thomas wrote.

More than two-thirds of likely voters are concerned that attacks on police will lead to a shortage of officers and reduce public safety where they live, which could explain why more than one-in-five of the 43% of people who live in a household with a gun have added an additional firearm since the unrest began.

In short, the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms is not only not anachronistic — it’s crucial. If the police are defunded or forced to stand down, the only way to protect oneself and one’s property will be to exercise one’s right to armed self-defense.