Randallstown, Maryland

From Baltimore’s WJZ.com of April 1, 2006

Randallstown Woman Kills Husband In Self-Defense

Baltimore County police say a woman shot and killed her husband, apparently in self-defense, at their Randallstown-area townhome this afternoon.

Police spokesman Bill Toohey says the woman's husband had been threatening her with a weapon before she shot him.

The 35-year-old woman called 911 around 4:30 this afternoon and calmly told the operator that she had shot her 44-year-old husband. She met police at the door when they arrived at her townhome on Gilly Way.

From Baltimore’s WBAL.com of April 10, 2006

Let Marylanders Protect Themselves by Ron Smith

I can get quite worked up while reading the morning newspaper. It happened again Saturday when I got to the Sun’s Maryland section and saw a story headlined, “Two killings test right of self-defense.” I knew what was coming.

Here’s Jennifer McMenamin’s lead. “Karen L. Foxx had sought court orders to keep her estranged husband away, had filed criminal charges against him and changed her phone number. She also bought a gun to protect herself, and last Saturday, her lawyer says, Foxx did just that when she fatally shot her husband.”

The story then tells us that her case and that of businessman Mark Beckwith, who fatally shot one of three men who attacked him in the upper parking lot at the Village of Cross Keys in North Baltimore a couple weeks ago, has led to the legal right of self-defense being “under examination.”

Consider the known facts of these cases and then ask what in the world would make these killings criminal. Foxx shot her estranged husband, Herman Bullock, in her home, from which a court order banned him. “In requests for protective orders,” the Sun story says, “she wrote that Bullock had threatened to kill her, slapped her, dragged her down the stairs, threatened her with an ax handle and kicked, punched pushed and choked her.” Also, she wrote that he had killed their Chihuahua by throwing it out the door, breaking its neck.

Furthermore, there are ample court records alleging violence by Bullock, not only in his relationship with Foxx, but also accusations from his first wife who filed for divorce from him in 1999. She alleged that Bullock had abused her in front of their children, dragged her down the stairs by her hair and abused their dog.

So this brute shows up at a home he is legally forbidden from visiting, she shoots him dead and we’re supposed to take seriously the notion that maybe she could have violated the rules governing self-defense? Like how many shots did she fire or where the gun was in the house whether his fingerprints were on the ax handle and whether she could have handled the threat from him by calling the police. Remember, “Call 911 and Die?” Remember the warning, “Call for a cop and call for a pizza and see which one gets there first?”

In the Beckwith case, the gas station owner pulls into the Cross Keys parking lot on St. Patrick’s Day to deposit money from his gas stations, when he’s set upon by three men apparently intent on robbing him. They hit him and try to grab the cash when he pulls away, yanks his Glock from a shoulder holster and opens up. One assailant dies, another is wounded and later arrested while seeking treatment for his wound.

Beckwith, whom I’ve known for thirty years, has been legally carrying a gun for two decades because of the necessity in his business of dealing with substantial amounts of cash. Never had he used it, or even brandished it. But the reason concealed carry permits are issued even in Maryland to people like him is to enable them to protect themselves in pretty much the kind of scenario that unfolded in that parking lot.

Some states give their residents the unquestioned right to protect themselves with force against those who would do them violent harm. Maryland should too, since there should be no question in cases like these that the law sides with the potential victim, not with the attacker.