I 
111TH CONGRESS 
1ST SESSION 
H. R. 17 
To protect the right to obtain firearms for security, and to use firearms 
in defense of self, family, or home, and to provide for the enforcement 
of such right. 
IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 
JANUARY 6, 2009 
Mr. BARTLETT introduced the following bill; which was referred to the 
Committee on the Judiciary 
A BILL 
To protect the right to obtain firearms for security, and 
to use firearms in defense of self, family, or home, and 
to provide for the enforcement of such right. 
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representa-
tives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, 
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE. 
This Act may be cited as the ‘‘Citizens’ Self-Defense 
Act of 2009’’. 
SEC. 2. FINDINGS. 
The Congress finds the following: 
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(1) Police cannot protect, and are not legally 
liable for failing to protect, individual citizens, as 
evidenced by the following: 
(A) The courts have consistently ruled that 
the police do not have an obligation to protect 
individuals, only the public in general. For ex-
ample, in Warren v. District of Columbia Met-
ropolitan Police Department, 444 A.2d 1 (D.C. 
App. 1981), the court stated: ‘‘[C]ourts have 
without exception concluded that when a mu-
nicipality or other governmental entity under-
takes to furnish police services, it assumes a 
duty only to the public at large and not to indi-
vidual members of the community.’’. 
(B) Former Florida Attorney General Jim 
Smith told Florida legislators that police re-
sponded to only 200,000 of 700,000 calls for 
help to Dade County authorities. 
(C) The United States Department of Jus-
tice found that, in 1989, there were 168,881 
crimes of violence for which police had not re-
sponded within 1 hour. 
(2) Citizens frequently must use firearms to de-
fend themselves, as evidenced by the following: 
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(A) Every year, more than 2,400,000 peo-
ple in the United States use a gun to defend 
themselves against criminals—or more than 
6,500 people a day. This means that, each year, 
firearms are used 60 times more often to pro-
tect the lives of honest citizens than to take 
lives. 
(B) Of the 2,400,000 self-defense cases, 
more than 192,000 are by women defending 
themselves against sexual abuse. 
(C) Of the 2,400,000 times citizens use 
their guns to defend themselves every year, 92 
percent merely brandish their gun or fire a 
warning shot to scare off their attackers. Less 
than 8 percent of the time, does a citizen kill 
or wound his or her attacker. 
(3) Law-abiding citizens, seeking only to pro-
vide for their families’ defense, are routinely pros-
ecuted for brandishing or using a firearm in self-de-
fense. For example: 
(A) In 1986, Don Bennett of Oak Park, Il-
linois, was shot at by 2 men who had just sto-
len $1,200 in cash and jewelry from his subur-
ban Chicago service station. The police arrested 
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Bennett for violating Oak Park’s handgun ban. 
The police never caught the actual criminals. 
(B) Ronald Biggs, a resident of Goldsboro, 
North Carolina, was arrested for shooting an 
intruder in 1990. Four men broke into Biggs’ 
residence one night, ransacked the home and 
then assaulted him with a baseball bat. When 
Biggs attempted to escape through the back 
door, the group chased him and Biggs turned 
and shot one of the assailants in the stomach. 
Biggs was arrested and charged with assault 
with a deadly weapon—a felony. His assailants 
were charged with misdemeanors. 
(C) Don Campbell of Port Huron, Michi-
gan, was arrested, jailed, and criminally 
charged after he shot a criminal assailant in 
1991. The thief had broken into Campbell’s 
store and attacked him. The prosecutor plea- 
bargained with the assailant and planned to use 
him to testify against Campbell for felonious 
use of a firearm. Only after intense community 
pressure did the prosecutor finally drop the 
charges. 
(4) The courts have granted immunity from 
prosecution to police officers who use firearms in the 
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