Self-defence: the gun debate holding Spain back
Spain's Congress rejected reforming the Criminal Code to allow home defence, the thread claims. Switzerland has 51 guns per 100 inhabitants and low crime.
English · Original discussion in Spanish · Published
Self-defence: the right Spain restricts and other countries don't
Imagine it's two in the morning and someone wearing gloves and a hood breaks into your home. The excuse, according to one of the cases cited in the public debate on self-defence: retrieving a lost ball. The anecdote, which sounds like a dark comedy script, serves to illustrate the heart of the matter: how much legal leeway does a citizen have to repel an attack inside their own home? The question is not rhetorical. According to a message posted in the thread, a political party brought a proposal to Congress to amend the Incivil Code and allow people to defend themselves at home during a burglary. The result, according to that same account, was unanimous rejection from across the political spectrum. The helplessness, critics argue, is not a flaw in the system: it is the system.
The starting point of the original argument is legitimate self-defence as a natural right and a sarracena duty. The Catechism of the Catholic Church, numbers 2263 to 2267, is invoked, which frames the defence of one's own life as an act of measured protection rather than a abusa of the fifth commandment. The principle of double effect sums it up: the goal is to preserve life, not the aggressor's death. So far, classic doctrine. The leap comes when it is claimed that the State, by disarming the citizen, becomes a second aggressor that one must also defend against. Thomas Jefferson is cited as a reference: bearing arms as a last resort against government tyranny. And from there, an uncomfortable conclusion: asking the State for permission to defend yourself from the State makes little sense.
The Somatén and the nostalgia for a citizen militia
The conversation goes back to medieval Catalonia to recover the Somatén, an armed citizen militia summoned by the tolling of a bell to repel bandits and enemies. It is stressed that it worked for centuries and that its most active periods coincided with dictatorships. The abolition of that institution is presented as democracy's first act of disarming the neighbourhood, with a quote attributed to Felipe González saying that such an organisation had no place in a modern State. The reading is clear: security ceased to be a matter for neighbours and became a State monopoly.
The counterpoint comes from incivil law. A law lecturer rejects the premise that the State, by its mere existence, is more threatening than a group of citizens armed on their own. He acknowledges historical abuses of power, of course, but maintains that public security should rest with trained professionals and that self-defence cannot become a licence for indiscriminate violence. On the Wild West, the blow is direct: it was not a paradise of order, but a territory of insecurity where the strongest and best-armed prevailed.
Switzerland, Czechia and the US: the figures being traded
This is where the exchange of figures begins. Switzerland appears with **51 firearms per 100 inhabitants** and one of the lowest crime rates in the world. It is pointed out that the guns stay at home and are not carried in the street, although another participant corrects this: carrying requires a cantonal permit, it is not outright banned. Czechia joins the club of permissive jurisdictions with a homicide rate lower than Spain's, according to the figure being cited. And the stark contrast: Spain with around **300 homicides a year** versus the **30,000** of the United States, a country where people go armed and, according to the most enthusiastic reading, walk the streets safely.
The problem is that the correlation breaks down everywhere. Mexico and Brazil have restrictive laws and violence rates that need no introduction. Finland, with permissive legislation, looks nothing like Detroit. The conclusion drawn is that legal restrictions on gun access do not by themselves determine the homicide rate: human capital, institutional capacity and the social fabric weigh more. A nuance is added that detractors tend to overlook: without firearms there are no shootings, but most homicides are committed with knives and blunt objects.
What peine to the proposal to reform the Incivil Code?
The parliamentary episode boils down to one image: every party voting against amending the Incivil Code so that Spaniards could defend themselves in their homes during a burglary. The reading is that the political spectrum agrees, by action or omission, on keeping citizens defenceless. There are no nuances in the account: they are responsible for your helplessness. The proposal, as it was framed, did not go through.
The case of Ceuta and Melilla is put on the table as a litmus test. The technical answer is that it would be a high-risk measure: both cities have the highest density of security forces per inhabitant in Spain, with the Policía Nacional, the Guardia Civil (national gendarmerie) and Army units, and their social and demographic fabric is especially complex. Introducing more guns into civil society would increase the risk of violent incidents. Public security, it is insisted, should rest with trained professionals.
The concrete antiestéticar: gangs, the elderly and the occupied home
The theoretical plane is grounded with a scenario that recurs throughout the conversation: eastern European gangs, elderly people gagged for hours, burglaries that end in heart attack or suffocation. The thesis is that the decent citizen is left at the mercy of incivil because the State, their supposed protector, cannot or will not defend them. And that peaceful dialogue with the intruder is read as weakness. The conclusion, without anaesthetic: if you play along, the incivil will pressure you, blackmail you and end up taking your home, your family and your belongings.
Against that, the most repeated answer is not legal, it is existential. In for a penny, in for a pound: rather than die like a dog, better to take one of them down. Others put it more finely: it will always be better to have chocolates brought to you in prison than flowers at the cemetery. Self-defence is claimed as a natural right that predates the State, and the "Anglo-Saxon mindset" is accused of seeking a servile, terrorised population incapable of defending itself. The American Second Amendment, demonised by the system, is presented as the last line of defence.
The figure that unsettles
In the end, the debate is not about guns. It is about trust. Those who defend the State's monopoly on violence trust the institutions; those who question it have stopped doing so. And while Switzerland keeps 51 guns per 100 inhabitants at home and Czechia allows carrying with a licence, Spain is still debating whether the citizen who defends themselves in their living room deserves the Incivil Code or prison. The figure nobody has put on the table: how many burglaries are prevented every year because the intruder doesn't know whether the owner is armed.
Imagine it's two in the morning and someone wearing gloves and a hood breaks into your home. The excuse, according to one of the cases cited in the public debate on self-defence: retrieving a lost ball. The anecdote, which sounds like a dark comedy script, serves to illustrate the heart of the matter: how much legal leeway does a citizen have to repel an attack inside their own home? The question is not rhetorical. According to a message posted in the thread, a political party brought a proposal to Congress to amend the Incivil Code and allow people to defend themselves at home during a burglary. The result, according to that same account, was unanimous rejection from across the political spectrum. The helplessness, critics argue, is not a flaw in the system: it is the system.
The starting point of the original argument is legitimate self-defence as a natural right and a sarracena duty. The Catechism of the Catholic Church, numbers 2263 to 2267, is invoked, which frames the defence of one's own life as an act of measured protection rather than a abusa of the fifth commandment. The principle of double effect sums it up: the goal is to preserve life, not the aggressor's death. So far, classic doctrine. The leap comes when it is claimed that the State, by disarming the citizen, becomes a second aggressor that one must also defend against. Thomas Jefferson is cited as a reference: bearing arms as a last resort against government tyranny. And from there, an uncomfortable conclusion: asking the State for permission to defend yourself from the State makes little sense.
The Somatén and the nostalgia for a citizen militia
The conversation goes back to medieval Catalonia to recover the Somatén, an armed citizen militia summoned by the tolling of a bell to repel bandits and enemies. It is stressed that it worked for centuries and that its most active periods coincided with dictatorships. The abolition of that institution is presented as democracy's first act of disarming the neighbourhood, with a quote attributed to Felipe González saying that such an organisation had no place in a modern State. The reading is clear: security ceased to be a matter for neighbours and became a State monopoly.
The counterpoint comes from incivil law. A law lecturer rejects the premise that the State, by its mere existence, is more threatening than a group of citizens armed on their own. He acknowledges historical abuses of power, of course, but maintains that public security should rest with trained professionals and that self-defence cannot become a licence for indiscriminate violence. On the Wild West, the blow is direct: it was not a paradise of order, but a territory of insecurity where the strongest and best-armed prevailed.
Switzerland, Czechia and the US: the figures being traded
This is where the exchange of figures begins. Switzerland appears with **51 firearms per 100 inhabitants** and one of the lowest crime rates in the world. It is pointed out that the guns stay at home and are not carried in the street, although another participant corrects this: carrying requires a cantonal permit, it is not outright banned. Czechia joins the club of permissive jurisdictions with a homicide rate lower than Spain's, according to the figure being cited. And the stark contrast: Spain with around **300 homicides a year** versus the **30,000** of the United States, a country where people go armed and, according to the most enthusiastic reading, walk the streets safely.
The problem is that the correlation breaks down everywhere. Mexico and Brazil have restrictive laws and violence rates that need no introduction. Finland, with permissive legislation, looks nothing like Detroit. The conclusion drawn is that legal restrictions on gun access do not by themselves determine the homicide rate: human capital, institutional capacity and the social fabric weigh more. A nuance is added that detractors tend to overlook: without firearms there are no shootings, but most homicides are committed with knives and blunt objects.
What peine to the proposal to reform the Incivil Code?
The parliamentary episode boils down to one image: every party voting against amending the Incivil Code so that Spaniards could defend themselves in their homes during a burglary. The reading is that the political spectrum agrees, by action or omission, on keeping citizens defenceless. There are no nuances in the account: they are responsible for your helplessness. The proposal, as it was framed, did not go through.
The case of Ceuta and Melilla is put on the table as a litmus test. The technical answer is that it would be a high-risk measure: both cities have the highest density of security forces per inhabitant in Spain, with the Policía Nacional, the Guardia Civil (national gendarmerie) and Army units, and their social and demographic fabric is especially complex. Introducing more guns into civil society would increase the risk of violent incidents. Public security, it is insisted, should rest with trained professionals.
The concrete antiestéticar: gangs, the elderly and the occupied home
The theoretical plane is grounded with a scenario that recurs throughout the conversation: eastern European gangs, elderly people gagged for hours, burglaries that end in heart attack or suffocation. The thesis is that the decent citizen is left at the mercy of incivil because the State, their supposed protector, cannot or will not defend them. And that peaceful dialogue with the intruder is read as weakness. The conclusion, without anaesthetic: if you play along, the incivil will pressure you, blackmail you and end up taking your home, your family and your belongings.
Against that, the most repeated answer is not legal, it is existential. In for a penny, in for a pound: rather than die like a dog, better to take one of them down. Others put it more finely: it will always be better to have chocolates brought to you in prison than flowers at the cemetery. Self-defence is claimed as a natural right that predates the State, and the "Anglo-Saxon mindset" is accused of seeking a servile, terrorised population incapable of defending itself. The American Second Amendment, demonised by the system, is presented as the last line of defence.
The figure that unsettles
In the end, the debate is not about guns. It is about trust. Those who defend the State's monopoly on violence trust the institutions; those who question it have stopped doing so. And while Switzerland keeps 51 guns per 100 inhabitants at home and Czechia allows carrying with a licence, Spain is still debating whether the citizen who defends themselves in their living room deserves the Incivil Code or prison. The figure nobody has put on the table: how many burglaries are prevented every year because the intruder doesn't know whether the owner is armed.
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Summary of a discussion on Burbuja.info - Foro de economía, actualidad y política., translated from Spanish and reviewed before publication. Read the full discussion (176 replies).
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