From the Right
One evening while walking home alone you notice a large man following you. After picking up your pace to make sure you aren’t being paranoid, you see him pull out a weapon and start running after you. You have a pistol in your bag. Do you a) try to run, b) use your firearm, or c) stop and consider whether local laws permit you to fight or require you to flee and act accordingly?
There’s no right answer to the above scenario, but there is a wrong one. I couldn’t find conclusive evidence as to whether Stand Your Ground gun laws reduce crime or simply result in more fatalities. For every statistic, there is another that supports the opposing view. If these laws – which permit individuals to use lethal force when under attack, without the obligation to retreat first – do affect crime or fatality rates, they are negligible.
Why? Because the wrong answer to the above question was the third option. When you’re under attack, are you really going to stop and consider state legislation before determining your course of action? Of course not. When you feel yourself in life-threatening danger, safety is your primary concern. Let the law sort itself out later.
Stand Your Ground laws are not about reducing crime or fatalities; they’re about basic human rights. That humans have the right to defend themselves in an area they are legally permitted to be in, while engaging in activities they are legally permitted to, is a premise that needs no explanation. Nor is self-defense a right granted by the state; it is intrinsic to all human beings.
Stand Your Ground gun laws have wrongfully come under scrutiny recently because of the Trayvon Martin shooting. Instead, some have proposed Duty to Retreat laws, which require individuals to flee from assailants before using force. Not only are these laws dangerous because they can unnecessarily expose a victim, they are morally backward.
Requiring an individual to flee from an assailant before attempting to use force essentially places the life of the assailant above the victim. There are, in fact, stories of criminals suing their victims for retaliating with force under Duty to Retreat laws. Do I need to explain why that’s wrong?
But what of the Trayvon Martin case? Should charges against Zimmerman be dropped because of Florida’s Stand Your Ground law? While the facts are still being released, the law would probably provide no protection to Zimmerman.
Stand your ground laws do not protect those who initiate the conflict and are engaged in illegal activity. Based on current facts, we know Zimmerman was pursuing Martin, even after he was told by the police not to, and he was most likely the assailant, not the victim. In reality these laws will have no impact on this case. So why are we fussing about it?
Providing legal justification for self-defense will rarely, if ever, determine the actions of a defendant against an assailant. It does, however, clean up the legal mess that’s sure to follow.
Our laws should protect victims, not assailants. Enacting laws that require victims to flee, rather than giving them the option to defend themselves, is simply backward.