I’m sure you are all shocked to learn this:
In April, more than a month after the shooting of Trayvon Martin, we looked the incidence of justifiable homicides in states with “stand your ground” or “castle doctrine” laws like Florida’s.
In general, such laws grant people more leeway to use lethal force on an attacker. More than 20 were passed after Florida’s in 2005. They typically do at least one of the following:
• Remove a person’s duty to retreat in places outside the home
• Add the presumption that the person who killed in self defense had a reasonable fear of death or harm
• Grant people who kill in self-defense immunity from civil lawsuits
Justifiable homicides nearly doubled from 2000 to 2010, according to the most recent data available, when 326 were reported. The data, provided by federal and state law enforcement agencies, showed a sharp increase in justifiable homicides occurred after 2005, when Florida and 16 other states passed the laws.
While the overall homicide rates in those states stayed relatively flat, the average number of justifiable cases per year increased by more than 50% in the decade’s latter half.
In a new study, an economics professor and a PhD student at Texas A&M University take a broader look at the laws’ effect. The authors, Professor Mark Hoekstra and Cheng Cheng, use state-level crime data from 2000 to 2009 to determine whether the laws deter crime.
The answer, they conclude, is no. In fact, the evidence suggests the laws have led to an increase in homicides.
In other words, stand your ground laws do EXACTLY what the critics of those laws said they would back when the laws were being debated:
“For a House that talks about the culture of life it’s ironic that we would be devaluing life in this bill,” said Democratic state Rep. Dan Gelber of Miami Beach. “That’s exactly what we’re doing.”
Like many states, Florida courts have ruled that people have a right to defend themselves in their homes. Florida courts have expanded that “Castle Doctrine” to include employees in their workplaces and drivers who are attacked in their automobiles.
Outside the home, however, courts have ruled that most victims must at least attempt to escape before using deadly force, a provision gun advocates say puts victims at greater risk. The proposal removes that requirement if a person has a reasonable fear of death or great bodily harm.
Critics say the measure could lead to racially motivated killings and promote deadly escalations of arguments.
“All this bill will do is sell more guns and possibly turn Florida into the OK Corral,” said Democratic state Rep. Irv Slosberg of Boca Raton.
The bill passed in Florida, and was immediately signed by Gov. Jeb Bush. Yes- that would be the same Jeb Bush who is running around today bemoaning radical Republicans. You know, the same “moderate” Jeb Bush who signed the laws giving him permission to insert himself into Terri Schiavo’s marriage.
They are all radicals.
Corner Stone
I’d like to make sure we are careful in differentiating between “stand your ground” and “Castle Doctrine” laws.
Patricia Kayden
“Critics say the measure could lead to racially motivated killings and promote deadly escalations of arguments.”
Ding ding ding ding ding!
What gets to me is that the word of the killer is treated as gold. Zimmerman would have walked off into the sunset if not for Trayvon’s zealous parents, some in the left-wing media and public outrage.
Mike Lamb
@Patricia Kayden: Right–that some of these laws create the rebuttable presumption of being in fear for one’s life is completely ass backwards. Puts the burden on the dead person to rebut the presumption. They need to be called “Last Man Standing” laws.
Ash Can
Add to this the fact that the US Commission on Civil Rights is going to be examining SYG laws for evidence of racial bias.
Comrade Dread
Well, that’s because until someone figures out necromancy, we can’t really get the dead person’s side of the story.
Which honestly means that as long as you don’t have any witnesses, you can get away with murder in these states.
But you know, freedom omelet, eggs, if a few innocent people have to die and their murders walk free, it’s all worth it to let me feel like Wyatt Earp.
SatanicPanic
@Mike Lamb: I like to think of them as history is written by the victors laws, but I like your formulation too.
Brachiator
@Mike Lamb:
Yep. These laws escalate confrontations into mortal combat.
The sad thing is that conservative goobers will likely double down on these laws, insisting that they “empower” ordinary citizens.
Hal
To this day, that Terri Schiavo incident amazes me for the depth of interference from the US Congress, not to mention the enormous dishonesty from Republicans who tried to use the case as a way to appeal to conservative voters:
The Other Chuck
@Hal: They were just six years too early.
redshirt
As the wingnuts tell me: An armed society is a polite society.
Right?
Comrade Dread
@Hal: Yeah, I’m generally pro-life, but the Schiavo incident and the GOP reaction to it really turned my stomach.
And it really is a bit hard to take someone’s pro-life credentials seriously if they’re pushing for of looser gun laws that will let people walk away from murder penalty free. (Or if they’re pro-death penalty or hawkish, for that matter.)
Punchy
I did not know this. So once the perp railroads the criminal system, there’s no civil liability at all? This seems like a really, really big deal that I was unawares of.
peach flavored shampoo
Any relation to Pete Hoekstra and Yo Yo Ma, respectively?
scav
Seems a good place to point out the telling detail that the author of a book called “The Kindness of America” was shot in a random drive-by shooting in Montana.
Corner Stone
@scav: In freakin’ Montana? Now that’s some damn delicious irony.
Face
And who wants to be a witness when the same jackass could approach you the next day and pull the same stunt? I’m guessin the Mob loves this law.
Doesn’t this pretty much “legalize” killing of one’s spouse, assuming kids are out of the house and the drapes are closed?
muddy
It’s so sad that they don’t have SYG law in my state, because there were several people I would have liked to have shot and gotten away with it in the last week. Damnit.
redshirt
According to a recent video from Texas I watched, all you need to do to get away with murder is to say “You were afraid”.
As in…
Jason Vorhees: I was terrified those co-eds were going to kill me! I had no choice!
Dracula
What I’d love to see is 3 of 4 young-ish black men walking down the streets of Jax or Orlando with concealed, holstered weapons. Pretty sure we’d find out just how well they enforce their right-to-carry laws.
MCA1
Hoocoodanode?
Which is the least shocking:
(1) that it would appear the expansion of stand your ground laws quite likely is leading to more “justifiable” homicides; or
(2) that when news of the study discussing the aforementioned likely conclusion appears on a Wall Street Journal blog, 90+% of the responsive reader commentary is utterly dismissive and/or openly defiant and/or outright racist crap? One person even flatly dismisses the linked study because it came from Texas A&M (approximately the last institution of higher learning in the world one would expect to be lumped in with Republicans’ “liberal ivory tower brainwashers” fantasies). Somehow, they collectively missed the fact that some people aren’t fans of expansive stand your ground laws because they think people being shot is a bad thing as a general matter, regardless of who’s doing the shooting.
rikyrah
don’t nobody Black that I know believes that Stand Your Ground applies to them. after all, we’ve been Black in America longer than 3 days.
Roger Moore
@Comrade Dread:
FTFY.
Forum Transmitted Disease
Another idiot Democrat who, imagination utterly failing, walks right onto the Republican’s playing field to fight them there.
Can’t win there, buddy. Might want to try something that doesn’t involve Republican framing.
Sadly, that seems beyond almost any Dem at the moment.
Ben Franklin
@redshirt:
As the wingnuts tell me: An armed society is a polite society.
It’s a civil war, they seek. ‘Pardon me. KaBlaam !’
stratplayer
“Stand Your Ground” is nothing less than a license to murder.
Stuck in the Funhouse
SyG and all the other untying the hands of the beleaguered white man, all come under the same rubric. OR, WE ARE BEING INVADED BY TOO MANY DARK SKINNED PEOPLE WHO TALK FUNNY.
The country is turning rainbow quite fast, and even if the average white wingnut can’t articulate the fear that gnaws at the fringes of their spartan grey matter, morning noon and night, their keen jackal senses tells them they are in danger of losing alpha pack status, in the country that is theirs.
And deep in the predatory cortex, weird logic and desperation meet up, and we get a loosening on the thing called murder. To now include, allowable, by simply being scared, and in the vicinity of a black or brown person.
I think it is behind about all the current manic grade insanity, well past the normal ideological kind, especially in the south, and parts of the SW.
So these people are in the midst of a fight or flee response themselves, seeming to be triggered by a President Black
Obama, and they are both fighting and fleeing. At the levels of governance, with their reps simply refusing to budge toward any semblance of responsible governance, and actively seeking to not let the enemy majority govern either.At the personal level, we get Stand Your Ground, and local officials building their own little private armies.. And all of wingnuts in their red states, slowly seceding by passing all sorts of retrograde nonsense in some bizzaro head long dash to flee us all back to the 1950’s, where things were simpler, meaning white males ran the roost, in every way. And wimmen folk knew their place, and that place was to let Big Daddy run their lives and their bodies, because that was how baby jeevus wanted it. I call them “Flux Capacitor Laws”. Because I want to.
Now don’t bother me, I’m installing a clown cannon in my personal bunker, and must concentrate. Those things are dangerous, and you can blast yerself if not careful.
JCT
The combination of paranoia and racism that these 2nd Amendment worshippers display is mind boggling and frightening. Great combo in a SYG state.
My favorite part of this is their incessant claim that Zimmerman is telling the 100% truth about the incident and that Martin “deserved” it. Oh no, of course Zimmerman had no incentive whatsoever to lie.
It’s insane.
El Cid
Yes, there may have been more homicides justified as self-defense, but this only proves how many more people needed killin’.
Villago Delenda Est
Well, DUH!
Svensker
@redshirt:
Yup. That’s why Canukistanners are so danged polite — they have secret, invisible weapons (I only know this because I’ve moved here and am sharing this highly classified information with only you, my close friends). Keeps everyone on their toes, saying please and thank you every dang minute. Also waiting patiently in line (we get shot with invisible guns if we complain! Seriously.).
This also explains why the French are so rude. No guns. Duh.
Roger Moore
Yes, and they do exactly what the proponents of those laws intended but were afraid to admit they wanted in public.
WereBear
And a woman, who is usually out-weighed and out-powered in any conflict with the opposite sex, cannot invoke Stand Your Ground at all. Even if she didn’t even shoot anyone, at all.
I can only assume Shut Up That’s Why.
maya
Relax. Stand Your Ground laws will eventually be replaced by Decorate Your Tree laws.
handy
@maya:
Ohhhhh
pragmatism
my winger friends say: but you can’t quantify how many potential criminals choose not to do the criminal act because they are afraid of getting killed!
i point out that they can’t quantify that this actually happens either and then the convo sidetracks into how i’m a hippie.
navigator
Poor ole Jeb.
You can see it slowly dawning in his eyes with each appearance: there will be no GOP reawakening, and he’ll never be President.
Ben Franklin
@maya:
Stand Your Ground laws will eventually be replaced by
DecorateDesecrate Your Tree laws.Fuxed–
Mino
@WereBear: A women can only claim it if the victim is a total stranger that she chased.
Mike G
As with all these Authoritarian South nutbar gun-totin’ laws, in practice they only apply to the Right Kind Of People.
Trayvon Martin had more right to a Stand Your Ground defence than Zimmerman, given that Martin was walking home minding his own business when accosted by a larger shouting man with a gun. Anyone believe for a split-second that if he had shot Zimmerman dead that the proponents of Stand Your Ground would defend him, and that he wouldn’t even be arrested except for a media shitstorm?
pragmatism
FYWP
Kyle
@navigator:
You can see it slowly dawning in his eyes with each appearance: there will be no GOP reawakening, and he’ll never be President.
I wouldn’t say that. The fact that the country appears poised to possibly elect a vulture capitalist to accelerate the corrupt deregulatory financial looting visited upon it in the last decade, means it is stupid enough, with the right facile big-buck marketing campaign, to once again elect a Bush.
WereBear
@Mino: When the barebones of the story appeared in a news teaser, Mr WereBear was vocally puzzled over how this could occur, and I said:
“She will be in a domestic violence situation where she knew the guy, no broken bones, and I’m betting she’s also African American.”
I was right on all counts.
gene108
@navigator:
I agree. He really missed his shot to become President, before his older brother ran in 2000 and then shitted on the family name, so that it’s now toxic.
Calouste
@Svensker:
France has a pretty high gun ownership, mainly hunting rifles though. IIRC there were rifles and/or ammunition for sale in the local equivalent of Walmart, but that was a few decades ago.
Mino
@WereBear: Eggsactly. He didn’t kill her before, so how can she say she was in fear of her life this time. Right?
Jay in Oregon
@JCT:
As someone said on Twitter (paraphrasing):
Zimmermann lied about how much money he had in his bail hearing and “forgot” to surrender a second passport. Seems pretty credible about shooting that kid, though.
HEY YOU
What happens when a family member of a well known Republican is killed by a Stand Your Grounder? Maybe all that could be said is;
THAT’S THE LAW.
WereBear
@Mino: I believe you have hit upon the mindset.
myiq2xu
By definition “justifiable homicides” are justified.
That means a bad guy bit the dust.
Jax6655
@Dracula:
Damnit! This is the second time I’ve seen this stupid-assed idea on this blog.
Why don’t you understand that young black men already have a target on their backs just by virtue of their race/gender? Why do you people keep fantasizing about young black men walking around armed???
They get killed enough [by police and assholes like Zimmerman] when they are unarmed.
Give me a friggin break!
STOP SAYING THIS! It is not the answer. This really pisses me off!
Yutsano
@myiq2xu: That is why you fail. Legal justification should never be easy when a human is killed by another.
Cain
I would suspect when a black man or latino (who looks like a drug smuggler) gets away with it, wingnuts might start thinking about it..
I say let black men arm themselves and let them walk around with steakes in their hands.
BTW – Florida is now off my list of places to go see. I’ve been there a couple times already, I don’t need to visit there again. fuck those guys. It’ sad that I have two states of the union off my list, Arizona and Florida. These two can kiss my ass.
Mnemosyne
@myiq2xu:
Or it means that you took your gun to your ex-wife’s house, sent her screaming from the house for someone to call 911, killed her boyfriend, had the SWAT team show up, and still walked away a free man because you Stood Your Ground.
But I’m sure that the unarmed man that Jarkas killed was a very bad man since he was dating Jarkas’ ex-wife. Only a really bad man would do something like that.
bluespapa
@Jax6655 That’s the point. It’s a citizen militia when they’re white, and a gang when they’re not. It’s self defense when they’re white, not when it’s anyone else. But if the laws did apply equally, we would have fewer stupid laws.
Patricia Kayden
@Mnemosyne: WHAT??!! Just wow.