Let’s Call Stand Your Ground What it Really Is
The Antis try to cloud the argument by calling stand your ground laws “Shoot First” or “Shoot the Avon Lady” laws. The only person likely to shoot the Avon Lady is Joe “just fire the shotgun through the door” Biden.
So in the interest of accuracy, here are some more accurate names:
- Don’t have to get backed into a corner laws
- Don’t have to take off running blindly in unfamiliar areas laws
- Don’t have to wonder who’s waiting outside your window when laws
- Don’t run out of every other option laws
Retreat is sometimes a viable option, and a good option if it’s available. If you can easily move back to a lighted area with other people around, it may be the safest way for everyone involved to deescalate a situation. And as the Zimmerman case proves, even if you are eventually cleared, a legal self defense shooting can have a lot of negative consequences. But often in a situation, you don’t have a clear path of retreat, and retreating could make a bad situation worse.
Take the pizza guy in a bad area, especially if he can’t get back to his vehicle. Where is he supposed to run? On a dark night, it’s impossible to know. When the lawyers show the brightly lit pictures take in the daylight, it can seem like he had plenty of options to retreat. But when you are alone there in the dark, who knows where the thug’s buddies are hiding? And how long are you going to take your eyes off an attacker to figure it out?
Frankly, I don’t have a need to kill or capture the bad guys, shoot it out, or do anything but get home safely tonight. That’s why I want all options available. If a situation can be deescalated without shooting, great. That should be our first option. But to have to worry if there was one last avenue for retreat that a lawyer could latch onto to claim that I didn’t need to shoot is ridiculous.
What do you think Stand Your Ground laws should be called? Tell us in the comments.
The anti-gun fanatics also call them “make my day” laws. How about “Don’t get railroaded by politically motivated ambulance chasers” laws? I used to be OK with legal duty to retreat laws, since any sane person would try to avoid a shoot-out if at all possible (and an insane person is not supposed to possess weapons anyway). Now, I’m convinced that Stand Your Ground laws are absolutely necessary. A mugging victim may have a split second to make a life-or-death decision, but a prosecutor or plaintiff’s lawyer can take weeks or months to construct some hypothetical scenario and make it look like the defendant had ample opportunity to get away. America’s greatest jurist, Oliver Wendell Holmes, said, “Detached reflection is not demanded in the presence of an upraised knife.”