Why Stand Your Ground Should Be Repealed Research Paper

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Stand Your Ground vs. Duty to Retreat: Why the Former Should be Repealed

Florida, Georgia, Texas, Louisiana, North Carolina and Nevada all have passed Stand Your Ground laws, whereas Maryland, New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Connecticut and Delaware all have Duty to Retreat or Castle Doctrine laws. Just by simply acknowledging the geographical location of these states and their respective laws, one can see a common theme: the Northeastern states adopt a more pro-active approach to avoid conflicting (if one can retreat to a place of security, one must do so rather than impose violence on another); yet in the Southern states, there is a more defiant position in terms of if one is somewhere he/she has a right to be, then he/she has a right to fend off any attack and to use physical violence if physical violence is used against him/her. The difference between these two perspectives is that the latter is more liable to lead to violence than the former which essentially espouses that violence must be avoided so long as it reasonably can be avoided. (For example, if one is attacked in one's home, which is considered a "castle" and a secure zone then one has the right to resist the attack with force). In this paper, I will show why I am for repealing Stand Your Ground laws by identifying two major points: first, when compared to Duty to Retreat and Castle Doctrine laws, they are far less effective deterrents of violence (Lave, 2013; McClellan, Tekin, 2012); and, second, Stand Your Ground laws can be used to defend civilians who shoot police officers.

Stand Your Ground States vs. Duty to Retreat States

The Stand Your Ground Law is dangerous for all because it is confrontational and can lead to physical harm more likely than can the Duty to Retreat or Castle Doctrine laws. It encourages individuals to resort to violent confrontation on the pretext that they are defending their rights and asserting themselves. While individuals may have the right to assert themselves, the fact remains that the police officer also has a duty to police and if he views someone acting suspiciously there is every reason for him to be on his guard and to arm himself in case the situation turns dangerous very quickly. Law-abiding citizens should be cognizant of that and not be in a hurry to challenge a police officer. Doing so will more than likely lead to someone being seriously injured. The most appropriate course of action is to retreat. If one feels that one's rights have been violated, one can always file a grievance later. If an offense has truly been committed on the part of the police officer then an inquiry will reveal that and punishment will be distributed. It does not suit the situation for a citizen to provoke the already tense encounter to an even an greater intensity. Conventional wisdom applies here: let cooler heads prevail. One should not take any more personal offense to a police officer doing his job than should one take offense to a traffic signal telling him to stop or go. Even if one perceives a slight or a personal affront, this is no time or place for such an insult to be resolved. The street is not a court of law and is not an impartial jury: on the street, tempers can flare quickly out of control. It is better to follow the Duty to Retreat dictum in this situation. The Stand Your Ground law simply encourages inappropriate conduct and justifies it on the basis of one asserting one's rights to protect oneself. Yet what protection is this, one the likelihood of someone being injured is raised substantially? Better protection is to retreat and live to see another day.

As of February 2014, for example, in Florida, the Stand Your Ground law has led to the deaths of "at least 26 children or teens" with the state turning into a new kind of Wild West (Flatlow, 2014; Cameron, Higgins, 2014). By October 2014, 75 cases of violence had been justified by Stand Your Ground, 45 Stand Your Ground defenses had been shot down and the defendants convicted, and 14 cases were still pending. That marks over 100 cases for a law that was not even ten years old yet.

In Maryland, however, the rules of engagement are different. The state has a Duty to Retreat law that imposes the necessity of retreating first before using lethal force.

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This law is designed to avoid violent confrontations that can lead to death. University of Baltimore Law School Professor Byron Warnken notes that "If you eliminate the need to retreat first, you probably increase the use of deadly force, which probably means you increase deaths" (Collins, 2013).

In Georgia, Stand Your Ground has been law since 2006, but it is now being scrutinized by Federal Courts after a lawsuit has been filed by a civil rights advocate challenging the appropriateness of the law in the wake of the Trayvon Martin death in Florida, which received national and even global news coverage, as it perfectly encapsulated the dangers posed by Stand Your Ground (Wallace, 2012). Nonetheless, a "new Georgia gun law will extend the state's Stand Your Ground legislation to protect convicted felons who kill using illegal guns" (McVeigh, 2014). Essentially, everyone, whether dangerous or with a record of being dangerous, is getting the right to kill if he or she suspects another person of having the intent to harm. The recipe is one ripe for "disaster," note legal experts in Georgia (McVeigh, 2014).

In New York, citizens have a duty to retreat, unless an intruder is in their own home, which is meant to be a secure, safe zone (Del Pozo, 2008). In Texas, it is the opposite: the individual has the right to use force in any place that he has a right to be if he perceives a threat to exist to his bodily person and feels the need to defend himself. One can see that the Northeastern attitude is quite different from the Southern mentality, and this difference is not only reflected in the laws that are passed regarding standing one's ground with force or having a duty to retreat -- it is also reflected in the body count of these states and the numbers of violent activities that are being "excused" on account of the Stand Your Ground defense.

According to a Texas A&M study, homicide rates have "soared" in states that have passed Stand Your Ground laws, and that includes Texas, Louisiana, North Carolina and Nevada along with the states already mentioned -- as well as others (Vedantam, 2013). The reality is that the law is used as a prop and an encourager of vigilantism justice. And with the proliferation of the street justice mentality as displayed in popular "super hero" movies like Batman and the Avengers, more individuals view themselves as being "above the law" thanks to the law of Stand Your Ground, which essentially permits persons to arm themselves and to take pre-emptive action similar to that of the Bush Doctrine -- attacking first anyone who you perceive might be a threat to your existence, whether they are in actuality or not.

In Duty to Retreat states like Rhode Island, Connecticut and Delaware as well as the other New England states already mentioned, the atmosphere is much different. The pre-emptive mentality is not promoted: instead, one has the right only to retreat if he or she suspects a threat. Force cannot be used until retreat has first been effected. The only exception to the rule is that if one is in one's home, car or sanctuary, there is no duty to retreat and deadly force can be utilized if it is the only means to protect oneself from harm. That does not mean that an individual should not attempt to call 911 or to seek help from law enforcement agencies if there is time to do so. It does not give the homeowner the right to immediately take matters into his own hands, as has happened in so many cases in states that have adopted Stand Your Ground laws. It simply means that deadly force should be a last resort. It is this emphasis that brings the most level-headed, common sense approach to the discussion, because it stops to consider all other possibilities first and does not simply give the individual the license to set guns blazing without recourse to other means of defense.

This is what happened recently in Nevada, when Paul Burgarello, 73, entered a vacant building he owned and found a woman and a young man there high on meth. He shot both, killing the young man. Burgarello was then arrested and charged with murder and attempted murder, but his defense is resting on the Stand Your Ground laws. Was Burgarello threatened? That is the question that prosecutors are asking: how can one.....

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