Shoot to Kill, Not Stand Your Ground
Shoot to Kill, Not Stand Your Ground
The increased lenience and acceptance of these laws embolden vigilantes.
By: Morgan Spry
This past year, Stand Your Ground laws have been brought to the public's attention yet again after a series of shooting deaths claimed the lives of innocent people mistakenly on a stranger's property.
In April, Ralph Yarl was shot when he accidentally rang the doorbell at the wrong house trying to pick up his twin siblings; and 20-year-old Kaitlin Gillis was shot and killed after her boyfriend accidentally turned into the wrong driveway.
When talking about Stand Your Ground laws, it is essential to frame them in the way that they have continuously been used — not just as a way for people to protect their homes and families, but as an excuse to shoot to kill in situations where there is no valid threat and bodily harm is inappropriate.
In the U.S., 38 states currently have some form of a Stand Your Ground law, which permits an individual to protect themselves with reasonable force — including deadly force — to prevent death or great bodily harm. Under common law, people have a duty to retreat before using bodily harm against another in self-defense. This does not, however, apply to self-defense within your home — an exception referred to as the Castle Doctrine.
Increasingly though, many states' Stand Your Ground laws allow an individual to use deadly force without a duty to retreat outside the home, such as in one's motor vehicle or place of employment, encouraging shootings without de-escalation.
Stand-your-ground laws are associated with an 8% to 11% increase in homicide rates, about 700 deaths each year (Degli Esposti et al., 2022). These deaths are not proportionately dispersed among racial groups. As stated by Kami Chavis, “[in] Stand-Your-Ground states, ‘homicides in which white shooters kill Black victims are deemed justifiable five times more frequently than when the situation is reversed.’”
The racial disparity of these laws can also be seen through recent instances where Trayvon Martin and Ahmaud Arbery were shot and killed walking in their own neighborhoods. As stated by Brady, “Stand Your Ground laws are made more lethal by our nation’s history of racism, are reinforced by our nation’s weak gun laws, and are galvanized by outside influence by gun rights groups like the NRA.”
The increased lenience and acceptance of the Castle Doctrine and Stand Your Ground laws embolden vigilantes through a misguided interpretation of the Second Amendment while threatening all Americans’ public safety.
For this reason, the conversation around Stand Your Ground laws must be reframed in such a way to show their true, dangerous reality — that these pieces of legislation are, in fact, "shoot to kill" laws that allow individuals to engage in violent acts in otherwise non-threatening circumstances.
“These laws aren’t necessarily making people safer. The statistics have shown that actually they’re likely to increase the rate of homicide.”
Morgan Spry is a senior at The Ohio State University studying Public Affairs and Political Science. She was a communications intern at Brady, and previously served as a press intern in the United States Senate.
Image by satellitov from Pixabay