In Florida and across the country, "Stand Your Ground" laws -- the same kind of legislation that authorities cited for not arresting a neighborhood-watch volunteer after 17-year-old Trayvon Martin was killed in Florida in February -- have coincided with a sharp increase in justifiable-homicide cases.Which is not necessarily a bad thing. although the WaPo article leads off with a bad incident, which it finally explains at the end of page 2. Maybe some of those justifiable homicide cases took the place of unsolved murders.
Prosecutors still reject many claims of self-defense under the new law, and no long-term studies definitively tie the rise in justifiable killings to the passage of laws that relieve citizens of the responsibility to back away from threats.
So why am I reading this article in the Sunday WaPo?
But the Martin case has focused a spotlight on incidents in which the mere statement that people feel endangered allows them to -- depending on your sense of what's right -- defend themselves against thugs or act like vigilantes.
This sharp turn in American law -- expanding the right to defend one's home from attack into a more general right to meet force with force in any public place -- began in Florida in 2005 and has spread to more than 30 other states as a result of a campaign by the National Rifle Association and a corporate-backed group called the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which promotes conservative bills.
Some police chiefs and other law enforcement officials warned that the measure would make it hard to convict people of murder -- defendants would simply claim self-defense and challenge prosecutors to prove they were lying.
But those concerns were heavily outweighed by lawmakers' desire to send a message to taxpayers that the justice system would no longer consider suspect those who defend themselves against attack.
Or is it an admission that the State can no longer claim to protect you, from the cradle to the grave?
In the aftermath of the 2001 terrorist attacks and amid images of lawlessness in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, many Floridians -- and Americans generally -- felt less safe and believed the justice system could not protect victims, said a study of Stand Your Ground laws by the National District Attorneys Association.
Hammer told legislators her bill would protect citizens who simply defended themselves: "You can't expect a victim to wait before taking action to protect herself and say, 'Excuse me, Mr. Criminal, did you drag me into this alley to rape and kill me, or do you just want to beat me up and steal my purse?' "
The Florida Senate passed the bill unanimously.
The law says a person "has no duty to retreat and has the right to stand his or her ground and meet force with force, including deadly force if he or she reasonably believes it is necessary to do so to prevent death or great bodily harm."
In response, a pro-gun-control group put up ads aimed at visiting tourists alerting them to "Florida's Shoot First Law."
Sure, now the poor disadvantaged people will be forced to kill you just to take your wallet to feed their family, because they fear you'll defend yourself.
Asked about the Martin case last week, former governor Jeb Bush, initially an enthusiastic backer of the legislation, said, "Stand your ground means stand your ground. It doesn't mean chase after somebody who's turned their back."
Hammer sees no cause to refine or backtrack. Neither she nor NRA officials responded to requests for comment, but Hammer told the Palm Beach Post that officials should not be "stampeded by emotionalism. . . . This law is not about one incident. There is absolutely nothing wrong with the law."
Not that some won't use the incident to try to disarm the gun-totin', Bible-thumpin' rubes in flyover country.