Not giving click bait to The Trace, but apparently the ABA gave them an advance copy of super-duper secret full report investigation about Stand Your ground that claims the following:

Since 2005

• Stand Your Ground states experienced an increase in homicides.
• Multiple states have attempted to repeal or amend Stand Your Ground laws.
• The law’s application is unpredictable, uneven and results in racial disparities.
• A person’s right to self-defense was sufficiently protected prior to Stand Your Ground.
• Victims’ rights are undermined in states with statutory immunity from criminal prosecution and civil suit related to Stand Your Ground cases.

Let’s go with the first assertion:

Stand Your Ground states experienced an increase in homicides.
Taking Evil Florida as example, from 2006, the first full year of implementation of SYG to 2014 which is the last year FDLE has provided data, the murder rate  has gone from 6.2 per 100K to 5 per 100K. I don’t know in Common Core, but old school stats call that a decrease. 

Multiple states have attempted to repeal or amend Stand Your Ground laws.
Again in Evil Florida, they tried their best with full cooperation of the Media and assorted Useful Idiots and did fail. Floridians by far and large like SYG and they are not willing to go back to when prosecutors played politics with the lives of citizens defending themselves.

Victims’ rights are undermined in states with statutory immunity from criminal prosecution and civil suit related to Stand Your Ground cases.
I venture a speculation and say this is the real reason the ABA is opposed to SYG/Immunity: It is bad for their pockets. And did you notice the use of the word victim? It is being applied to the critter that needed the defense and not the person who had to use force to stop the attack. Who has not heard of cases in which a criminal or his family has sued in civil court even though it was their precious snowflake the one that wanted to carve his initials on a stranger and get his money or her sex? We still hear the lamentations of “He was a good boy! Just because he was flinging a machete does not mean he deserved to be shot!” from weeping mothers and other relatives?

The law’s application is unpredictable, uneven and results in racial disparities.
The application of the law was predictable: Some prosecutors and judges had no problem with it and some hated it so much they did their best to screw with it or misapply it. It seems it ended with the case of of Gabriel Mobley, who was thrown under the bus by the legal system and had a successful appeal that cemented Stand Your ground in Florida.

As for the use of the race Card to eliminate SYG, we go to the original source of the Anti SYG movement: The Tampa Bay Tribune and their database of cases. As of today, the numbers were as follows:

Fatal cases total = 134
Cases where the SYG claimant was Black: 45.
14 convicted, 25 justified, 6 pending.

Cases where the SYG claimant was White: 81.
33 convicted, 41 justified, 7 pending.

Cases where the SYG claimant was Hispanic: 10
2 convicted, 7 justified, 1 pending.

Black by a factor of two to one had a better outcome claiming SYG. Hispanics are in a three to one ration while Whites are almost even. So much for being a racist law.

Non Fatal cases = 115
Cases where the SYG claimant was Black: 38.
10 convicted, 24 justified, 4 pending.

Cases where the SYG claimant was White: 69.
21 convicted, 44 justified, 4 pending.

Cases where the SYG claimant was Hispanic: 5.
1 convicted, 3 justified, 1 pending.

Although Whites improve their ratio, Blacks maintain the two to one in favor and Hispanics their three to one.

Out of the total amount of cases (249), Blacks comprise 33% even though they are only 18% of the population in the State of Florida. Any claim that SYG is racist is patently BS according to the numbers provided by the Tampa Bay Tribune.

I have always sustained that SYG is hated within some in the legal profession because it literally took their  power to screw with people’s lives and not having to pay for it. It has to be intoxicating to be God-like and with a flick of the finger destroy somebody’s life that did nothing other than stop a deadly force attack. The idea that a prosecutor should strive for justice appears to be lost in the care to have great conviction records and successful re-election campaigns.

That is a sad commentary on our Justice system.

Yes, it is BS and most of us knew it. Still some kept pasting the stupid “I do not give permission…” meme. But some have made actually fun of that and came up with some great “legal” disclaimers. My favorite? Claudia Christian’s.

Due to the fact that Facebook has chosen to align themselves with the Dark Side to push forth their own agenda through the use of Psi Corp operatives, Storm Troopers, Cylons, Daleks, Reavers, Borg and the like, I state: on this day, in response to the new guidelines of Facebook, which violate the all that is good in every known galaxy and were summarily voted against by every champion of humanity, I declare my rights to all that is mine, for I
am Ivanova…and God sent me.

Those who visit my command log (also known as this Facebook page) can copy and paste it as they so choose. This will allow them protection against all allies of the Shadows who threaten to violate their rights.

If you have not published this statement at least once, you tacitly allow Facebook and its advertisers to corrupt your soul as well as use the information contained in profile updates.

I aim to misbehave. Use the force and join me. Let’s send Facebook back to Mordor where it belongs. So say we all.

Some critics are taking a short-sighted approach by questioning the propriety of a $2.4 million federal grant to the gun industry’s trade and lobbying association to promote gun locks and storage. Two anti-gun groups want Washington to withdraw the grant to the National Shooting Sports Foundation, whose headquarters is located in Newtown, the same town as the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre. The NSSF has resisted “any and all reforms” that would protect children, one of the groups, the Coalition to Stop Gun Violence, says. The raw feelings toward the gun lobby are understandable, considering the terrible toll taken that December day and the gun industry’s intransigence toward reform legislation, state or federal.

But if gun locks and the storage of guns already in circulation saves lives, the grant money will be well spent. This incremental step should be part of a larger strategy to stem gun violence.

Source: Let lobbyist have federal grant for gun locks. A little safety better than none. – Hartford Courant

The Hartford Courant is not a pro-gun rag by any means. Probably you will not find a more anti-gun paper in the Northeast asides from the New York Times Tacos and Fajitas.

So when even they are telling Ladd and his cult members that they are missing the porcelain receptacle, you know CSGV really stepped into a huge pile of dung. And I am not saying that the Hartford Courant has seen the light and want to implement real gun safety measures designed by gun people, but simply that they know that the optics of blocking gun locks out pure of political spite is not going to go well with the general population.

Via Bayou Renaissance Man. A very in-depth report of the Westgate Mall Terrorist attack. This passage caught my eye.

News of the assault was beginning to spread via frantic phones calls, texts, and WhatsApp messages. Westgate is in the heart of a Kenyan-Indian part of the city, and the close-knit community there knew better than to rely on the authorities to send help. Instead, the call went out to the community’s own licensed gun holders, who were organized into self-appointed armed neighborhood watch units.

Source: ‘Close Your Eyes and Pretend to Be Dead’ | Foreign Policy

Damned Vigilantes and Insurrectionists making the difference by going into harm’s way and getting people out of the line of fire.

The article is long and worth it. I saved it in PDF for future reference. Get you beverage of choice and study it. It may very well save your life one day.

By telling them that they can’t tell the difference between an Open Carry citizen eating a burger & fries at the local McD’s and an armed robber shooting Ma & Pa Jones minding their store.

And, of course the citizens will feel much better after they are told the local Houston Fuzz will shoot anybody in sight for no frigging reason.

When you see Chief McClelland, you must realize you are watching a historic moment: Lapdog Dinosaurs on their way of political extinction.

I immediately thought of Clayton and his heretofore foreign worldview, weighing it against how I now felt instinctually glad that my brother would be able to react if a crazy person tried to hurt our mother. And how, at the same time, it felt like madness that I would be glad someone was carrying a gun to church. But that’s the thing about my values—they tend to bump up against reality, and when that happens, I may need to throw them out the window. That, or I ignore reality. For me, more often than not, it’s the values that go.

Source: Confronted by my own bullsh*t: I wanted to be the voice of nonviolence for my church after George Zimmerman’s acquittal, but all I could do was cry for all my inconsistencies – Salon.com

Go read it. It is an interesting beginning in soul-searching and she still has long to go.

She won’t probably read this post, but in the off-chance: One of your watershed moments will be when you can eliminate the concept of violence as purely evil. Think of violence on its basic definition: behavior involving physical force intended to hurt, damage, or kill someone or something. What can be evil is its application as in hurting somebody to obtain a gain against their wishes. A criminal using violence regardless of the tool, to rob money, or satisfy a bruised ego or obtain sexual satisfaction from a woman; yes, those are evil uses of violence.

Your internal conflict comes from realizing that there are truly good applications of violence such as the defense of oneself and our loved ones or the innocent and that it is morally reprehensible that others should suffer or die because we are programmed with the silly (and dangerous) notion that all violence is bad. The other part of the conflict is the misuse of the legal definition of violence (the unlawful exercise of physical force or intimidation by the exhibition of such force) to define a philosophy or a way of life. Non-Violence is  defined as the personal practice of being harmless to self and others under every condition. It is the last part which many of us find reprehensible and immoral for the reasons explained in the beginning of this paragraph: To do nothing when your life is about to be extinguished by others is against nature. To do nothing when the life of your loved ones or the innocent is threatened by evil individuals is to be complicit in their deaths: you may have not pulled the trigger or drove the knife into the chest, but you morally share the guilt if you were in a position to do something and chose not to.  Your guilt goes exponential when you work to impede others to from defending themselves or others under that faulty and immoral code of Non-Violence.

I am willing to bet that your token conservative is one of the nicest, sweetest, less “violent” persons you know. It comes from being prepared and understanding how violent evil hurts others. We do not seek or desire such a thing for anybody and strive for deconflict by other means, but when all other options are spent, we will inflict violence rather than allow evil to triumph.

“One bleeding-heart type asked me in a recent interview if I did not agree that ‘violence begets violence.’ I told him that it is my earnest endeavor to see that it does. I would like very much to ensure—and in some cases I have—that any man who offers violence to his fellow citizen begets a whole lot more in return than he can enjoy.”

Col. Jeff Cooper.

CSGV dropped this one on its Facebook timeline:

Here is the story as from the source the CSGV used:

Houston police responded to a shooting call around 11:15 p.m. Saturday at a Valero gas station on Jensen Drive at Reid Street in north Houston. Officials say two men jumped another man in the gas station parking lot and took the victim’s Chevrolet pickup truck. Police say a witness then pulled out a gun and began shooting at the suspects, accidentally hitting the carjacking victim in the head.
The victim was transported to a nearby hospital where he remains in stable condition. Police say the witness who shot at the suspects picked up shell casings and left the scene. Police found the stolen pickup truck about a mile down the road but are still searching for the suspects.

Source: One man injured after carjacking, shooting at gas station

And here is another source on the same incident:

A man was carjacked and beaten after he walked out of the Valero gas station late Saturday night in northeast Houston. But someone else who witnessed the crime helped end the attack.
The attack happened on Kelley at Jensen around 11pm. A man said he was hit on the head near a bus station on the edge of the parking lot. A witness saw what happened and as two suspects got in the man’s truck to escape, the witness pulled out a gun and shot at the departing truck. The suspect ditched the truck about three blocks away. Police found blood inside the truck. Investigators aren’t sure if the blood belongs to the suspect or the truck’s owner.The truck’s owner is in the hospital recovering.

Source: Witness who fired on carjackers sought after northwest Houston attack | abc13.com

I have my doubts on the first story and it is based on the brass-picking part of the report. Finding the brass you shot during the daytime and without any stress is hard enough, nighttime during SHTF? Doubtfully.

The second narrative is better written overall, but it is the story on both that still does not congeal for me and on this one? The distance between the bus stop and the store?

Google maps gives us a very nice view of both the gas station and the bus stop.

I would advance that the person that actually did the shooting was the victim and that he is a prohibited person which is the reason that we have a mysterious shooter that disappeared. My very speculative take? Drug deal went wrong or something of the kind.

Unless more info appears, I am not putting this one in the Defensive Gun Use column. The Opposition is already running with the other narrative and by now they are used to stories coming back to bite them in the ass.

Always check your sources.