When the National Rifle Association conceived the law known as “stand your ground,”
Florida’s Expanded ‘Stand Your Ground’ Law Has Prosecutors Sounding the Alarm. The Trace.
We come back over this one several times a year whenever SYG makes the news for one reason or another. The Narrative created by the Gun Control Groups is that Stand Your Ground is something recently manufactured by the NRA and some other Conservative group to kill minorities. That Narrative has been proven false about 2 days after SYG was signed into law, but never let the truth get in the way of a good load of Political Bullshit.
Stand Your Ground goes way back. How back? Try one hundred and twenty-two (122) years as of March 27.
U.S. Supreme Court
Beard v. United States, 158 U.S. 550 (1895)
“The defendant was where he had the right to be, when the deceased advanced upon him in a threatening manner and with a deadly weapon, and if the accused did not provoke the assault, and had at the time reasonable grounds to believe, and in good faith believed, that the deceased intended to take his life, or do him great bodily harm, he was not obliged to retreat nor to consider whether he could safely retreat, but was entitled to stand his ground and meet any attack made upon him with a deadly weapon in such way and with such force as, under all the circumstances, he at the moment, honestly believed, and had reasonable grounds to believe, were necessary to save his own life or to protect himself from great bodily injury.”
But that is not all
United States Supreme Court
ROWE v. U S, (1896) No. 439
“The accused was entitled, so far as his right to resist the attack was concerned, to remain where he was, and to do whatever was necessary, or what he had reasonable grounds to believe at the time was necessary, to save his life, or to protect himself from great bodily harm. And, under the circumstances, it was error to make the case depend, in whole or in part, upon the inquiry whether the accused could, by stepping aside, have avoided the attack, or could have so carefully aimed his pistol as to paralyze the arm of his assailant, without more seriously wounding him.”
I did forget to mention a detail about the defendant:
“The testimony on the part of the government tended to show: That on the evening of the 30th of March, 1895, the defendant, David Cul Rowe, who is a Cherokee Indian, and the deceased, Frank Bozeman, a white man, a citizen of the United States, and not an Indian, met at an hotel at Pryor’s Creek, Ind.”
And to close with a nice little red bow:
United States Supreme Court
BROWN v. UNITED STATES, (1921)
Many respectable writers agree that if a man reasonably believes that he is in immediate danger of death or grievous bodily harm from his assailant he may stand his ground and that if he kills him he has not succeeded the bounds of lawful self defence. That has been the decision of this Court. Beard v. United States, 158 U.S. 550, 559 , 15 S. Sup. Ct. 962. Detached reflection cannot be demanded in the presence of an uplifted knife.
It is that last sentence that bears memorizing:
Detached reflection cannot be demanded in the presence of an uplifted knife.
It is the dogma of some prosecutors and all Gun Control fanatics that a person facing deadly danger must take pause to retreat no matter what. We have seen video upon video where attacks happen and the victim does not have but a second or two to react to an overwhelming situation, yet some prosecutors insist that you must retreat no matter what, and the prosecutors reserve the right to determine if you properly executed the retreat.
I know there are good prosecutors that will not twist the intention of the law and will actually try to impart Justice rather than win a case, but unfortunately in Florida, we have seen the opposite with devastating results to good people whose only crime was not to be killed.
What The Trace and others paid by Bloomberg will not tell you is what the People of Florida think about Stand Your Ground: They like it. And it is not only like it, but like it a lot. So between the acceptance of SYG among Floridians and the three Supreme Court cases that go in favor of SYG (probably the reason the law was never challenged in superior courts) we can expect that other states will follow path (Iowa’s legislature just sent SYG to the Governor’s desk) after an initial barrage of bad press.
It has never made any sense that your life is precious and 100% worth saving within the confines of your home, but the moment you step outside, it suffers a 50% depreciation of value and determined by a third-party with possible political ambitions.
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