Do Stand Your Ground Laws Help or Hurt Crime Rates?

[CDR_Glock]

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Obviously, this writer is biased against SYG.

 

[maine04619]

Depends if your a BG or not..

 

[bmwruss]

As a Floridian, I feel that the law has lowered crime. The stand your ground law has been used numerous times and stood up in court since enacted. Look at England. I don't have exact numbers, but guns are flat out illegal. Muggings and murders by knives is through the roof. Where guns are banned or highly restricted, crime soars.
Now, with the Zimmerman case, everybody wants to blame the stand your ground law. Gov Scott wants to "look at" and possibly modify the law. I say leave it alone. It's fine just the way it is.

 

[kelcarry]

Depends if your a BG or not..

Also depends if you are the subject of the BG's focus. Bottom line as the old saying goes--"LEO is many minutes away, the bullet is less than a second away". Anyone who can argue about anyone being in a position to defend themselves is a hypocrite. Odds are that most of our anti gun politicians have firearms themselves or have the privilege of security people around them--as another saying goes---"do as I say, not as I do"--hypocrisy of the first kind--g-d I hate hypocrites and this country is just full of them, particularly in DC.

 

[SR40c]

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Obviously, this writer is biased against SYG.

The Media? Biased? Really?

Excellent example.

 

[wolf_fire]

Link Removed

Obviously, this writer is biased against SYG.

I love how the article uses terms such as "... a study suggests". Really? Which study? A study done by whom? What were the results of this study so I can make my own informed opinion?

First of all, I really think it is a slippery slope to try to compare crime based on how easy it is to carry or based upon SYG laws because all the anti-gunners need is one year where the results are not favorable to gun owners. We carry because our fore-fathers had the wisdom to create the second Amendment to our Constitution. It is also the one amendment that uses the words "... shall not be infringed".

 

[walt629]

Looks like the paper had a lot of open space to fill so it when on a scavenger hunt for stuff to stuff into an open hole. A lot of misleading "study information" being used in the article.

References to "Going back hundreds of years English common law, which underlies much of US law, has recognized a “duty to retreat” first before using deadly force to counter an attacker" make me think the author longs for the good old days when only the "Lords of the Land" had access to self defense and it was the surfs responsibility to stand and take the punishment from whomever desires to deal it out.

Interesting that later in the article the autor resorts to using ambiguous language like "homicide" rather that defining which side of the law the participant in "an additional 600 homicides per year" stand on. Since the study came out of Texas A&M, you would think it would be more specific.

And I question if the article was original of the Alaska Dispatch or plagiarized from elsewhere considering this is the subtitle: "the Monitor's Editorial Board | The Christian Science Monitor | Jul 06, 2012"

 

[golocx4]

Crime Stats humph!
In the early 70's Stealing over $50.00 was a felony.
Sometime in the late 70's they changed the minimum to $150 Crime rate for theft dropped.

 

[golocx4]

Looks like the paper had a lot of open space to fill so it when on a scavenger hunt for stuff to stuff into an open hole. A lot of misleading "study information" being used in the article.

Under Common Law you had the right to use deadly force to protect your home/castle.
I never heard anything about a duty to retreat until recently. A case of re-writing history again me thinks.

 

[Nightmare45]

Simple answer is there is no duty to retreat, you have the absolute right to protect yourself and your family and I will. Look up the FBI/GOV crime stats, they have dropped, when Florida passed the CC law, crime against individuals fell, it fell on the law passing and it was not even in force. Criminals are lazy not stupid, they go for the easy target. I am not now, nor will I ever be an easy target. Peace, Love, Colt 45.

 

[Domineaux]

This article, and many more on "Stand Your Ground" are total BS.

First of all, the Zimmerman/Martin case that has fueled all this attention was never a valid example of "SYG" in use as Zimmerman only resorted to lethal force when he had no way to retreat and was having deadly force used against him, and even then based on the recorded cries for help, he hesitated before employing lethal force and the level of force employed was restrained (one shot was fired when he could have fired 5+ times).

Secondly the basis of "duty to retreat" from English Common Law is specific to cases such as a brawl or simple assault which does not excuse homicide in self-defense except when "but in sudden and violent cases; when certain and immediate suffering would be the consequence of waiting for the assistance of the law":

From Repuiblic Study Guide - Training Material Search Results

2. HOMICIDE in self-defense, or se defendendo , upon a sudden affray, is also excusable rather than justifiable, by the English law. This species of self-defense must be distinguished from that just now mentioned, as calculated to hinder the perpetration of a capital crime; which is not only a matter of excuse, but of justification. But the self-defense, which we are now speaking of, is that whereby a man may protect himself from an assault, or the like, in the course of a sudden brawl or quarrel, by killing him who assaults him. And this is what the law expresses by the word chance-medley , or (as some rather choose to write it) chaud-medley ; the former of which in its etymology signifies a casual affray, the latter an affray in the heat of blood or passion: both of them of pretty much the same import; but the former is in common speech too often erroneously applied to any manner of homicide by misadventure; whereas it appears by the statute 24 Hen. VIII. c. 5. and our ancient books,35 that it is properly applied to such killing, as happens in self-defense upon a sudden reencounter.36 This right of natural defense does not imply a right of attacking: for, instead of attacking one another for injuries past or impending, men need only have recourse to the proper tribunals of justice. They cannot therefore legally exercise this right of preventive defense, but in sudden and violent cases; when certain and immediate suffering would be the consequence of waiting for the assistance of the law. Wherefore, to excuse homicide by the plea of self-defense, it must appear that the slayer had no other possible means of escaping from his assailant.

Thirdly, failing to categorize the "study" results by "justifiable" or "non-justifiable" homicides shows clear bias.
I have read other articles about this "study" from Texas A&M and it specifically states that "castle doctrine laws increase the narrowly defined category of justifiable homicides by private citizens by 17 to 50 percent" while "the laws increase murder and manslaughter by a statistically significant 7 to 9 percent" which sounds to me like the good outweighs the bad, and many cases in that 7 to 9 percent are likely cases that would otherwise have been found as justifiable except that the "defender" was either engaged in criminal activity or not in a place where his legal right to be was covered under SYG laws.