Category: Safety

Standing Your Ground Is A Constitutional Right

There’s a problem in our society when people face prosecution for defending themselves in public, and when a major network props up an anti-gun activist on Sunday morning television to ridicule the basic right to self-defense with lies and rhetoric, the underlying issue and our rights at large as Americans face even greater peril.

Unfortunately, that scenario is exactly what America got this past weekend when ABC’s Martha Raddatz held a discussion with a Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence attorney on “stand your ground” laws, in which the so-called expert blatantly lied on the air claiming these statutes and precedents “upend centuries of common law on self-defense and allow people to carry guns outside of the home…” This is utter nonsense.

Instead, while she briefly alluded to it on air, this so-called “expert on state gun laws” clearly is a supporter of the ludicrous “duty to retreat” laws that many leftist states still maintain. Despite the recent reinforcement of the inherent right to self-defense in New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen, these statutes, as their names suggest, require citizens, when faced with a seemingly life-threatening situation, to determine whether they can refrain from the use of deadly force by essentially running away. Further, a citizen who uses deadly force — even when threatened — could lose a claim to self-defense and potentially be charged with a crime, up to and including homicide, if it’s determined that a “retreat” should have been made.

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Prof. Yamane misunderstands one part of self defense law in Missouri when he states: “From where I stand, shooting someone through the locked glass of your front door.…does not rise to the reasonableness standard required by self-defense law.”   Well, under Missouri revised statutes 563.031
2. A person shall not use deadly force upon another person under the circumstances specified in subsection 1 of this section unless:
(2) Such force is used against a person who unlawfully enters, remains after unlawfully entering, or attempts to unlawfully enter a dwelling, residence, or vehicle lawfully occupied by such person;
In effect you can do exactly that to stop someone who’s trying to get in to where you are. That’s what a lot of people fail to take in account; each state’s laws on use of force may be very similar, but they are not all the same.

Stand Your Ground laws do not allow you to ‘shoot first and ask questions later’

Three recent shootings have, understandably, raised concerns about the legality of using lethal force in self-defense. Sixteen-year-old Ralph Yarl was injured after approaching the wrong house in Kansas City while trying to pick up his siblings. Twenty-year-old Kaylin Gillis was killed after a car she was riding in pulled into the wrong driveway in upstate New York. And two teenage cheerleaders were shot in Austin, Texas, after one of them got into the wrong car in a grocery store parking lot.

Gun violence prevention advocacy groups like Everytown for Gun Safety and Moms Demand Action have used these events to renew criticisms of Stand Your Ground laws for emboldening people “to shoot to kill & claim self-defense.” Everytown even goes so far as to say these laws “give people a license to kill.”

These groups and even scholars studying gun violence refer to Stand Your Ground (SYG) laws as “shoot first” laws, short for “shoot first and ask questions later.” As a gun scholar, gun owner and opponent of gun violence, I fear that equating SYG with the legal right to “shoot first” could unintentionally mislead people into thinking that self-defense laws truly give them a blanket license to kill with impunity.

They do not.

Self-defense laws actually place significant limits on the ability of individuals to use lethal force in self-defense lawfully. Whether people fully understand those limitations is an empirical question, but critics should drop the language of “shoot first” in referring to these laws. Instead, in the interest of public safety, why not educate people on the limited range of behaviors they in fact allow?

First, the shootings of Ralph Yarl and Kaylin Gillis took place at the shooters’ homes, not in public spaces. Therefore, SYG law does not apply to these cases. (Not to mention that New York does not even have a SYG law.) If anything, they would fall under the common-law principle of “castle doctrine,” which allows people to use reasonable force — up to and including lethal force — to protect themselves and their loved ones at home. It allows people to stand their ground in their own “castle.”

SYG laws can be understood as extending castle doctrine into public space. They apply, in the language of Florida’s landmark law, to any individual “who is not engaged in an unlawful activity and who is attacked in any other place where he or she has a right to be.” These are significant limitations in themselves. Someone mistakenly getting into your car and then immediately exiting cannot reasonably be considered an attack, so no lawful acts of self-defense are justified. The shooting in the Austin grocery store parking lot looks much more like an act of criminal assault.

Second, even under SYG, all the other legal requirements for using lethal force in self-defense still apply. In addition to innocence, there is the issue of proportionality: A person only has a right to “meet force with force, including deadly force.” This also highlights that the individual claiming self-defense must establish their reasonableness. The person must convince a prosecutor or a jury that other reasonable people in the same circumstances would similarly believe they were in danger of death or great bodily harm.

From where I stand, shooting someone through the locked glass of your front door or at a car in your driveway does not rise to the reasonableness standard required by self-defense law. These cases are reminiscent of the killings of Renisha McBride in Detroit and Jordan Davis in Jacksonville. Both shooters claimed self-defense but are now incarcerated for murder.

Reasonableness, of course, is determined in the criminal justice system, which is marred by racial inequality. But the flawed application of law and a flawed law are not the same. People of goodwill can disagree about whether Stand Your Ground laws are, on balance, good or bad. But both gun owners and non-owners must understand what self-defense laws actually allow and prohibit — politically charged rhetoric like “shoot first” is harmful.

Stand Your Ground does not allow anyone to “shoot first and ask questions later.” Not within the law, at least. Please stop saying it does.

ICYMI CDC Study Findings Show Americans with Guns Very Effective at Stopping Crime

Washington, DC – Remember that time a report from 2013 commissioned by President Barack Obama, conducted by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) found that the use of firearms for self-defense was and is a significant crime deterrent?

The report, titled “Priorities For Research to Reduce the Threat of Firearm-Related Violence,” * notes that most firearm incidents do not result in a fatality and that violent crimes, including homicides, have declined in the past five years. It also highlights that defensive gun uses by victims are at least as common as offensive uses by criminals, with estimates of annual uses ranging from about 500,000 to more than 3 million per year.

Commenting at the time, John Frazer, from the National Rifle Association, had this to say;

“I thought it was very telling that this report focused so heavily on . . . futuristic technology that’s not been brought to the market in any kind of reliable form that consumers have any interest in,” said John Frazer, director of research and information at the National Rifle Association (NRA).”

“These “smart gun” technologies are “designed to prevent misuse, to prevent either accidents or crimes committed with stolen guns,” Frazer noted. “Obviously it wouldn’t have any effect on crimes committed with a gun purchased by the criminal. It obviously wouldn’t have any effect on suicides by people who bought the guns themselves.” However, “it could have a huge burden on self-defense rights of law-abiding people if they’re forced to use an unproven technology.”

The CDC’s findings that guns are an effective and often used crime deterrent and that most firearm incidents are not fatal could affect the future of gun violence research.

However, there has been criticism of the study from some quarters, with concerns expressed that the research may be used to promote gun control.

“The anti-gun researchers out there who want to study and promote gun control are perfectly free to get funded to do that by [New York] Mayor Bloomberg or by any number of other organizations or foundations,” said Frazer. “It depends on who’s doing the research. I would be very concerned that a lot of the follow-up research that might come from this agenda would be more of what we’ve seen from the anti-gun public health establishment in the past.”

The report establishes guidelines meant only for future “taxpayer-funded research,” Frazer said. At the time, the Annie E. Casey Foundation issued a statement reaffirming its support for the study, which “is in keeping with our work to collaborate with public agencies, nonprofit organizations, policymakers, and community leaders to make a positive impact on the lives of kids, families, and communities.” Other supporters of the CDC study include The California Endowment, The Joyce Foundation, on whose Board of Directors Obama served for eight years prior to his Senate run, and Kaiser Permanente, which contributed over half a million dollars to his presidential campaigns.

The report highlights that the majority of firearm deaths are from suicide, not homicide.

African American males are most affected by firearm-related violence, with “32 per 100,000” deaths. Risk factors and predictors of violence include income inequality, “diminished economic opportunities . . . high levels of family disruption” and “low levels of community participation.”

This review of the CDC study underscores the importance of firearms for self-defense and as a crime deterrent. It recommends gun safety technologies as a means of reducing firearm-related deaths, rather than gun control measures. Despite the findings in his report, we can most certainly count on the biased MSM to only promote gun control as a solution to the out-of-control crime in 2023.

*Source “Priorities for Research to Reduce the Threat of Firearm-Related Violence”

This, and let teachers and school staff, who want to, be armed.
Private business will have to decide what each one wants to do.

There is something we can all do about mass shootings

Over the last two weeks, we’ve seen two mass shootings. Much as I’d like to say it, this isn’t unusual. Such horrible events seem to happen in clusters, where we’ll go months with relative quiet, only to see a number of shootings in fairly quick succession.

Such incidents always spark debate. We simply have to find some way to address the problem.

The thing is, we kind of already have a plan, and it’s one that doesn’t require us to trip over ourselves passing new laws.

All it takes is for people to decide to do something. We just stop making these people famous.

Here’s a take from my friend, Brad Polumbo, from a couple of years ago:

What if there was a way we could significantly reduce the number of mass shootings without either side having to sacrifice their policy principles?…

We could meaningfully decrease gun violence if both sides were simply willing to give up their cheap rhetoric. How do I know this? Because according to the American Psychological Association, the individuals who become mass shooters are often directly seeking the media infamy we continue to grant them.

Western New Mexico University Psychologist Jennifer B. Johnston has found in her research that mass shooters tend to be in the midst of rampant depression, social isolation, and pathological narcissism; they are in part driven to such heinous crime by their desire for national attention.

And it is undeniable that the wall-to-wall coverage in the wake of these mass shootings—coverage that is amplified and jacked up by partisan political attacks that instrumentalize the shooters’ names and identities—makes the crime all the more tantalizing for these mass murderers.

“We find that a cross-cutting trait among many profiles of mass shooters is desire for fame in correspondence to the emergence of widespread 24-hour news coverage on cable news programs, and the rise of the internet,” Johnston has said. “If the mass media and social media enthusiasts make a pact to no longer share, reproduce or retweet the names, faces, detailed histories or long-winded statements of killers, we could see a dramatic reduction in mass shootings in one to two years.”

In other words, we just stop making these schmucks famous.

Following both Nashville and Louisville, I’ve seen almost puff-piece-like articles describing the shooters. They give names, where they went to school, positive sentiments about the eventual killers, and everything else one would expect to see in a report on a new celebrity.

Their names get thrown around by the media with reckless abandon.

Even in death, they become celebrities of a sort. As Brad notes above, that’s what they want.

When you reward behavior, you get more of that behavior. From dogs to kids to grown adults, the truth is that if you give someone what they’re seeking when they perform a given action, you’re going to get more of that action. This is basic psychology.

Potential mass shooters see this and remember it. They want to be famous. They want to show the world.

And the media gives them exactly what they want.

No one is saying not to report on the shootings. We can and should cover them as well as details about the killers that might be relevant. We don’t need their names, though.

By letting these tools fall into obscurity, many of these shootings simply wouldn’t happen. The narcissistic need to seek fame would be sought out some other way, some way less fatal to innocent people.

And we don’t need laws to do this. We just need media outlets to stop naming names.

We don’t do it here. However, we often rely on news from places with no such efforts in place, and that bothers me.

We can take a big step with regard to mass shootings if the media would just step up for a change and do the right thing.