{"id":92076,"date":"2023-04-21T18:54:38","date_gmt":"2023-04-21T23:54:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=92076"},"modified":"2023-04-22T04:36:17","modified_gmt":"2023-04-22T09:36:17","slug":"92076","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/?p=92076","title":{"rendered":""},"content":{"rendered":"

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.<\/strong>…does not rise to the reasonableness standard required by self-defense law.”<\/em>\u00a0 \u00a0Well, under Missouri revised statutes 563.031<\/a>
\n2. A person shall not use deadly force upon another person under the circumstances specified in subsection 1 of this section unless:
\n(2) Such force is used against a person who unlawfully enters, remains after unlawfully entering, or attempts to unlawfully enter<\/span><\/span> a dwelling, residence, or vehicle<\/strong><\/em> lawfully occupied by such person;
\nIn effect you can do exactly that<\/em> 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.<\/p>\n

Stand Your Ground laws do not allow you to \u2018shoot first and ask questions later\u2019<\/a><\/p>\n

Three recent shootings have, understandably, raised concerns about the legality of using lethal force in self-defense. Sixteen-year-old\u00a0Ralph Yarl was injured<\/a>\u00a0after approaching the wrong house in Kansas City while trying to pick up his siblings. Twenty-year-old\u00a0Kaylin Gillis was killed<\/a>\u00a0after a car she was riding in pulled into the wrong driveway in upstate New York. And\u00a0two teenage cheerleaders were shot<\/a>\u00a0in Austin, Texas, after one of them got into the wrong car in a grocery store parking lot.<\/p>\n

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\u00a0\u201cto shoot to kill & claim self-defense.\u201d<\/a>\u00a0Everytown even goes so far as to say these laws\u00a0\u201cgive people a license to kill.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

These groups and\u00a0even scholars studying gun violence<\/a>\u00a0refer to Stand Your Ground (SYG) laws as \u201cshoot first\u201d laws, short for \u201cshoot first and ask questions later.\u201d As a gun scholar, gun owner and opponent of gun violence, I fear that equating SYG with the legal right to \u201cshoot first\u201d could unintentionally mislead people into thinking that self-defense laws truly give them a blanket license to kill with impunity.<\/p>\n

They do not.<\/p>\n

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 \u201cshoot first\u201d 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?<\/p>\n

First, the shootings of Ralph Yarl and Kaylin Gillis took place at the shooters\u2019 homes, not in public spaces. Therefore,\u00a0SYG law does not apply to these cases<\/a>. (Not to mention that New York does not even have a SYG law.) If anything, they would fall under the common-law principle of\u00a0\u201ccastle doctrine,\u201d<\/a>\u00a0which allows people to use reasonable force \u2014 up to and including lethal force \u2014 to protect themselves and their loved ones at home. It allows people to stand their ground in their own \u201ccastle.\u201d<\/p>\n

SYG laws can be understood as extending castle doctrine into public space. They apply, in the language of\u00a0Florida\u2019s landmark law<\/a>, to any individual \u201cwho is not engaged in an unlawful activity and who is attacked in any other place where he or she has a right to be.\u201d 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\u00a0criminal assault<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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 \u201cmeet force with force, including deadly force.\u201d This also highlights that the individual claiming self-defense must establish their reasonableness.<\/em> 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.<\/p>\n

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\u00a0Renisha McBride in Detroit<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Jordan Davis in Jacksonville<\/a>. Both shooters claimed self-defense but are now incarcerated for murder.<\/p>\n

Reasonableness, of course, is determined in the criminal justice system,\u00a0which is marred by racial inequality<\/a>. 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 \u2014 politically charged rhetoric like \u201cshoot first\u201d is harmful.<\/p>\n

Stand Your Ground does not allow anyone to \u201cshoot first and ask questions later.\u201d Not within the law, at least. Please stop saying it does.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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.”\u00a0 \u00a0Well, under Missouri revised statutes 563.031 2. A person shall not use deadly force upon another person … Continue reading “”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-92076","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-safety","category-self-defense"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92076","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=92076"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92076\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":92080,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92076\/revisions\/92080"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=92076"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=92076"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/milesfortis.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=92076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}