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Notes -
Turning to some good news:
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This is a WSJ article about the rise in justified homicides in the US in recent years. Much of it is about "Stand Your Ground Laws." I'd be interested to hear the thoughts of the more lawyer-brained Mottizens on those kind of laws and their proliferation over the past decade or so.
On the culture war angle, this article is maybe the starkest example of "erosion of trust in society" that I've come across. A few of the anecdotes are pretty hair raising. They're cherry picked, I know, but the idea that a kid loses his father over an argument about a a fence and a property line made me sad. The "road range" incident they cover in detail seems like it was unfortunate but when one guy levels a gun at another, there's only one reasonable reaction.
Violence must be tightly controlled for a society to function. This is something that's bone deep in humans. We've developed methods of conflict resolution that fall short of violence for our entire existence as a species. Even within the context of violence, there are various ways of controlling it. Duels and so forth. Even informal ones; basic Bro code dictates that when one guy falls down in a fight, the other one backs off.
But this article hints at the idea that people are zooming past any of that to full lethality. It's impossible to compile the stats to determine if that's actually the case or not, but the larger point remains; in a society with plunging basic trust, you're going to see levels of interpersonal violence spike. How should state laws governing violence respond to this? Stand Your Ground is something I generally still support, but my mind could be changed if simple Bad Neigbor fights end up with more orphans.
So self defense claims are based on five pillars:
All the state/prosecution needs to do is show the person is guilty of breaking ONE of those pillars to knock out a self defense claim - even if the other four are met.
Did the jury think you started the deadly force fight? Guilty.
Did the jury think you escalated the fight into deadly force? Guilty.
Did the jury think there no imminent threat? Guilty.
Did the jury think you were not being reasonable with your evaluation of a deadly force threat? Guilty.
Did the jury think you could have run away in the heat of the encounter? Guilty.
News and politicians frequently don't understand (or actively lie) about how self defense is determined in the law - not understanding that Stand Your Ground only removes the requirement of avoidance, but not the other four pillars. It isn't a pass for you to not be innocent, respond to non-deadly force with deadly force, react before the threat is imminent, or have your decisions not be reasonable.
If the news or politicians blame people saying "they feared for their life" on Stand Your Ground, that is arguing reasonableness, not avoidance - Stand Your Ground only deals with avoidance. This is an example of either not understanding self defense law or lying. If the jury felt the fearing for their life wasn't reasonable (or the person is lying about fearing for their life), Stand Your Ground wouldn't matter, as they'd fail the reasonableness pillar and be guilty.
Zimmerman was a classic example of Stand Your Ground being blamed - but the defense never argued it and didn't need to. When Zimmerman shot Trayvon Martin, he was pinned to the ground and being pummeled - there was nowhere to run to - so there was no need to argue he didn't need to run away (pillar five, avoidance), he physically couldn't.
What people are upset about is they feel stand your ground lets people go "looking for trouble" - Zimmerman should have minded his own business and not go looking for Martin - but that is just something that would be impossible to regulate in the real world. It also puts the cart before the horse: the attacker shouldn't have started a deadly force fight.
Are there situations where things are "awful but lawful"? Of course! If someone who couldn't walk without crutches attacks someone with a knife in a stand your ground state, instead of running to safety it allows you to stab them / shoot them legally, even if you could have easily escaped.
There are also the reverse cases wherein what should be an innocent person who used self-defense correctly only to be convicted because a good prosecutor can have the jury "Monday Morning Quarterbacking" the decision the person who used self defense made in the split second they had in a life or death fight that maybe they could have gotten away (even if the person being attacked didn't actually see a valid avenue of escape, so long as the jury felt they had one)
I'd suggest the vast majority of self defense cases never actually invoke stand your ground in a trial and it is just a boogeyman being used by people to explain increasing violence, but can't regulate a "mind your own business" ethic when something bad happens to a person who is a part of a class that gets special considerations from certain ideologies.
I see two main issues. One, is that actually a fair characterization of all SYG laws, that they only narrowly remove avoidance? I remember seeing it strongly argued that #1 was often directly undermined or made irrelevant by such laws, though I’m not sure about the truth of that. Related, and you see this a bit in the thread, is that SYG sort of “begs the question” in a sense where the very presence of a gun re-interprets a fight as lethal disfavorably to a would be assailant quite often. I realize sympathy for assailants is low around here, but common law does usually support the idea that e.g. a fistfight or an unarmed mugging is usually not a fight to the death (of course intentionality matters). The presence of a gun obviously changes the calculus. But who assumes this extra risk, is the operative question? I appreciate what SYG laws are trying to do but I do wonder if the matter is quite as clear cut as you say. As an example, should a conscious decision to bring a gun to an otherwise nonlethal dispute have any bearing on the legal responsibility, and do SYG laws impact that kind of finding?
I try to avoid absolutes, but I haven't seen any SYG law that did anything except remove avoidance - which isn't to say a judge or jury somewhere misunderstood it in a case - so if I could be pointed to a bad SYG law that removes more than avoidance, I'd love to see it.
In this case, the defender with the gun isn't legally allowed to use it in a non-lethal confrontation - it would break the proportion pillar, just having the gun doesn't permit one to use it. SYG also doesn't do anything here as if the "defender" goes for the gun, they are not acting in legal self defense with or without SYG.
Theoretically, and I am confident this has happens fairly often, two people who are both armed (guns holstered) and get into a shoving match without anything else happening. In this example, if one of them reaches for their gun, they have elevated a non-lethal confrontation into a lethal one, and the other person is now legally allowed to go for their gun. If no one reaches for their gun, it is a non-lethal confrontation regardless of guns being present - same as if they each had a sheathed knife or sword.
To give you your due, however, the presence of guns (or any other lethal weapon) does heighten tensions as actions in the heat of a confrontation can be misinterpreted and someone quickly lowering their hand to their side can look just like reaching for the gun. That is an incredibly unfortunate example, though, again, this isn't an issue caused by SYG or remedied by removing SYG - with or without SYG a confrontation where lethal weapons are around (even when holstered) is much more likely to escalate to legal self defense due to misinterpretation of actions.
In a weird way, guns essentially remove the avoidance pillar in most self defense cases to begin with (making SYG redundant), as as Nybbler put it: you can't outrun a bullet. It would be a very unusual self defense case where the prosecution could reasonably suggest a person can safely run from a lethal confrontation with an attacker with a gun.
Where SYG would most likely apply is when the "attacker" has a melee weapon of some sort and the "defender" has a gun - but is also confident they could safely remove themselves from the situation yet still decide to use the gun instead. I would be surprised if the number of cases which fit this fact pattern or similar to this is incredibly small - making SYG a boogeyman. I'm not even really defending SYG laws as much as I am pointing out it is probably used effectively in a handful of cases annually and is being smeared by people who either have no idea how self defense law works or are lying for political/legislative ends.
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If you don't have an example you're just spreading FUD.
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