Stand Your Ground Laws Make America Unsafe

NB: We do not resell your papers. Upon ordering, we do an original paper exclusively for you.

NB: All your data is kept safe from the public.

Table of Contents

Stand Your Ground Law Make America Unsafe
Increased Insecurity and Homicide Incidences
Difficulty in Prosecuting Cases and Indefinite Parameters
Potential Racial Bias
Non-Deterrent on Serious Crimes
Conclusion
References

American citizens have the right to protect themselves against and their properties from any unwanted invasions by assailants. The Stand Your Ground law enacted and implemented in numerous states provides various favorable defenses for people criminally charged with homicide. The statute empowers individuals to use deadly force in self-defense instead of retreating when they believe they are under an imminent threat of being killed, kidnapped, raped, or victimized in other ways. This is an alternative to a legal requirement in other states, which demands that a person repelling an invasion should not use deadly power when it is possible to retreat with complete safety. The law’s principal objective is to enhance Americans’ overall safety by asserting their rightful occupation of a place and protecting themselves against imminent danger. However, this has not been achieved, indicating the general counterproductivity of the statute. This paper underscores how the Stand Your Ground laws have contributed to making America more unsafe.

Stand Your Ground Law Make America Unsafe

Although the Stand Your Ground (SYG) laws were meant to make Americans safer by empowering them to repel attacks with deadly force, they have contributed to a rise in insecurity. These statutes authorize people to use lethal power when they perceive or believe to be facing such threats as kidnapping, rape, murder, or bodily harm. They provide favorable defenses for persons charged with killing an assailant who attacks them while in their homes or rightfully in public places. Notably, the laws are an alternative to the duty to retreat, which requires an individual, unlawfully attacked, to deescalate a confrontation or safely flee from aggression instead of fatally injuring the invader. This implies that under SYG, an accused person can claim self-defense since they are not obliged to retreat or escape from the danger. Although the core aim was to enhance the security of Americans, the accruing demerits outweigh the realizable benefits of the law.

Increased Insecurity and Homicide Incidences

Among the prominent drawbacks of SYG is the inherent spike in unjustifiable homicides, gun-related incidences, and insecurity. Historically, the Castle Doctrine accords Americans the right to defend themselves against intrusion in their homes without imposing any obligation to retreat or flee from the attacker. This long-standing common law principle seeks to preserve the sanctity of peoples’ residences and their security from violation while within the precincts of their dwellings. However, SYG expands the application of this tenet to places outside the victim’s apartment. The direct implication of these laws is that they influence peoples’ perception towards the use of lethal force, effectively reducing their likelihood of considering or taking alternative actions.

Multiple studies have demonstrated the inherent association of SYG and proliferation in homicide and gun-related incidences. For instance, Gius (2016) observes that SYG statutes are positively related to a spike in insecurity, crime, and unjustified murders. These findings are corroborated by Levy et al. (2019) and Humphrey et al. (2017), who contend that states without SYG legislation have fewer incidences of homicide compared with those that have enacted the law. Indeed, the expanded reach and scope of these laws do not promote or enhance the legitimate acts of self-defense but encourage the use of lethal force without attracting legal repercussions. In this regard, the SYG statutes have made the country more insecure compared to previous periods.

Difficulty in Prosecuting Cases and Indefinite Parameters

SYG gives unfettered discretion and powers to people in societies where the laws have been enacted and implemented. These statutes foster an attack-first mentality among the people when they encounter uncomfortable situations. Consequently, this has rendered the prosecution of individuals who commit crimes more difficult due to the possibility of pledging self-defense. For instance, Elijah al-Amin, a 17-year-old teen, was stabbed multiple times by Michael Adams because he was unsafe and felt threatened by the hip-hop artists (Lartey, 2019). Adam argued that he felt the need to be proactive in extinguishing the presented threat instead of reactive. Similarly, the ambiguity, indefinite parameters, and absence of a precise threshold of what constitutes reasonable belief of imminent danger pose a significant challenge in the prosecution of such incidences in the courts.

Further, the SYG laws are primarily on abstractions and assumptions, allowing extreme latitude, leeway, and flexibility under the statute. In this regard, the implementation of this law presents a major problem since there is no quantification of what reasonable fear encompasses. Headly and Alkadry (2016) argue that there lack clear-cut standards which define the starting point of when a victim would feel or perceive to be under the risk of the covered crimes. In this regard, SYG statutes have unnecessarily complicated the prosecution processes by failing to precisely define the parameters and giving people extensive powers and discretion to use lethal force. From this perspective, these statutes allow perceived, imagined, or presumed fear to dictate the juries’ verdicts instead of a solidly identified threat.

Potential Racial Bias

Over the years, homicide incidences in the United States have disproportionately fallen on African Americans. While on the surface, SYG laws reinforce peoples’ right to protect themselves, multiple studies have illustrated their differential impact on diverse racial groups, pointing to the possibility of racially inspired violence against the blacks. Despite America’s pursuit of enhancing racial equality, there remains a disturbing pattern of more homicides and firearm incidences launched against the blacks. According to Boeck et al. (2020), African Americans are twice as highly likely to be victims of homicides than their white counterparts. The implication of SYG is that it significantly undermines the successes achieved in promoting racial balance by failing to recognize the differential burden of homicides on blacks.

Moreover, the notions of self-defense across the United States have remained relatively unchanged, with Black Americans perceived to pose an inherent danger to the whites. These implicit structural biases and negative social concepts are widespread across the United States. Indeed, a person’s skin color has been directly associated with the propensity to commit a crime or pose a danger for some people. In this regard, the passage and subsequent implementation of SYG laws could potentially promote or encourage people to act on their implicit prejudices and biases. When individuals are faced with an uncomfortable situation with limited time to react, they act on these imposes. As a result, mild aggression involving a black and a white person may be considered more threatening and attract a lethal reaction from the latter than an identical behavior involving two white people. Therefore, the potential bias and social prejudices against some races project SYG laws as discriminatory and racist.

Non-Deterrent on Serious Crimes

The enactment of laws is intended to promote some social good or serve as deterrence for some undesirable behaviors. Although the SYG laws were meant to enhance the security of Americans by empowering them to lethally eliminate a threat, there is no conclusive evidence that this objective has been achieved. On the contrary, these statutes do not lead to a reduction in serious criminal incidences in the states in which they were enacted (Gius, 2016). Indeed, the law incentivizes criminal elements to acquire even more powerful firearms to ensure they succeed in surmounting the defensive force initiated by the victim. In this regard, these laws have not been statistically effective in reducing the occurrence of serious crimes, such as murders, kidnappings, and rape. These events also contribute to the increase in the financial toll of violent gun incidences. Additionally, the blurriness of SYG statutes radically changes the nature of gun violence and firearm incidences in the United States by providing a loophole through which a person who murdered another can walk scot-free.

Conclusion

Stand your ground laws enacted in numerous states across the United States allow people to use lethal power when they perceive to be under imminent threat of death, kidnapping, rape, or other serious crimes. Although the specific components of the statutes vary by jurisdiction, they eliminate a person’s obligation to retreat or deescalate a confrontation before they can initiate a deadly self-defense reaction against the attacker. The principal objective of SYG was to enhance the safety and overall security of the Americans by empowering them to thwart any attacks from assailants. However, these laws have been associated with a spike in homicide, insecurity, and a general deterioration in peoples’ safety. Additionally, they disproportionately impact the people of color, complicate the prosecution process, and serve no deterrent purpose for violent crimes. From this perspective, the traditional self-defense statutes provide sufficient protection and eliminate the unfettered discretion and power for the people to unjustifiably kill others. Therefore, the demerits of SYG laws greatly outweigh the accruing benefits.

References

Boeck, M., Strong, B., & Campbell, A. (2020). Disparities in firearm injury: Consequences of structural violence.Current Trauma Reports, 6(1), 10–22. Web.

Gius, M. (2016). The relationship between stand-your-ground laws and crime: A state-level analysis.The Social Science Journal, 53(3), 329–338. Web.

Headly, A., & Alkadry, M. G. (2016). The fight or flight response: A look at stand your ground. Ralph Bunche Journal of Public Affairs, 5(1), 1–13. Web.

Humphreys, D., Gasparrini, A., & Wiebe, D. (2017). Evaluating the impact of Florida’s “stand your ground” self-defense law on homicide and suicide by firearm.JAMA Internal Medicine, 177(1), 44. Web.

Lartey, J. (2019). Man fatally stabs teenager listening to rap because he felt ‘threatened’ by music.The Guardian. web.

Levy, M., Alvarez, W., Vagelakos, L., Yore, M., & Khallouq, B. (2020). Stand your ground: Policy and trends in firearm-related justifiable homicide and homicide in the US.Journal of the American College of Surgeons, 230(1), 161–167.E4. Web.

Click Here To Order Now!