—Barbara Standard, whose son, unarmed, was killed after he threw a rock at a truck
True, but Barbara Standard does not appreciate the irony. The Wild West, at least the mythical one being invoked, required both participants be armed. As we have learned from movies and TV, if someone threatens you, the law of the Wild West allows you to "stand your ground" and kill them in a 'fair' gunfight. The modern "stand your ground" law requires no such honor.
Here is paragraph 3 of the Florida law:
A person 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 has no duty to retreat and has the right to stand his or her ground and meet force with force, including deadly force if he or she reasonably believes it is necessary to do so to prevent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony.Barbara Standard's son, Scott, was unarmed. He threw a rock at the truck of someone with whom he had a long rivalry. The shooter claimed he was threatened and justified to shoot him under Florida's "stand your ground" law. The judge agreed.
George Zimmerman also claims he is protected by the law in the shooting and killing of Trayvon Martin.
And the former Florida governor, Jeb Bush, who signed the bill into law in 2005 and supported its passage, said Saturday he did not think it should protect Zimmerman, who shot the unarmed teen after trailing him as Trayvon walked to the home of a family friend living in the same gated community as Zimmerman.
“Stand your ground means stand your ground. It doesn’t mean chase after somebody who’s turned their back,” Bush said while speaking at the University of Texas in Arlington.
But the law as written in Florida and at least 20 other states does not require a person to retreat to prevent a possible altercation; and it does not address the question of whether it is OK to chase down someone who has been perceived as a threat. In fact, last Wednesday, a Florida judge threw out the second-degree murder case against a man who chased a burglar more than a block and stabbed him to death. Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Beth Bloom cited "stand your ground," the Miami Herald reported
5 comments:
I wonder how many people who support the stand your ground laws also purport to be a faithful follower of the fellow who said this:
Whoever hits you on the cheek, offer him the other also; and whoever takes away your coat, do not withhold your shirt from him either. ... Treat others the same way you want them to treat you.
Exactly. I was going to add that this law could also be called the anti-Gandi or anti-Martin Luther King law.
But calling it the anti-Christian law works just as well. Perhaps this is finally a move to remove religion from politics or has religion become so twisted that it has become anti-Christian?
Where is Christopher Hitchens when we need him?
Of course, it should read, "anti-Gandhi".
Perhaps with the "stand your ground" laws, we are arriving at the place predicted by Yeats:
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
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