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Brandon Reagan
Dr. Benz
Soc 401.01
Final draft
Assessing Stand Your Ground Laws
Abstract
The stand your ground laws have been a topic of recent debate. Defended
by gun rights advocates and criticized by those who advocate the
continuation of life, they have gained much infamy by the recent case of the
death of Trayvon Martin. This writing provides brief definitions of what stand
your ground entails, a history of what may have triggered the laws to be
enacted, and an explanation of where the law stands today. A review of the
literature reveals that stand your ground laws possess a higher risk than
benefit potential, and should be rescinded.
Introduction
Since 2004, 24 states have adopted stand your ground laws. Stand your ground
law is defined as having no duty to retreat a situation before resorting to the use of
deadly force without being limited to the property of your home (Yue 2014). It is popular
for many reasons including that it can make people feel safe in dangerous situations if
they are carrying a weapon and are allowed to use it, and if the weapon used by the
defendant does not have to fear legal repercussions. However, it should not be legal
because it promotes using weapons when there are other options, takes away the
opportunity for a person who dies in result of deadly force to fix the situation using other
means, and takes the court’s ability to judge a situation out of the picture. Stand your
ground laws are dangerous, unnecessary, and make it too easy to take another
person’s life.
Roadmap

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In the following pages, a brief explanation and definition of stand your ground law
is provided. Next, there is an explanation of why it is important to care about the policy
including the history of how it came to be. After that, strengths and weaknesses of the
policy are discussed. Evidence is provided that demonstrates how this policy can lead
to unnecessary violence. Finally, a summary is provided on the positive and negative
outcomes of stand your ground laws.
Describe
Stand your ground (SYG) law states that a person may use deadly force in self-
defense without the duty to retreat when faced with a reasonable perceived. Stand your
ground laws are built on the premise that an individual should not be obligated by law to
run or retreat from a threat to themselves or loved ones. This may sound like a good
idea, since a person should have a right to self-defense, however, the nuances of the
laws are rather vague and unclear.
“Prosecutions, at their core, are stories. Depending how the story is told, and
maybe even depending on who tells the story, the case can be dramatically different”
(Lawson, 2012, p. 273). According to Tamara Lawson (2012) one of the biggest issues
with stand your ground laws, as in the case of Trayvon Martin, is the near guarantee
that only one side of a case can be shared due to the fact that the holder of the other
side is dead by the time facts can be considered. This undermines the goals of the court
system and takes away the option of serving justice to people who are wrongfully killed
in instances where there were more solutions to a problem than self-defense killing.
Policies like this can be problematic and actually pose more of a problem or extension
to the problem than a solution. Zachary Weaver (2008) examines how Florida’s stand

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your ground law unnecessarily adds to the right to use deadly force. It is already legally
recognized and acceptable to use force against another person in self-defense.
Elizabeth Megale (2010) examined how the stand your ground law in Florida can
take vague definitions and allow for them to be twisted in court as a defense. She
begins by exploring how a “reasonable perceived threat” is defined. Megale says it
would be up to the person who is under threat which leaves a large amount of room to
come to different conclusions. However, there is no room to decide if the threat was
legitimate enough to use deadly force after the fact. This would put the decision to
determine a reasonable perceived threat into the hands of any person who feels
threatened for any reason and give them justification to use deadly force. Not to
mention the fact that officers reporting to the scene of the crime have the ability to
decide if a person acted in self-defense and grant that person immunity in court which
goes against the fourteenth amendment of the constitution because it ignores the due
process of law (Megale, 2010).
Florida enacted the stand your ground laws first in 2005 (Sullivan 2013). What
makes SYG laws different than more traditional self-defense laws is that SYG overrides
the duty to retreat. The duty to retreat is described as such: if a person is under eminent
threat, that person must first make every attempt to escape a threatening situation
before acting in self-defense (Sullivan 2013). Traditional self-defense was already legal
under common law which just makes SYG a deadly extension to the already legal use
of self-defense. Up until Florida passed its SYG law in 2005, most states had what is
known as the Castle Doctrine on the books as a self-defense law. Castle Doctrine is
defined the same as stand your ground except it limited the use of deadly force in self-

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defense to a person’s castle, which includes their property, vehicle, or home depending
on the state. The SYG laws permit or even justify using deadly force as a first resort to
solving a problem. Since then, over thirty states have also adopted similar laws
(Sullivan, 2015). States have what is called the castle doctrine Light (2012) wrote about
the castle doctrine in Pennsylvania and the different ways it can be interpreted. He finds
that the castle doctrine overrides the duty to retreat when inside of the home, or in some
states a car or place of business, and instead permits using deadly force to defend
property, self, or other people within these premises. For example, in Pennsylvania, a
castle can even be extended to places near the home a person resides in, which is still
open to many different interpretations (Light, 2012). The castle doctrine is insufficient
because people are more likely to be threatened outside of their castle and stand your
ground fills the gap by allowing the same rights anywhere.
Discussion
The stand your ground laws have potential to provide an incentive to kill, and
even an unnecessary entitlement to kill another person in situations with other possible
outcomes. A law like this can lead to unnecessary shootings, people dueling as if they
are cowboys on the frontier. Giving the option to shoot first and ask questions later
overrides options to work out a problem and leads to more grimace conclusions to
disagreements. Important points that may arise while determining the legitimacy and
need for the stand your ground law include, how this law started, and next what this law
has led to today.
There were several high profile incidents that triggered the adoption of SYG laws
across the country. For example, the case of James Workman, a Florida man who in

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2004 shot and killed a man who entered his trailer when he was asleep. This case was
ruled in self-defense after a trial that was deemed too lengthy and drawn out (Sullivan
2013). The length of time this case took was part of what fueled the passage of stand
your ground laws because people thought that it should have immediately been decided
self-defense without the need to go through bureaucratic red tape in the court. This was
a commonly cited case that led to the passing of stand your ground. It was an example
of a person acting in self-defense who already was acting in accordance of the currently
existing law before stand your ground came about. Politicians spun this case into a
larger deal by using the opinion that a case like this should not have taken so long and
wasted so much time of a 77 year old man even with the fact that he had shot and killed
another human being.
Lave (2012) explores the case of Workman further. She found that the problem
was not James Workman being identified as guilty of unjust murder. Rather, the real
problem was the fact that it took three months of bureaucratic court rulings to seal the
case identifying Workman as innocent. The stand your ground law was passed as an
effort to speed up and even eliminate the need for court involvement in the first place
(Lave, 2012). A problem of this complexity, however, should be looked at carefully and
decided in court because it involves the most heinous and serious crime of them all
which is the murder of another person. Stand your ground laws were introduced as a
solution to the complaint regarding the extensive in time it takes for courts to make
decisions.
Another example of a high profile case that brought SYG laws into the spotlight
would be the case of Trayvon Martin in 2012 which resulted in a public outrage. The

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case of Trayvon Martin includes the death of a black teen by a neighborhood watchman
by the name of George Zimmerman. Lawson (2012) suggest that this case has been
another set-back in the fight for racial equality due to the fact that Martin was black, in
the wrong place at the wrong time, and likely racially profiled by Zimmerman at the time
which prompted the incident. Due to the stand your ground law, Zimmerman was
released without any charges even though there was a significant lack of evidence that
Martin was shot in self-defense. Since Martin was dead and there were no witnesses,
no defense existed to provide a full story of what actually happened, and additionally,
none was needed to prove Zimmerman an unjust murderer. This case touches many
sensitive subjects including racism, unreasonable violence, and even death (Lawson,
2012). The issue then, if the need for quick legal decisions as the stand your ground law
brings about, is worth relying solely on the word of the person who killed the other, or if
this leads to sloppy legal conclusions, the perpetuation of inequality, and a license to
kill.
Make an Argument
To determine the legitimacy of the stand your ground law, there are many
aspects to look at. First, it must be decided if stand your ground is necessary to protect
the right to self-defense. Next, there is the question of if it is necessary to protect
innocent people. After that, it is important to look at the possibility that stand your
ground law promotes a vigilante mentality. The possibility of this law being racist is
another important factor. Finally, one must determine if stand your ground was
constitutional to enact in the first place. After examining these aspects, it is prudent to
conclude that this law is, in fact, hurting society as a whole.

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Stand your ground laws are not necessary to protect the right to self-defense.
Acting in self-defense is a basic legal right and stand your ground laws promote and
even encourage doing so with deadly force. By taking away the duty to retreat, people
are left in situations where they could duel with their guns leaving the survivor always
acting in self-defense due to the fact that their life was threatened by another person
holding a gun (Weaver, 2008). In the current day and age it should be expected that
there are better, fairer, and more humane ways to handle problems than opening fire
and ending the lives of those who have opposing. Mark Hoekstra and Cheng Cheng
(2013) examine the results of this new law and found that stand your ground has
actually led to an increase in murder rates. They came to the conclusion that taking
away restrictions of the use of lethal force made homicide numbers worse than before in
castle doctrine and stand our ground states. They used homicide, burglary and, and
aggravated assault data in the UCR to determine if people were using lethal force in
self-defense and increasing homicide.
With the intention of protecting innocent people, stand your ground laws have
consequently also had the unintended result of protecting possibly guilty people who
exercise their extended right of using lethal force. This leaves room for a gun owner to
overreact to a situation that in reality does not threaten their life, and unnecessarily take
life away from another person. Lawson (2012) finds that all a murderer must do to prove
self-defense is recount the event in a way that suggests they were under the possibility
of danger of losing their own life. The person who was acting in self-defense does not
even need to be correct about the potential threat of losing their life as long as their
story paints a supporting picture that the offender was indeed potentially dangerous.

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(Lawson, 2012) In many cases, the shooter can be incorrect about the danger potential
that the other person presented to them, and has led to lives being ended without a real
purpose. (Lawson, 2012) This leaves a scary dilemma where a person can shoot
another, then concoct a false story of how they thought the other person had a gun or
other dangerous weapon that put their life under eminent threat regardless of the fact
that the person they shot may have not even had a weapon to use. In this case, the
courts are only looking for a perceivable threat instead of a real threat that would have
justified using a gun in self-defense.
Next we will explore how by enacting stand your ground laws, a vigilante
mentality is employed to the public. A vigilante mentality is employed to the public by
enacting stand your ground laws. Aya Gruber (2014) finds arming a neighborhood
watch program with stand your ground laws promotes vigilante squads by assessing
different neighborhoods after the passage of said stand your ground laws. This is
exactly what led to the death of Trayvon Martin as he was murdered by a trigger
enthused neighborhood watchman. People employed as neighborhood watch are given
the title with the intention to keep an eye on the neighborhood and to call the police if a
problem does in fact arise. The stand your ground law allows these people to take
matters into their own hands and deal with the case using the legal backing to shoot if
they feel threatened. (Gruber, 2014) The main problem here is that there are
alternatives to shooting somebody. In a society where life is the most sacred entity of a
person, giving the option to shoot somebody or end their life with just perceived fear is
dangerous and against all that is stood for in a country where a part of the foundation of
the legal system suggests a person is innocent until proven guilty. If a person is

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innocent until proven guilty, it is not possible that the perceived threat of danger is
enough to take another person’s life.
Among other issues, stand your ground law is racist in practice. On legal
documents, the law is non-discriminatory, however, in practice a person of color is more
likely to have their life ended and justified by this law (Jones, 2014). One way Jones
suggests racist tendencies of the law is by making the claim that there is an inaccurate
stereotype of black males that makes them out to be problem causing by nature. Jones
suggest that an amount smaller than one percent of black males are responsible for
committing violent crimes.
Since the possibly racially driven death of Trayvon Martin, Fair (2014) claimed
the law was under serious attack after Martin’s death even after Zimmerman was
charged with second degree murder after the second trial of the case. Not only is the
law racist, but women are at a significant disadvantage when the law is used as well. In
the case of domestic occurrences, women have a significantly lower chance of
benefiting from stand your ground laws than men do meaning that they will likely be
guilty regardless of the truth.
Justin Murphy argued against the law on multiple levels. Research showed that if
the victim was white and the person trying to use the law was of color, there was
extremely low chance of the law following in their favor. Next, using mainly domestic
cases, women shooters had a very low chance of benefitting from the law when they
took lethal action against a male victim. From Murphy’s research, it can be concluded
that this law mainly benefits white males, who were already at an advantage by legal

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recourse, putting minorities and women even farther behind in a fight for equality and
fairness.
The final, and possibly most problematic, issue with the stand your ground law is
that it is unconstitutional. The vagueness of the law leaves it open to interpretations that
can be cleverly reworded as a defense when posed in courtroom situations. Giving
immunity of court ignores the standard procedure of due process of law and takes lives
of individuals (Megale, 2010). Megale also finds that there is not equal and fair
application of the law when it is practiced due to racial and sexist tendencies. Megale
reports that giving immunity in situations which happen in the castle or home, it is
almost always assumable that the act was in self-defense, leaving little room to question
the possibility that it was not. This is different from stand your ground cases because in
the home there is not likely going to be any other witnesses, which leads to an unfair
result. The main point is that killing the only other witness leads to an unfair trial and
granting immunity closes the option of a trial existing at all.
In defense of stand your ground law, there are also some positive outcomes that
come with it. Sara Ochs defended stand your ground law in situations where people
were defending themselves or their property and put in jail before the law was in place.
One of the main points was that the law gives victims of violent crime protection under
the law to defend their lives. Next, in cases like that of James Workman, the trials can
take too long, therefore depriving people who legitimately used the law to protect
themselves of time and energy in their life murder is a big deal, we should investigate it
which takes time. Killing someone should not be as easy as buying groceries
Conclusion

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With all aspects being taken into consideration, the potential costs of the stand
your ground law significantly outweigh the benefits. The stand your ground law is as
dangerous as a loaded weapon and can be easily used in court to protect a person
guilty of murder. The common law of self-defense, by itself, is enough to protect people
that are actually acting in self-defense. This makes the stand your ground law an
unnecessary expansion that makes killing a person a first resort rather than a last
resort. Stand your ground is not a solution to the rare problem of people being charged
with murder in acts of self-defense, but rather a problem that is more likely to grant
freedom to people who engaged in the act of murder. Stand your ground laws are
dangerous, unnecessary, and give too much freedom to the hands of a person willing to
take a life of another, even if it is unjust. Killing a person and receiving immunity takes
away the opportunity to serve justice to the person murdered if it was not done in self-
defense. All in all, stand your ground laws do more harm than good and need to be
repealed.

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Works Cited
Cheng, C., & Hoekstra, M. (2013). Does Strengthening Self-Defense Law Deter Crime
or Escalate Violence? Evidence from Expansions to Castle Doctrine. Journal Of
Human Resources, 821-853.
Fair, M. (2014). Dare defend: standing for stand your ground. Law and Psychology
Review, 153-161.
Gruber, A. (2014). Race to incarcerate: punitive impulse and the bid to repeal Stand
Your Ground. University of Miami Law Review, 961-1023.
Jones, M. D. (2014). "He's a black male ... something is wrong with him!" The role of
race in the Stand Your Ground debate. University of Miami Law Review, 1025-
1050.
Lawson, T. F. (2012). A fresh cut in an old wound - a critical analysis of the Trayvon
Martin killing: the public outcry, the prosecutors' discretion, and the stand your
ground law. University of Florida Journal of Law and Public Policy, 271-310.
Lave, T. (2012). Shoot to Kill: A Critical Look at Stand Your Ground Laws. University of
Miami Law Review, 67(827), 827-857.
Light, J. G. (2012). The Castle Doctrine – The Lobby My Dwelling. Widener Law
Journal, 22(1), 219-252.
Megale , E. B. (2010). Deadly Combinations: How Self-Defense Laws Pairing Immunity
with a Presumption of Fear Allow Criminals to "Get Away with Murder". 34 Am. J.
Trial Advoc., 105-134.
Murphy, J. (2015). A Statistical Analysis of Racism and Sexism in "Stand Your Ground"
Cases in Florida, 2006-2013. University of Southampton. – this one doesn’t count
as peer reviewed, unless published in a journal
Ochs, S. (2013). Can Louisiana's Self-Defense Law Stand Its Ground: Improving the
Stand Your Ground Law in the Murder Capital of America. Loyola Law Review, 59, 673-
722.
Sullivan, S. (2013, July 13). Everything you need to know about ‘stand your ground’
laws. Washington Post. Retrieved April 6, 2015
Weaver, Z. L. (2008). Florida's "stand your ground" law: the actual effects and the need
for clarification. University of Miami Law Review, 395-430.
Yue, Y. (2014). Deterrence Effect of Stand Your Ground Law on Crime in Eastern US
State. Atlantic Economic Journal, 42(1), 119-120.