Let me throw out a scenario for you.
Three people. Person A, B and C.
Person A is a man who is harassing a women (person C). There is a verbal altercation. Person B, being a chivalrous guy steps in to see if there is a problem. Person A tells him to mind his own business. B responds stating that A needs to leave the woman alone. The situation escalates into a shoving match and then full on fight. Person A gets taken down and has been punched a few good times and is getting his ass kicked when he decides to invoke lethal force, pulling out his gun and killing person B.
Does he deserve to go to jail under the stand your ground law?
I should've said no witness saw the bully start the fight.
Stand your ground does not allow you to attack someone and then claim you were defending yourself. Whoever escalated the verbal altercation into a physical one started the fight and is in the wrong.
Yes, there are times where a person is incited to violence, but that is very difficult to prove.
What you almost always see is a "I am tougher than you" or "I am just an hothead who cannot control myself" type of idiot who decides that physically attacking someone is a smart thing to do.
Go read Ferns posts further up. Stand your ground does allow the aggressor to claim stand your ground law.
Furthermore, determining who the aggressor is isn't as easy as you make it out to be, in my opinion. Hell, in the Zimmerman case alone its difficult to say who the aggressor is. Sure, Trayvon made have made the first strike, but Zimmerman stalked him late at night, which could certainly be taken as an aggressive maneuver. My point is, unless absolutely necessary, to avoid mistakes like this, the person carrying the gun should have a responsibility to remove the deadly weapon from a delicate situation. You can carry it and use it if absolutely necessary. But if you have teh opportunity to safely remove it and yourself from the situation, that should be expected. The stand your ground law is the absolute opposite of that line of thinking.
I have not seen that portion in the law.
Then if the aggressor is so hard to figure out, why would it matter if the law allows the aggressor to use it (not saying it does)?
I should never be forced to run away because of the actions of a criminal when I have the ability to defend myself. Saying I must yield to criminals is absurd.
What parts of this law are unprecedented relative to previous self-defense laws?
Self-defense is usually an affirmative defense. This, OTOH, legalizes murder.
I walk up to you and shoot you in the head.
"He came at me."
= Immune from prosecution.
As long as there are no living witnesses (just shoot them all and claim they came at you), you get off scott free.
What parts of this law are unprecedented relative to previous self-defense laws?
Walking in the street
"Your mom"
"What WTF you say my mom" Boom get punched in the face dropping like a sack of potatoes
"F%^$% YOU" Bang
Dead
Haha he punched me first hahaha
It's up the person being attacked how they feel about the situation. Just like women "feel" sexually harassed and there is nothing you can say about it.I want to talk specifically about the stand your ground law. Obviously we will look at the Trayvon Martin case and others, but this thread is NOT about Trayvon Martin, but more importantly the law and whether or not it needs to be changed.
A friend and I were having a conversation the other day and we happened upon this conclusion. Depending on the verdict of the Martin/Zimmerman trial, we almost have a precedent that it is legal to use a gun during a fight. This seems to be an EXTREMELY slippery slope. Where do you draw the line?
Most of us being men in this forum, I think its safe to say most of us have been in at least one or two fights in our life. Shit happens. Now I've not been in any fights since the age of 18, but I wouldn't judge someone who was. A fight out at a nightclub or a bar. A disagreement at a sporting event. An argument in a traffic accident or road rage incident. The list goes on and on, but fights do happen.
Sometimes fights are simply pushing and shoving. Sometimes they escalate to punching and/or a wrestling match. The vast majority of these cases are NOT life threatening. Someone might get their ass kicked, but very rarely will it end fatal.
Well, with this stand your ground law, it brings in a MASSIVE gray area for when someone 'feels' their life is threatened. So basically, if I get in a fight with some guy who starts whooping my ass a little bit, I'm legally entitled to shoot him? Sure, if he doesn't stop he could kill me, but its just a fight, I'll probably just end up bruised and battered.
It just seems that this stand your ground law is WAAAY to dangerous. I'll be stunned if lawmakers don't revisit this law, as I think it is grossly irresponsible.
Discuss, but let's please try to keep it on topic of the law itself and not stray to racial issues, specifics about the Trayvon case etc... We have enough of that in the other threads.
No.
In the situation you describe the law requires:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stand-your-ground_law#Florida
Fern
It's up the person being attacked how they feel about the situation. Just like women "feel" sexually harassed and there is nothing you can say about it.
If i'm out with my daughter (2) and someone approaches me aggressivly, I am in hyper protective mode and would draw down very quickly
What if the bully started the fight and then shoots the guy? In florida & similar states he gets off scott free. As long as there are no witnesses, the bully goes free.
The problem is not who started the fight, it's KNOWING who started it.
Here we're going to be talking about cases where a person is shot and killed and the evidence leading to their death can be flimsy at best, or nonexistent at worse. Then we have to rely on their shooter to determine the proper handling of SYG.
That's very problematic, and I suppose extends beyond SYG and into shootings in general.
Would this be any better if knives were used in the fatality?
verbal insults are no excuse for violent reactoins
And you are EXACTLY the type of person that has no business carrying a gun. You are very likely to overreact, make a mistake and end someones life when there is no reason for it.
you know nothing about me. i'm more level headed and rational and have more patience than most people you'd meet. Thats to say that things typically don't get to me, I do show remarkable restraint in most situations. I get called 'pussy' because i'll deflect anger rather than feed into it and get into a physical altercation. I walk away from arguments. I'm very likely NOT to overreact. But if you come upon me when i'm with my daughter and are violent, you should have every expectation in your mind that you may end up 6-feet under pushing up daises.
I don't carry. There goes that theory.I don't know you, but I know a lot of people like you. I also can make an assumption based on a few things you said.
First of all, you talk like you are a badass with a gun. I've met tons of people who talk like this. Arrogant, I-Carry-A-Gun-So-Dont-Fuck-With-Me guys looking for a reason to use their gun. They say the exact type of things you've said.
Why don't they come up calmly and discuss the situation? I can maintain my calm, why can't you? Lets be civil.Secondly, it doesn't matter if you're with your daughter or not. If a guy comes up to you with attitude, arguing or yelling, showing some signs of aggression (yelling is almost always a sign of aggression) it doesn't mean you should be allowed to draw your gun on them and shoot them.
I understand, heat of the moment and all. Trust me i would rather not harm someone, but I would rather not take that chance especially with my child or wife. Simply put, remain respectable and calm and there isn't an issue, how hard is that?You may think that you're level headed and always make the correct decision, but the vast majority of people who carry guns think this way, they are also wrong. Most people have no idea how they will react in a given situation until it occurs and the vast majority of times they do not react calmly or in the manner that they would hope. This is how accidents happen and people are unnecessarily killed.
Let me throw out a scenario for you.
Three people. Person A, B and C.
Person A is a man who is harassing a women (person C). There is a verbal altercation. Person B, being a chivalrous guy steps in to see if there is a problem. Person A tells him to mind his own business. B responds stating that A needs to leave the woman alone. The situation escalates into a shoving match and then full on fight. Person A gets taken down and has been punched a few good times and is getting his ass kicked when he decides to invoke lethal force, pulling out his gun and killing person B.
Does he deserve to go to jail under the stand your ground law?
Do cops not go through EXTENSIVE training about when to use deadly force and when not to? And they still make tons of mistakes?
Our insticts are to fight or flight. There is nothing in our insticts that tell us when is the right time to use deadly force, according to the law. That is gained through training. Perhaps a cop can comment on this for us? I'm fairly certain police officers undergo a LOT of training in this area.
In public, when all parties have a right to be where they are, in situations that are no where near as easily understood and comprehended in the heat of the moment, I think it is absolutely reckless to allow untrained/unqualified individuals to make these sorts of decisions.
The way I look at it is this. If you are carrying a weapon in public (which I am fine with) you are held to a MUCH higher standard than the average person. Since you are carrying deadly force in your pocket, it is your responsibility to be sure, 100% beyond a shadow of a doubt, that if you need to use that weapon, you are in the right.
But if there is any chance of this situation not being extremely clear cut and you have the ability to remove yourself and your deadly weapon from the situation, it is your responsibility to do so.