Stand Your Ground

[Lexical]

Stand your ground laws hold a special place in my heart as they empower the individual and not the masses. However, they are abused by the people enforcing these laws which leads to a lot of corruption. The main thing to consider when viewing a law is does it make logical and theoretical sense in relationship to your governing philosophy and how does that affect the masses and establish better progress. (By your governing philosophy, I mean the most general and abstract stance you take on human existence: is a humanity a community or an aggregate of individuals)

Good luck! **hug**

[Elmarnieh]

The stand your ground laws have been greatly misrepresented by the media which draws viewership by sensationalism. The only thing these laws do is remove the duty to retreat from any place one is legal to be - they grant no extra leeway in using lethal force on others.

[Hitchens]

Originally Posted by Elmarnieh [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

The only thing these laws do is remove the duty to retreat from any place one is legal to be - they grant no extra leeway in using lethal force on others.

In a civilized society, I think people do have a duty to retreat from a deadly situation if they are able to do so.

There is a distinct difference between advocating vigilantism and protecting people from litigation after defending themselves.

Just my view.

[stormlord]

In my view you have to look at it on a case by case basis, since there's so much crossover. What I mean by this is that distinguishing between defending yourself and aggressively defending yourself is tricky. In war and in all manners of conflicts and even in sports and in other competitions there're numerous examples of how offensive measures are seen as defensive in nature. In basketball they will often throw around the phrase "the best defense is a good offense". People may use different justifications for their actions and there might in fact be past relations with the attacker that would warrant them being suspect themselves. I just see a lot of gray here and I think that any attempt to neatly wrap all this up in a law is too tyrannical and prone to error.

There's wisdom in granting people freedoms and not just making everything either legal or illegal. There're just too many unique circumstances. People need freedom to react to all these different possibilities.

The idea that justice has to be perfect is I think an inhibiting conception. I cannot see how it will ever be so. Thus I cannot imagine any given situation always leading to a positive ending. In this I mean that the defender might make a mistake or a misjudgment. Viewed from the angle of somebody who thinks justice should be perfect, this might place the defender squarely in the suspect category - which is silly.

Nature has a way of straightening us out if we become too extreme in our approach. The problem is it can hurt a lot. It's always a race between ourselves and the balancing mechanism(s) of nature. If they fall behind or come out ahead then something bad usually happens and there's lots of shared consequences.

[Hollywood]

There's some good comments on SYG and Castle Doctrine over at Straight Dope's Martin/Zimmerman thread - particularly across pages 170-180

http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/...d.php?t=648744