Stand Your Ground Before He Stands His (and it's elephants all the way down)

[TalkingDog]

The Spousal Unit and I have been having this very discussion over the past few days. Mostly in a vein of humor so dark it does not bear repeating. Suffice it to say, in one instance we found an old lady taking too long in the cross walk to have the future potential to be threatening because we were impatient with her marked lack of speed.

[DCBob]

1. perfect!

[snot]

2. This is exactly what I've been wondering about.

It has to happen pretty regularly that people who don't know each other fear each other. As a practical matter, if they both have guns and there's no duty to retreat, under Stand Your Ground, they can both shoot each other.

Moreover, again as a practical matter, it seems like any white guy can beat up any black guy, and if the black guy defends himself at all, the white guy can shoot him and claim he was afraid of being seriously injured.

[BlueStreak]

3. "Stand Your Ground" means pistol duels are perfectly legal

This is an absolutely insane law. It says that if a person "feels" that he might be in danger, he has no obligation to do anything to avoid the confrontation. In particular, he has no obligation to try to leave if that is possible.

Well, maybe that makes sense on some planet in some universe. But if the other person also stands his ground, and the other person also has a gun, then the law says that neither of them has any obligation to try to retreat, and either one can shoot the other one dead and not face any charges.

This is what they used to call a "duel". This is the progress we have made in 150 years?

The Zimmerman case is fundamentally about bad laws and a society that glamorizes gun violence. I wonder how many teevee shows George watched where the "good guys" did exactly what he visualized himself doing?