Duty to retreat vs stand your ground and castle laws: Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater

[Major Nikon]

31. Wow! Just Wow! Killing an unarmed teen with no legal ramifications is the "bathwater"?

And the very best case for the baby you can make is some completely unrelated case of a drunk woman who shot her husband?

Here's the flaws in your arguments:

Now there's a frenzy to get rid of "stand your ground." But there is a serious problem with the standard legal alternative—"duty to retreat." It elevates violent criminals over the law-abiding and innocent.

Sorry, but this just demonstrates binary thinking. It suggests that there are only two alternatives, which is pretty much the idiotic mindset which gives us these idiotic laws in the first place. The shooting of Trayvon Martin is an excellent example of why the Florida law in particular (as well as some others) are failures. They allow people like Zimmerman to shoot unarmed people with no criminal or civil repercussions whatsoever. Furthermore, Trayvon Martin is almost undoubtedly not the only victim of this piss-poor law in Florida alone.
http://miami.cbslocal.com/2012/03/20/deaths-nearly-triple-since-stand-your-ground-enacted/

If you do not yield to the criminal, if you defend yourself from an unjustified assault and kill or injure him, you will face charges, lawsuits, or imprisonment. Even if you did not see a safe escape path, your judgment will be second-guessed by a safe, warm, comfortable jury.

You're really trying to suggest that every case of self defense results in "charges, lawsuits, or imprisonment" without these laws? I beg to differ. Believe it or not, thousands of cases of self defense resulted in no charges or lawsuits being filed, years before the Dirty Harry bullshit laws were enacted. In fact, cases where someone was prosecuted for failure to retreat are exceedingly rare, and generally always involve extenuating circumstances just like the very poor example you provided.

People who oppose "stand your ground" often portray it as being an ego-driven, macho policy. But the legitimate principle is freedom.

They suggest that because that's exactly what it is. The Florida law was driven by the NRA, which is the epicenter of "ego-driven, macho policy". If your definition of "freedom" includes the right to deprive someone else of theirs including the most basic right of life itself, I'll have to say that your definition diverges considerably from mine.