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

[TeamsterDem]

76. You're right, we've got about a 98% agreement

And I think that in perfect theory - subtracting the idiots who always ruin everything for everyone with their stupidity - we could reach 100% agreement. It's just that perfect theory doesn't work in an imperfect world as you know, and some jerk always winds up abusing laws (or worse, other human beings). You seem like a perfectly nice and rational person, and I'm sure there's no public safety threat from you. But you know the people about whom I'm talking, people like Zimmerman who I'm sure we can find agreement in saying that he had no business near a firearm.

I do agree, though, that innocent folks shouldn't have to yield to any criminal. How we resolve that (protecting the rights of innocent bystanders in public versus a stand your ground law in which an individual is free to use deadly force in emergencies) is a great question. Again, my only hesitation is that neither the law nor any human can control the behavior of any person. We can try, and I suspect in things like the law we should try (well, otherwise it'd be anarchy). But as always what concerns me is not just the rights I have, but also the rights others have to not have my "rights" infringe upon theirs. For example, I would never go for target practice (assuming a law wasn't already in place) on someone's property because of course they might not enjoy my right (the noise), and if I hit them I'd both feel terrible and serve a lengthy prison sentence. But it's not just their property rights if we're discussing public places: In my view, a gun owner has a right to carry their weapon right up until the point that their "right" infringes upon someone else's, a stray bullet striking a non-gun carrier being my example of that.

Maybe a good example of what I mean could be expressed by analogy. I'm well over 21 years old, so I may legally drink alcohol. But I may not get drunk (as legal as that is in the abstract sense) and then go drive because that infringes on others' rights to a roadway not occupied by drunken drivers. Maybe I'm not saying it in the best way, but one person's drunkenness can and sometimes does cause a non-drinker quite a bit of problems. And it's in that vein which I see a "stand your ground" law.

This being a message board it's perhaps not wise to reveal one's self to such a degree, but I'll tell you a brief story about myself. I used to have a CCW, and I carried my weapon with me to the places I was allowed to carry it. I always stressed about it, thinking of the very few situations in which I could legally use it (my state does not have a "stand your ground" law), and finally what got to me is one day I was standing in line, fretting as usual about all of the things that could go wrong, and I saw this little boy playing with a plastic squirt gun. I started thinking (his plastic squirt gun it made me think of the very real gun concealed under my shirt), what if something happened and out of a justifiable fear I went to shoot someone else- a robber, whatever - but accidentally hit this little boy? How would I live with myself? I never could answer that question, and I gave up my CCW literally because of some little kid who I didn't know. I don't say that to make a show out of it, but I do say it because I think until we can all answer a question like that we have a very solemn choice to make about carrying guns - however legally - in public.