There's a debate about whether Zimmerman should have been carrying

[Atypical Liberal]

131. This is a great article, but not the way the author intends.

Frankly, this article makes me support SYG even more.

From the article:

"The Tampa Bay Times has identified 140 cases across the state in which "stand your ground'' has been invoked, and many involve defendants whose lives were clearly in jeopardy. But at least a dozen share similarities with what we know about the Trayvon Martin case, and they show the law has not always worked as its sponsors say they intended. "

First of all, I'm OK with the fact that 12 people might have improperly used the law to get away with a crime given that over 120 people didn't face financial ruin trying to defend themselves for defending themselves from true criminal violent crime.

But then there are the examples that the article cites as so terrible:

"Early morning, Jan. 25, 2011. Greyston Garcia was in his apartment in Miami when a roommate told him someone was stealing the radio from his truck.

Garcia grabbed a kitchen knife and ran outside. The burglar saw him coming, grabbed his bag of stolen radios and fled.

Rather than calling the police, Garcia chased the thief down the street and caught up to him a block away. The confrontation lasted less than a minute and was captured on surveillance video. The thief swung the bag of radios at Garcia, who blocked the bag with his left hand and stabbed the thief in the chest with his right.

Pedro Roteta, 26, died in the street. "

Now admittedly, I'm in favor of the use of deadly force to protect property. So to me the issue isn't really that Garcia was physically attacked by the thief, Roteta. The way I see it, a criminal gambled his life over some stereos and lost. I'm not heartbroken over this.

It turns out that Garcia was also a criminal, later selling the stolen goods and lying to the police, but that's another matter.

Here's another hand-wringer from the article:

"One of Romine's cases is a prime example. In 2008, his client, Charles Podany, noticed a truck speeding past his house in Thonotosassa, where his children play in the front yard. Podany fetched his handgun and rode his bicycle down the street to the house where the truck was parked to get a license plate number.

He found himself in a confrontation with Casey Landes, 24, who had been a passenger in the truck. Landes, legally drunk, attacked the smaller Podany and wound up on top of him. Podany drew his weapon and fired twice. The second bullet entered Landes' left cheek and struck the back of his skull, killing him instantly.

Podany was charged with manslaughter. But before trial, a judge ruled that despite initiating the confrontation by arming himself and riding his bicycle to the speeder's house, Podany was in a place he had a legal right to be and he was carrying a weapon he had a legal right to carry. He found that Podany feared for his life and had the right to defend himself with deadly force. "

As the article notes, "Podany was in a place he had a legal right to be and he was carrying a weapon he had a legal right to carry. "

Case closed, the judge decided, and I agree.

""There is not an exception to the law that says if you're doing something stupid, or risky, or not in your best interest, that 'stand your ground' doesn't apply," Romine said. "

That's right, there shouldn't be. We don't allow rape victims to be blamed for their rape because they were doing something stupid, risky, or not in their best interest, so we shouldn't allow victims of other violent crimes to be blamed for it, either.

Here's another:

"A man got into a shootout on a Sarasota street, for instance, killing a man who owed him money and endangering bystanders. But a judge granted him immunity because a witness testified that his rival had claimed he had "fire in his pocket" and threatened the shooter. Police found no weapon at the scene, but that didn't matter. What mattered was that the shooter believed his enemy had a weapon and was ready to use it. "

Seems like the victim had a pretty good reason to have a reasonable belief that his attacker implied he had a weapon and threatened him.

The bottom line is, except for the whopping 500 people who have evidently signed a petition to repeal SYG, most people believe that victims of violent crime should be able to defend themselves with deadly force without the penalty of massive legal entanglements after the fact.

People believe that good people should be able to stand up to bad people.

The SYG law does that.

I'm open to tweaking of the law that makes it clearer that people who initiate confrontations will have a much harder time claiming self-defense. But we are going to have to be careful on exactly what constitutions initiating a confrontation. If you have a right to be where you are, even if that is annoying to someone it's not an excuse for that someone to respond violently, and if they do, people have a right to defend themselves, even if they initiated the annoyance.