Police: Ga. woman, 65, gunned down after her car, motorized wheelchair bump at gas station

[The Magistrate]

84. Laws Vary By State, Sir, So this Will Be General

Florida's, which became notorious, is a little different than most.

Basically, the idea is like this. Common Law, while granting the right of self defense, expected violence in self-defense to be a last resort. If you could reasonably evade the confrontation without resorting to violence, you were supposed to do so, and if you used violence when you could have secured your safety without doing so, then you had a problem with the authorities. A modern illustration might be if you are in a car at a stop-light, and someone comes up to the passenger window with a clenched fist and utters a verbal threat, in a most convincing manner. Getting out of your door with a baseball bat and a cry of 'you and what army!' would fail the traditional test as a response, since you could well have simply pressed the accelerator and left him swathed in exhaust, and so whatever you did could be viewed as a criminal act, rather than as self-defense. The 'stand your ground' laws remove this condition. Under them, you do not have to exhaust reasonable options short of violence; even if you could have departed instead, you can still use force legally (providing of course you are facing an actual threat).

Florida's law adds a sort of extra layer, in which if someone claims self-defense, the state has to show it was not. This is a reverse of the general traditional doctrine, in which self-defense is an affirmative defense, one the defendant must prove.