George Zimmerman's attorneys won't use "stand your ground" defense

[DanTex]

54. What you call "weasel words" are actually pretty normal for an economics paper.

The paper found 500 to 700 additional homicides due to SYG. Now, if all of those extra homicides were justifiable, that would change things, because it would mean that SYG wasn't actually causing any additional loss of innocent life. But, as the authors point out, even if you stretch the assumptions in that direction, you still can't account for the entire increase in terms of justifiable homicides. This isn't weaseling, it's typical: the authors are pointing out that their conclusions are still valid even under unfavorable changes of assumptions.

Of course, if you read the entire paper, you find out that under the most likely assumptions, only a small fraction of the increase in homicides is justifiable. Still, whether the majority of the additional homicides are justifiable or not is of secondary importance. Let's assume that SYG caused an increase in 300 justifiable homicides and 200 murders. That would still be bad -- it would mean 200 additional innocent lives lost. If SYG were actually saving lives, then we would find a drop in the number of murders, due to the fact that more would-be murder victims are successfully defending themselves.

As far as the Florida data goes, that is great, but that's only one series of data from one state. The two studies we are discussing do a far more thorough job of looking at the data systematically from all states that have passed SYG laws, and also taking into account national trends and other factors, etc. And, yes, they did find that SYG produced more justifiable homicides. However, and more importantly, they also found that SYG produced more murders.