You can't claim stand your ground if you go looking for a fight. If you haven't gone looking for a fight and someone is going to beat you up, then you should absolutely be able to kill them. Stand your ground is in place for those times when someone is assaulted having not engaged the assailant violently or in a way that would give the assailant reason to expect bodily. The quintessential stand your ground case would have an assailant engage a victim (in a place the victim has a legal right to be) and that victim then turns and uses lethal force against the assailant. As long as the assailant engages the victim in their crime and the victim then responds, that's stand your ground. Stand your ground says that you take your life into your own hands when you decide to have a fist fight with an unsuspecting victim. This is as it should be.

Edit: One thing to bear in mind is that stand your ground is a self-defense claim and the use of unreasonable force would still be a crime. However, if the victim's only response is to take one action and that action results in a death, then they have not violated a law (regardless of their ability to retreat). If the assailant continues the assault beyond the victims first response, then that victim would be able to respond further (just the same as any other self defense claim). While the assailant remains a threat, stand your ground remains valid.

Nice Angel1...

One small step closer to vigilante justice.

Its funny how we have people that don't approve of the death penalty and then we have others that say if someone threatens you you should be able to kill them (judge/jury/executioner).

It's a unique perspective to see everyone talking about the lives guns take while keeping quiet on the lives they save. From a personal experience I can tell you that guns saved not only my fathers life but also the fathers of several of my close friends. Ironic that all these caring people don't give two fluffs about the lives that guns save.

yea, well I will tell you another thing, if I loved in detroit and someone knocked on my door at 3am loud enough to wake me up, I would bring my gun with me...

we still dont know what happened that caused her to walk 4 blocks before she tried to get help, and why it took her 2 hours to do so...

we have 1 story and that is it.

the familes story is 100% garbage and has in fact proven to be a lie so thats out the window. they family cried to the media that she turned away and got shot in the back, sadly that doesnt line up with the police report and the autopsy that shows she got shot in the front. oops.

again, it is unfortunate she got shot but until there is proof that it was complete innocence, this guy acted within his rights.

as for the US being one of the top countries in the world with gun related homicide, yes, we are, we also are the only developed world that still incarcerates people for petty soft drug crimes. if you decriminalize the soft drugs that cause 95% of the shootings, a lot of that problem would be resolved.

furthermore, the US is middle of the road as far as violent crime goes with UK far and away leading the pack. Many other EU countries are in the lead as far as violent crime and considering the abnormally high homicide rates in US, I'd say that really says something about what we are doing. If we decriminalize the petty street drugs it would go a long ways to stop that homicide and you would see a HUGE drop in crime altogeher, imo.

also rifles, to oh so dangerous "assualt rifles", accorind to the FBI accounted for less than 200 deaths in the US last year. of the ~11000 that were killed by gun. just a fun fact.

also another fun fact: of the 150+ models of guns that were included in the gun control legislation that crashed and burned... 0, yes ZERO, were on the list of top 10 guns used to kill people in the united states. this isn't about safety.

This isn't about vigilante justice, this is about people not being charged with crimes because, in the heat of a moment that they did nothing to create, they reacted and their would be assailant paid with their lives because the assailant chose to assault someone.

Here's a thought: if you don't want stand your ground laws used against you, don't go around assaulting random people. Hey, isn't that a nice idea?

Our justice system is meant to settle the aftermath of crimes, not to settle the crimes as they're occurring. The justice system doesn't work in the moment that a victim is being assaulted. The justice system doesn't work in the moment that an assailant decides to murder someone. No, the only people that can work in those moments are the people that are there. I don't know about you, but I think that people's right to life when they are going about their normal, legal business far and away outways the thoughtless perception that everyone should have their day in court. When a criminal steps outside of the law, they do so completely (both the prohibitions and the protections of law). Until they are back inside the bounds of law, anything that happens to them is simply the criminal assaulting themselves (sometimes by way of their victim).

Hear hear!

Anyone who chooses to assault and threaten another person has chosen to step away from civilized society. If that person can't take some uncivilized consequence of their uncivilized actions, too bad for them I say.

That does not mean that a shooter who claims "stand your ground" should not be investigated or even charged with murder if that is motivated, but I think we NEED to have an attitude in society that using unprovoked violence and threat of violence should be harshly punished, or there is no true justice for peaceful people.

This is still a naive perspective based on a fluffload of assumptions. I can make assumptions too.

Let's say that before the "stand your ground law" there were 100 people who "reasonably felt threatened" on Saturday night in a city. In most of those scenarios neither party was armed with a gun. Now, how many of those do you think resulted in a homicide? 10% might be a high estimate. After all, our homicide rate is remarkably low (<5 on a Saturday night in a major city).

Now we put in place the new Stand Your Ground law and tell everyone to carry around guns and be ready to kill anyone who they feel is threatening them.

Your argument is essentially that because of this new law/practice, nobody will threaten anyone anymore because of the fear of the now prevalent guns.

My argument is that there may be some slight decline in those "threatening" situations but not much. Instead you will now have people with guns feeling threatened by more people with guns. And those people feeling threatened have been told to pull their gun. Whether the first person "threatening" was doing so with a gun at the start is irrelevant. If they weren't, they'll probably pull their gun now too since they feel threatened. Shoot-out ensues and someone dies.

Essentially you predict that everyone running around with guns and taught to shoot first when threatened will save lives. I believe the opposite. Someday, maybe we'll know one way or the other. These laws are just going into place and the culture is only starting to shift (gun sales rising, especially among women, for example). So it may be years before we know.

I certainly won't feel safer going to a nightclub in downtown just because everyone is packing heat.

Mdevol, if I am even caught in the vicinity of people smoking pot(ie at a party or something), I could face possible deportation. Japan is much much much harder on drugs than the US is :P

I think this is conflating two separate issues, guns and stand your ground. While stand your ground can be put to use by means of a gun, it doesn't have to be. When someone without warning, without you provoking them, goes to attack you, you're not going to be thinking rationally about what to do. Most people are either going to flee or fight back. The fight or flight instinct kicks in and stand your ground says that you shouldn't be responsible if the fight part of that instinct kicks because of actions completely outside of your control.

Stand your ground says that your duty to society is not to think rationally immediately, but to think rationally after the threat is ended (at least momentarily). Stand your ground says that your duty to society is to think rationally after the initial fight instinct subsides some because the threat has subsided some. How can society expect a reasonable person to react when faced with a threat that they themselves had no role in creating? In that moment, you have a split second to react and to protect yourself from death or whatever else this threatening person intends to do. In that split second, rational thought is an unreasonable expectation. No matter how much society dictates that you have to think rationally in that split second, it is never going to happen. Even a decision to flee is not a rational thought in that split second.

Stand your ground is an attempt to make the law recognize reality and to deny criminals the right to take over any area because the people could simply flee.

LOL... nice way to re-write it. EVERY way I have ever heard stand your ground described, by politicians and supporters is that it is meant to get folks to carry a gun, pull it out and shoot. Essentially, when confronted with "fight or flight" the argument is that we should adjust our instincts and our available armament so that we choose fight and kill the SOB in that split second.

If you aren't perceiving the societal shift to favor overwhelming violence as a solution to problems, you aren't paying attention.

No, the argument is that people should not be sent to jail because some other person decided to attack them and they responded with force where maybe they could have fled instead (but they weren't thinking about that at the time they were being attacked since they were...being attacked!).

In stand your ground, the problem only exists because a criminal decided to make it exist.

That is incorrect. A criminal is someone found guilty in a court of law. Under stand your ground, a person can act simply because they reasonably felt threatened. As I said, vigilante justice.

That is incorrect, a criminal is someone who commits a crime.

And now for a more fun Stand Your Ground reference (you have to watch (or skip) until the end):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdkGA_rgHRY

That isn't for you to decide Angel1, its why we have a justice system. The whole "accused" and "innocent until proven guilty". As soon as you say that "anyone who feels threatened" should get to decide if the person they find intimidating is a criminal and execute them, you have entered the realm of vigilantism. If that is what you want, then just say that, but don't hide it behind new language.

Have you never seen a situation in which people felt threatened but no crime actually took place? Or it was so minor a crime that it was never pursued? Have you ever BEEN TO A COLLEGE PARTY???

you are WAY over broadening stand your ground and connecting it to cases in which is has nothing to do with. Most of world didn't even know what the law was until the media FALSELY connected it to the Trayvon Martin case to sensationalize an agenda in which George Zimmerman had a clear cut self defense case all along. The kid was on top of him beating him, as the experts and the courts agreed. It was not stand your ground. The justice system worked in carrying out the law.

Does that make it any less horrible a young man got shot? No. Should that young man have walked home instead of going back to sucker punch Zimmerman? Yes.

Just because there was some sort of self-defense involved does not make it "stand your ground"

In this case in Michigan it was different. The stand your ground is not being used. instead the castle doctrine is what is the issue. Again the media jumped out in front of the story to push an agenda against "stand your ground" that was not correct.

Furthermore, we now have some more information about the night.

http://www.detroitnews.com/...0131111/METRO01/311110095

either the defense attorney was lying or the autopsy is incorrect. You decide.

http://www.detroitnews.com/...0131114/METRO01/311140105

Also, if the initial household had, in fact called police as they claim, wouldn't they have found her walking the street? The lawyer has some holes in his story.

She was clearly intoxicated and as for what happened at the front door, we don't know but i think it is safe to assume that it wasn't just some regular joe knocking on the front door quietly for help.

This doesn't make killing somebody the right choice to make, but this man is innocent until they can prove he is guilty and he is not going to get murder 2. that is for sure. Manslaughter is probably even a reach.

Again, this is not a stand your ground case. it never was and it never will be.

No, it's not for me to decide. It's for an assailant to decide when they choose to commit a crime. The courts aren't in session on a particular criminal case when the crime is being committed. The only people that are involved are the criminals and their victims. The courts don't decide whether someone is a criminal or not, they just decide whether they should be convicted or not. In fact, the US Supreme Court has ruled that prosecutors have a duty to pursue justice...meaning if they feel that justice would not be served by pursuing a conviction for someone, despite (in this hypothetical case, having ample evidence to convict, then they shouldn't prosecute. You should not conflate the terms "criminal" and "convict". These are separate and distinct. We would hope that only criminals would become convicts, but this has been shown not to be the case numerous times. We know that some dangerous criminals have escaped conviction in the courts many times before finally being convicted (Al Capone, anyone?).

The courts don't decide whether or not someone is a criminal. They only decide whether or not someone is going to be a convict. An innocent man convicted is not a criminal. A guilty man that walks free is still a criminal. Maybe not in the eyes of the law, but in the eyes of reality. The term "criminal" is properly linked to real truth. The term "convict" is properly linked to perceived truth. Perceptions can change, but real truth exists even if no person believes it.

No, criminal, is not a title to be bandied about lightly. Yes, every case that involves stand your ground should be thoroughly investigated to see if stand your ground has merit. However, when someone is forced to fight for their life and health, they should not be held to account because someone else made all of the decisions that led to the situation. The most fundamental right of people is to self-defense. Stand your ground is an application of self-defense. It was put into place to reign in overzealous prosecutors who frequently created enough doubt in the question of whether or not someone could have fled to convict innocent people who exercised their first and foremost right of self-defense.

The amount of guns owned in a country has nothing to do with the amount of people that get killed every year. We have to many crazy people roaming the streets since all of the states dumped their insane people out into the real world and closed all the asylums because it costs to much money to keep care of them. And in DETROIT in and around that area there have been so many home invasions by people that they now shoot first and ask questions later. And when I answer my door I am holding a 45 caliber hand gun just in case it is required for some wack job attempting to rush in my house which has happenned before. Needless to say guns are required now and feel good about yourself for now until some wack job shows up at your front door then if you live past that experience you can tell us all about it. Or we can read about it in the obituaries.

you can debate this untill your blue in the face. people have a right to defend themselves in their own homes. if someone is banging on my door at 3am i will answer it with gun in hand. but i will also make sure that i am handling it in a safe manner to prevent accidental discharge. In california we have the same type of laws. you have to be in fear for your life to shoot someone in your home. this obviously did not happen becasue the woman was outside the home. but she was also drunk (.0218 BAC) and had weed in her system. not to mention she was loopy from the accident.