In speaking out against “Stand Your Ground” self-defense laws this week, Attorney General Eric Holder criticized legislation that has been enacted in some two dozen states and has been backed by powerful gun lobbyists since the first such law was passed in Florida in 2005.
Stand Your Ground laws — sometimes referred to as “Shoot First” laws by detractors — change the legal definition of self-defense for citizens who feel they are being confronted with deadly force or imminent danger. They have been part of the public discussion around the George Zimmerman trial; although the legal team arguing on behalf of the man who was found not guilty of shooting Trayvon Martin did not ask for an immunity hearing under the law, the instructions given to the jury borrowed language from the statute.
Normally, a citizen has a duty to retreat when confronted with what they perceive to be deadly force. The Stand Your Ground doctrine mostly removes that, meaning citizens who feel threatened are no longer required to try to quell a situation first before having the right to use deadly force in self-defense.
With major support from the National Rifle Association under a Republican state legislature during Gov. Jeb Bush’s administration, Florida became the first state to enact a Stand Your Ground law on Oct. 1, 2005. Since then, Stand Your Ground law has been invoked in more than 200 cases in Florida where charges were dismissed or defendants were acquitted or not charged at all, according to The Tampa Bay Times.
There are three parts to Florida’s Stand Your Ground law. It states that a person is presumed to have reasonable fear of imminent death or great bodily harm when using defensive force if an intruder has broken into his or her home or vehicle and is justified in using force; it states that a person does not have a duty to retreat if he or she believes death or bodily harm is imminent; and it provides immunity from criminal prosecution and civil action for justifiable use of force.
What made it such radical legislation was the automatic presumption of reasonable fear. Inside Florida homes and cars, it overrode previous self-defense laws that required proof that an individual felt a reasonable enough level of fear to use self-defense.
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