Caroline Light The Conversation - As a scholar who has studied America’s love affair with guns and lethal self-defense, I have explored the history of laws that selectively shield citizens from criminal responsibility when they use force and claim self-defense. Since 2005, these “stand your ground” laws have spread to around 30 states, transforming the United States’ legal landscape.
While preexisting laws regarding justifiable use of force allowed the use of lethal force for self-defense in some circumstances, they required that people first try to retreat from a perceived threat if it was safe to do so or to seek a nonlethal solution to a hostile encounter. Stand your ground laws, meanwhile, authorize defensive violence without a duty to retreat, wherever a person may legally be. Some also expand the circumstances in which someone could use lethal force to defend property. Although the laws appear to apply to all law-abiding citizens, research shows that they are not equitably enforced, and that they may be emboldening property owners to shoot first and question their actions later, even when there is no real threat of harm.
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