Pirate's Cove

And now the gun grabbers are using uber-Marxist Black Lives Matter to reduce gun rights and the right to self protection

If Black Lives Truly Matter, Stand Your Ground Laws Must Go

Now that pointing firearms at peaceful Black Lives Matter protesters is the magic ticket to a speaking slot at the GOP convention, and we have a president who defends an accused double-murderer, it is time to open our eyes to the irrational fear and racism behind Stand Your Ground laws and immediately repeal them.

Unlike many of the other prominent and sobering examples of systemic racism in our country, Stand Your Ground laws aren’t the product of another century or the lasting vestige of our troubled past. They’re new, but their disparate impact on race is unmistakable and disturbing.

The Stand Your Ground laws are a product of the National Rifle Association and a shadowy right-wing organization called ALEC. The law, first passed in Florida in 2005 and now enacted in 27 states, radically changes the definition of self-defense by removing the duty to retreat when defending oneself outside of the home. It has basically traded self-defense for self-offense and lets people discharge a firearm and even kill someone if they feel threatened, with no requirement to seek to de-escalate a potential conflict before firing.

It’s really not that simple, but, if someone is threatening me or attacking me, why should I have to retreat in the face of these assaults? If someone attacks me to the point I need to shoot them, that is not an offensive behavior, that’s still defensive. Further, why is it incumbent on the person being attacked to “de-escalate”? Don’t forget, these same nuts want to defund the police and replace them with social workers, so, who comes to help when the nuts attack?

What is considered “threatening?” Well, that’s in the eye of the beholder. For GOP heroes Patricia and Mark McCloskey, “threatening” is Black people and civil protesters marching peaceably in front of their cavernous, suburban St. Louis home.

Yeah, except for there being 100+ of them and many were threatening the McCloskey’s, and some may have had firearms themselves. And neither shot anyone. The uncivil mob stayed back.

The impact of Stand Your Ground laws has been predictably appalling and bears the marks of the racial justice issues America is grappling with today. White-on-Black homicide in Stand Your Ground cases is almost three times more likely to be found justified than a white-on-white homicide, according to a study by the Urban Institute. And in Florida, where these heinous laws started, the odds of convicting a shooter for killing a non-white victim is half that of compared to cases where the victim is white. In other Stand Your Ground states, white defendants are 354 percent more likely to be let off for killing a Black victim than in cases where the victim is white.

Here’s an easy solution: don’t attack people, especially armed people. Don’t break in their homes.

If we are now living in a country where Black lives truly do matter, we can no longer make room for a law that encourages a “shoot first” mentality or one that makes fear of Black bodies a justifiable defense to murder. With an eye on restoring justice and safety to communities, states across the country should remove these harmful laws from their books.

Of course, if you shoot second you’re probably dead. And, in the wake of all the violence, those states will not be removing their SYG laws. Gun grabbers like Jim Kessler at the Daily Beast just want SYG laws gone in order to prosecute more legal gun owning people to scare more into not carrying and not owning. It’s all about doing away with privately owned firearms