General News A Victory Against Stand Your Ground in Michigan

I'm happy to see this verdict; there's way too may many people who've become trigger-happy due to these stupid Stand Your Ground laws.

That, and people seem to be becoming more and more paranoid, despite crime actually declining...

 

Based on the evidence in this article, it does sound like the shooting was not justified. I don't have all of the evidence though. I am sure the court will make the correct decision.

Having said that, I strongly believe in "Castle Doctrine" laws like Michigan has. If someone manages to break into your house, they are a threat, weather armed or not. It is not your duty to try to retreat in your own house. I would never advocate firing first if they are outside the house. If they were to demonstrate that they are armed and intend to do you harm all bets are off.

This again would not have anything to do with "Stand Your Ground", it is defense of a person's home, so it would have fallen under "Castle Doctrine", not "Stand Your Ground". Even then she did not enter the house, so "Castle Doctrine" likely doesn't help here either.

Since you brought up Travon Martin, I don't see any relation between that case and this one. In the Martin Case, did not even apply, as it was plain self defense legal in almost all states. I think both Zimmerman, and Martin could have done things differently leading up to the shooting. Zimmerman was within his rights conducting a neighborhood watch, and keeping an eye on someone he thought looked suspicious. Martin, may have rightly felt nervous about someone following him. Martin however, was the first one commit violence, buy attacking Zimmerman (based on the news covering the trial). Assuming the news reports are correct, Martin was on top of Zimmerman banging his head into the concrete. If someone were doing that to me, I would feel in fear for my life and use anything up to and including Deadly Force to defend myself. Weather I had a gun, a knife or a rock would be irrelevant, I would defend myself, and Martin would likely be dead.

 

Based on the evidence presented during his trial, the jury felt otherwise.

 

I don't see this as anything other than a whacko that was trigger happy getting his punishment. The stand your ground defense only works when your life is in real jeopardy. If she had managed to cross the threshold, the outcome of the trial may have been very different.

A side note here is thank God she didn't kill someone whilst driving drunk AND high. Let's not sidestep the reasons she ended up there in the first place .

 

By your description, the shooting was unjustified even with SYG. Not to mention any responsible gun owner knows you should be sure of your target. That person just knew it was "somebody" and took the chance on killing them. Abominable and unforgivable, but it shouldn't change a lot politically or philosophically about gun ownership.

 

I have to object to the framing of this post. Before coming to the thread, I thought there had been a legal victory "against" self-defense laws that do not impose a duty to retreat. In my view, such laws are eminently reasonable, and self-evidently so. I would therefore be greatly dismayed if we were "celebrating" a "victory" against such laws.

Quite a lot of the time, these laws are constructed in a very specific way. They do not (and never have) authorized a person to use lethal force if she herself feared the person presented an imminent threat of death or serious injury. Rather, the laws require such a person to have a reasonable belief. These things are not the same. One is "I felt like this, because I'm either lying or a psychopath," and the other is "we, as jurors in the community can see the average person having a legitimate fear for her life in these crcumstances."

Answering the door and blowing someone's head off because they were pounding on the door does not meet this test. If you really feared for your life, you wouldn't answer the door until the person had calmed down to the extent required for you to feel comfortable. It looks like the jury didn't accept this reasoning, and I am happy they did not. For if they did, their jurisprudence would also entail allowing any homeowner to blow any distraught person's head off.

And obviously they didn't feel that way, so they didn't permit that affirmative defense. This isn't a "victory" against an eminently reasonable law that the weapons-squamish among us should celebrate. In fact, we should view this incident as the reasonable person test making the statute exactly as strong and prudent as it is.

At least, that's how it would be interpreted in Montana. We may be different from Michigan, because here, lethal force is not allowed just because someone enters your home unauthorized. The element of that person presenting an imminent threat to people in the structure has to exist, and the mere presence of that person does not create such a presumption. If that person had a weapon and were shouting, running, or moving suddenly, that would create the presumption. However, that doesn't sound like the circumstances observed here.

Finally, I want to emphasize again, what Argentwing said because it's so important. Rule #4: Always be sure of your target and what is beyond it. As Clint Smith said, we "don't shoot as sounds or shadows," we shoot at targets. If you don't have a target, don't shoot. Recently in Missoula, Montana, some asshole shot and killed a teenager in his garage that he couldn't even see. The garage was dark, he admitted, and he just fired into it. That admission alone should get him declared mentally unfit for the purpose of firearms ownership law. He wasn't sure of his target, and he admitted intentionally breaking one of the foundational rules of firearm safety. And he did so, at a time when it truly counted. The poor German kid is dead now, and Stand Your Ground and Castle Doctrine are once again coming into question.

These guys need to fucking stop behaving this way, because they just give liberals more ammunition to make outrageous claims about self-defense law.

 

Cases like these make me happy that there are almost no guns in Europe. I don't like guns, but if I'd had to live in the USA, when there are so many crazy people with guns in your country I'd like to have a gun please (and laws which would allow me to use it, even if the laws themselves are probably immoral and can lead to dangerous situations)....

 

I can't agree with Pret Allez more. Guns are not bad, and the laws are set up the way they are suppose to be. But when that 1 in a million gets on the news, suddenly everything is coming into question. Never mind the million that are perfectly responsible and within the laws...

 

Thank you, Michigan! Hopefully you can set an example for our fellow Floridians. I'm so sick of these "stand your ground cases"! :dry: