The so-called Stand Your Ground self-defense laws in Florida and some other states amount to “a license to murder” and an excuse for “vigilante justice,” New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg charged Wednesday.
“The laws are not the kind of laws a civilized society should have and the [National Rifle Association] should be ashamed of themselves,” Bloomberg, a leading gun-control advocate, said at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. “This has nothing to do with gun-owners’ rights. This has nothing to do with the Second Amendment.”
“Plain and simple, this is just trying to give people a license to murder,” he added of the Stand Your Ground laws.
Bloomberg clearly is not familiar with the text of Stand Your Ground, so here it is:
A person who is not engaged in an unlawful activity and who is attacked in any other place where he or she has a right to be has no duty to retreat and has the right to stand his or her ground and meet force with force, including deadly force if he or she reasonably believes it is necessary to do so to prevent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony.