Stand Your Ground Laws Are More Common Than You Probably Think

The irrepressible Andrew Branca takes a swipe at a graphic from a Vox explainer:

To be fair, the explainer itself isn’t too bad; unlike a lot of media coverage, it makes clear what Stand Your Ground does and does not do:

Under standard self-defense laws, someone who’s facing a dangerous threat must retreat if it’s safe to do so, with use of force only legally available as a last resort — what’s called the “duty to retreat.” So through this standard, you can only use deadly force if you cannot safely avoid harm or death by, for example, running away or hiding.

But if a “stand your ground” law is in place, someone can, well, stand his ground, and use up to lethal force even if he can safely retreat while under imminent threat. There are also “castle doctrine” laws, which remove the duty to retreat in a legally occupied setting, such as your home, office, or car (your “castle”). “Stand your ground” is an expansion of “castle doctrine”: While the latter only removes the duty to retreat in your home, the former removes the duty to retreat everywhere — whether you’re in a grocery store, in a park, or on a street.

In other words, without Stand Your Ground, someone who attacks you creates a duty on your part to get away from them, unless that’s not physically possible. With Stand Your Ground, you can meet force with force, so long as your force is reasonable. (And I agree with David French that it wasn’t in the recent case out of Florida, the shooter in which has finally been charged.) If you oppose Stand Your Ground, you are quite literally saying we should throw people in prison for defending themselves when attacked.

But the problem with the map is a bit more interesting. It does depict the states that have Stand Your Ground statutes, by and large. (Wyoming, an exception, is a newcomer.) What it leaves out are the states where courts have done away with the duty to retreat themselves, in the course of interpreting and implementing those “standard self-defense law[s].” In my own state of Virginia, for instance, court decisions stretching back more than a century have held that there is no duty to retreat from an assailant, so long as you are not at fault yourself for the confrontation.

This is a strong testament to how commonsensical Stand Your Ground is: Even when legislatures don’t specify whether there’s a duty to retreat, courts have often found it doesn’t make sense to lock people in cages for defending themselves.