Late last month The Wall Street Journal (WSJ) ran a piece denouncing stand-your-ground laws enacted by most states, claiming that they essentially amount to a license to kill.
Its headline gave readers the gist of their thinking: “Six Words Every Killer Should Know: ‘I Feared for My Life, Officer.'”
Bearing Arms editor Cam Edwards observed that, first of all, the WSJ cherry-picked only those states that have statutory stand-your-ground laws.
It was written by Wall Street Journal senior editor Mark Maremont, who claimed that the 30 states that have implemented stand-your-ground laws have seen a substantial growth in what he calls “legally sanctioned homicides.”
Of the 20 other states, some have common law (judicial) stand-your-ground provisions, while others require crime victims to retreat.
The WSJ story argued that because those 30 states extended stand-your-ground to include public places, they “make it difficult for prosecutors to file homicide charges against anyone who says they killed in self-defense.”
But it’s not as simple as that.
The action a person takes to stand his ground and use a weapon to defend his life must be, above all else, reasonable.
Being the initial aggressor is not reasonable. Participating in a gang fight is also not reasonable. Shooting someone who startles you is also not reasonable.
As Ed Morrissey observed in HotAir,”‘Stand your ground’ laws only eliminate the requirement to flee from a threat before taking action; it does not negate the ‘reasonable’ standard on a threat of death or grave bodily harm, nor does it give a pass to someone who participated in a conflict.”
The Journal story reported that during the 5-year period from 2019 through 2024, “justifiable homicides by civilians increased 59%,” adding that the total homicide rate for those same locales, whether justified or not, rose by 16%.
The 59% increase initially sounds significant, but they cherry-picked even more to achieve that rate by only looking at “a large sample of cities and counties in those states.”
Why not give statistics for the entire state?
What about statistics for the other 20 states?
What about the murder rate in Chicago, for instance, or Portland, Oregon?
But more than that, what about the phrasing of the WSJ story?: “Justifiable homicides by civilians increased . . . .”
We don’t want to see any homicides, or deaths, as far as that goes, but these homicides were determined to be “justified.”
A rise in justified homicides isn’t the result of stand-your-ground laws, but rather a result of the circumstances, including the migration of violent illegal aliens that flooded the country during the previous administration, and local soft-on-crime policies.
Moreover, firearm restrictions have little effect on violent crime. Illinois has some of the most restrictive gun laws in the United States, yet Chicago has turned into an uninhabitable shooting gallery in recent years.
Or how about the idyllic Caribbean? U.S. Virgin Island residents are also subject to draconian gun laws and are required to apply for a permit just to purchase ammunition, yet its murder rate is “four times higher than notoriously violent Mexico.”
Rather than eliminate stand-your-ground laws, as The Wall Street Journal suggests, it would be far better to reduce the need for self-defense — return violent illegal aliens to their country of origin, and impose stiff prison sentences on our own violent criminals.
Thomas Jefferson stated in the Declaration of Independence that life is one of the most fundamental rights that every person possesses. If life is a fundamental right, then it follows that the defense of life is just as fundamental.
If government wants to fulfill its most basic function — to protect society — it has to take appropriate action against the criminal element, and leave law-abiding gun owners alone.
And the editors at The Wall Street Journal have to understand that as well.
Michael Dorstewitz is a retired lawyer and is a frequent contributor to Newsmax. He’s also a former U.S. Merchant Marine officer and a Second Amendment supporter. Read Michael Dorstewitz’s Reports — More Here.
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