In woke America, lawful individuals will not be safe from the hordes of criminals likely being let loose by leftist local leaders. Following the death of George Floyd, movements to defund the police have become more pronounced. On top of that, the overall anti-police sentiment is causing many police officers to retire, while prospective candidates consider other professional alternatives.
As a result of this law and order vacuum, a number of states have proactively taken measures to allow for individuals to defend themselves against crime. Generally speaking, law enforcement is only minutes away when seconds count in deadly situations.
Which is why many states are beginning to look at their gun laws and consider strengthening citizen’s ability to bear arms and defend themselves in the face of growing crime. States like Ohio and Arkansas recently approved laws that strengthened “Stand Your Ground” in their respective states. Stand Your Ground refers to laws that give lawful citizens the ability to use force, which includes lethal force, to defend themselves from criminal threats. As Second Amendment writers such as AWR Hawkins have observed, Stand Your Ground “creates a framework whereby a citizen cannot be held liable for using such force in an instance where fear of losing his own life is demonstrable.”
Unfortunately, there are some elected officials who want to scrap Stand Your Ground laws on the grounds that they’re supposedly racist. For example, Florida State Senator Shevrin Jones introduced legislation, Senate Bill 1052, back in February that would have repealed Florida’s Stand Your Ground law.
In his argument against Stand Your Ground, Jones pulled the race card by asserting that “We know for a fact that Stand Your Ground promotes vigilantism, it allows people to shoot first and ask questions later. More important, it puts black people and other people of color at a greater risk of gun violence.”
What Jones conveniently ignores is that blacks in Florida have actually used Stand Your Ground a disproportionate amount of times to defend themselves. In Second Amendment researchers’ John Lott The War on Guns, Stand Your Ground was heavily defended from the intellectually lazy attacks that race hustlers routinely employ.
Lott made one very powerful finding:
From 2005 through October 1, 2014, blacks made up 16.7 percent of Florida’s population and 34 percent of the defendants who invoked Stand Your Ground. Black defendants who invoke this statute are actually acquitted four percentage points more frequently that whites who use this very same defense.
In addition, Lott observed that blacks in urban centers disproportionately benefit from Stand Your Ground laws in urban neighborhoods. He argued, “Blacks living in high-crime urban areas are the most likely victims of violent crime and the most likely beneficiaries of Stand Your Ground laws.”
Along with Constitutional Carry, Stand Your Ground has stood out as one of the most successful legislative efforts for Second Amendment advocates nationwide. No one should be hanging their heads, even in these times of political chaos. The Second Amendment still offers hope for any activists that are looking to score wins at state level politics.
