Stand Your Ground Laws Reduce Murder Rate
Yeah, that's right, I said it: "Stand-Your-Ground laws reduce the murder rate." A year after Florida was the first state to pass a "Stand Your Ground" law, Georgia state lawmakers passed a version of the self-defense law that is now a huge issue in the wake of the Trayvon Martin justifiable homicide case. Since then, Georgia's murder rate has decreased by more than 12% despite a 20% increase in population with the side benefit that more lives have been saved through justifiable homicides:
Online Athens, 4 May 2012, Justifiable homicides in Ga. increase after law
An Associated Press analysis of Georgia Bureau of Investigation data found that justifiable homicides involving private citizens averaged seven per year in the three years before the so-called stand your ground law took effect. It then jumped to an average of 13 per year in the five full years since then.
Killings that involved police officers also saw a similar increase. Meanwhile, Georgia's overall murder rate has decreased between 2000 and 2010, from a rate of 6.1 per 100,000 people in 2000 to 5.4 per 100,000 in 2010. Georgia's population has increased 20 percent during that time.
More than 24 other states have enacted similar laws (see map above); here are some:
U.S. News, 18 Jul 2013, Florida had first Stand Your Ground law, other states followed in 'rapid succession'
Texas: A person can only use Stand Your Ground if they have the right to be present at the location where the deadly force is used, and has not provoked the person against whom the deadly forced is used.
North Carolina: Exceptions to the use of deadly force as listed in North Carolina's law are against police officers or law enforcement, bail bondsmen and landlords. Stand Your Ground passed in North Carolina in 2011.
Kansas: Kansas' Stand Your Ground law specifies the person can't be engaged in illegal activity while defending him or herself.
Louisiana's Stand Your Ground law passed in 2006.
Arizona's Stand Your Ground law passed in 2010.
Oklahoma enacted its Stand Your Ground law, which closely mirrors Florida's, in 2006...
While some of my readers may worry that Blacks will likely be more victimized than whites with everyone carrying a gun, the statistics say otherwise:
University of Chicago Press, Interview with John Lott, author of More Guns, Less Crime
High crime urban areas and neighborhoods with large minority populations have the greatest reductions in violent crime when citizens are legally allowed to carry concealed handguns.
Indeed, as I reported in an earlier article, more Blacks than whites have used Florida's Stand-Your-Ground law to save their own lives.
For those of my readers who worry about living in a place where everyone has a gun, as in the old wild west city of Dodge, read this article where we learn that "in the real Dodge City, for example, there were just five killings in 1878, the most homicidal year in the little town's Frontier history."
