Stand your ground law

A stand your ground law (also called "no duty to retreat" law) provides that potential victims may use deadly force when they reasonably believe it to be necessary to defend against a threat of death, serious bodily harm, kidnapping, rape, or (in some jurisdictions) robbery or some other serious crimes. This "law" is either a matter of common law court decisions or in many states addressed by a specific statute. Under such a law, a person has no duty to retreat before using deadly force in self-defense, so long as he has the lawful right to be there. Stand your ground laws do not cover a person who is the initial aggressor, or who is otherwise engaged in criminal activity. The exact details vary by jurisdiction. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott asserted in 2024 that his State has the strongest "stand your ground" law in the country, and based on that Abbott pardoned a defendant (Daniel Perry) who was convicted of murdering an armed BLM protester.

Thirty-five states are stand-your-ground states with 27 having specific statutes on the subject. The Second Amendment does not guarantee a right to stand your ground, and the weapons used are subject to whatever control regulations apply to that locality. Under the common law, when a person is accused of a crime because of defending himself, he must raise it as an affirmative defense and has the burden of proof to establish that he was acting in self-defense. A stand your ground law shifts the burden to the prosecutor to show that the use of force was unreasonable.

The alternative approach to stand your ground is "duty to retreat." The duty to retreat jurisdictions say that when a person is threatened with bodily harm, he has a legal responsibility to avoid the danger by leaving instead of by using deadly force.

The American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) was the prime mover behind the adoption of stand your ground laws and lobbied Florida to adopt the first statute in 2005. ALEC then lobbied in other states for similar provisions. The National Rifle Association is a prominent member of ALEC along with other corporate supporters. The rest of ALEC is composed of members of state legislatures.

Unfortunately, most people placed in dangerous situations do not have detailed legal training and may not know all of the facts, so the legal system must second-guess and sort out the facts in each case with unpredictable results. As smartphone cameras have come into widespread use, there is more documentation of the facts from different viewpoints.

Soros prosecutor Kim Gardner charged Patricia and Mark McCloskey of St. Louis with weapons charges for defending their home.

On February 26, 2012, neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman shot 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in Florida. Zimmerman was arrested and tried for murder. A jury acquitted Zimmerman of all charges, but the case drew national media attention because Zimmerman was white and Martin was black. Left-wing media used the case to draw criticism to stand-your-ground laws and ALEC.

On June 28, 2020, Black Lives Matter protestors wanted to demonstrate at the home of the Mayor of St. Louis, Missouri. However, the Mayor's house is in a gated community that can only be accessed by a private street. The protestors broke through the gate and passed by the home of Patricia and Mark McCloskey en route to the Mayor's house. The McCloskeys stood on their front porch holding an AK-47 and a pistol as the protestors approached them holding smartphone cameras. McCloskey did not draw his weapon until being threatened. Protestors threatened to press charges against the McCloskeys, both of whom are lawyers that had represented black clients in Civil Rights cases. The McCloskeys later spoke about their experiences at the 2020 Republican National Convention. In May 2021 Mark McCloskey announced his candidacy for the U.S. Senate.

In September 2020, Arizona State University held a virtual conference to discuss stand your ground laws. Caroline Light, the senior lecturer on women, gender, and sexuality at Harvard University, was an invited speaker and said,

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In many ways, I see [‘Stand Your Ground’ laws], which have spread now to 33 states in some kind of version, as a way in which the state might outsource its violence to individual citizens who are marked as ‘law-abiding citizens,'

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and

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By definition, the legal system is based on essential injustices that originate with the very beginning of this nation in settler colonialist violence, in racial capitalism through chattel slavery, [and] gender violence. So these essential exclusionary principles are baked into the legal system and the justice topographies that we deal with.

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Her views are consistent with the Critical race theory interpretation of stand-your-ground laws. Such laws will grow in importance of the Black Lives Matter movement succeeds in defunding the police.