Repeal Florida’s reckless “shoot first” law that shields Trayvon’s killer

[Laura Lynch]

Please sign this Criminal Justice Petition: Repeal Florida's Stand Your Ground reckless "shoot first" law that shields Trayvon's killer. 

This case is further evidence that Florida’s ‘Stand Your Ground Law,’ which passed in 2005, needs to be repealed. The failure of the Sanford police to further investigate this crime as a result of their interpretation of this law is an injustice to Trayvon’s family and to all Floridians. —DEBBIE WASSERMAN SCHULTZ (FL) Chair of the DNC.

National Republicans have already begun defending Stand Your Ground, a law passed at the urging of the NRA.

https://www.change.org/petitions/repeal-florida-s-reckless-shoot-fi...

[antonio Alejandro]

Before you continue posting, why dont you include the law and some of the pro arguments.  I like to hear both sides of the story.

[antonio Alejandro]

Well to tell you honestly hearing on side of the argument can be misguided.  I dont watch television, no time, so i dont mind hearing what people have to say pro and con regarding subjects.  The purpose of these discussions is to read both sides.

[Laura Lynch]

"Stand Your Ground" is a law that has really created a Wild West kind of mentality and environment in Florida ... in practice, people take the opportunity to shoot first and say later they had a justification. It almost gives them a free pass to shoot. "Stand Your Ground" (Florida statutes 776.012 and 776.013) removes an individual's duty to retreat from a conflict when he/she can safely do so:

A person who is not engaged in an unlawful activity and who is attacked in any other place where he or she has a right to be has no duty to retreat and has the right to stand his or her ground and meet force with force, including deadly force if he or she reasonably believes it is necessary to do so to prevent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony.

...it's not just the doing away with of the "duty to retreat" that makes the "Stand Your Ground" law so egregious. In conjunction with Florida statute 776.032, it can also prevent shooters from ever having to face any meaningful review of their actions by a jury.

"Justifiable homicides" in Florida have increased from 43 the year the law was enacted in 2005 to 105 in 2009. The law has been invoked in at least 93 cases in Florida involving 65 deaths, a 2010 St. Petersburg Times review found. Trayvon Martin is not even the first unarmed black teenager to be killed by a shooter using the "Stand Your Ground" defense.

"The bottom line is that prior to the "Stand Your Ground" law, if you were out in public in Florida and could avoid spilling blood by safely retreating from a conflict, you were required to do so by law. Now, hundreds of years of common law have been thrown out the window and the Seminole County grand jury will have to evaluate Zimmerman's actions through the lens of the NRA's new (and dangerous) statutes." –Josh Horwitz, Exec Director Coalition to Stop Gun Violence.