Quote:
Originally Posted by ColbyBruce
What I don’t understand about this shooting or the Zimmerman/Martin shooting is this: why were the deceased not allowed to “stand their ground”? Martin had truly done nothing, and this dead fellow MAY have pulled into a Handicapped space to go inside and bring out a handicapped person, or may have been disabled himself. It’s not like this second shooter was a doctor, right? No. But in both cases, somebody is graveyard dead and the party responsible is not charged.
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Because "Stand Your Ground" is the media-friendly term for a statute which says "in a public place where you have the legal right to be, there is no duty or obligation to retreat before using deadly force in self-defense". Some states have it, others do not.
The deceased, both in Zimmerman and this case, was not acting in self-defense, as there was no overt threat. For instance, if Trayvon Martin, convinced he was being followed by Zimmerman, had turned around and used a lawfully-carried firearm against Zimmerman, he would be guilty of murder, since Zimmerman was not an immediate, unavoidable, grave threat.
Now, I understand why you'd think such a thing, because various...
inexpert media sources make exactly that point about the deceased "standing their ground".
The way I like to think of it is that "SYG" is a sort of additional protection. In other words, you
should retreat, regardless of what your legal obligation is. However, if deadly force becomes necessary, "SYG" protects you from the suggestion that you should have retreated, even though it wasn't a viable option.