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On July 12, 2013, the Honorable Judge Debra S. Nelson addressed the jury in the second-degree murder trial ofGeorge Zimmerman in Florida and read her instructions to the jury (pdf). They included the following:

In deciding whether George Zimmerman was justified in the use of deadly force, you must judge him by the circumstances by which he was surrounded at the time the force was used. The danger facing George Zimmerman need not have been actual; however, to justify the use of deadly force, the appearance of danger must have been so real that a reasonably cautious and prudent person under the same circumstances would have believed that the danger could be avoided only through the use of that force. Based upon appearances, George Zimmerman must have actually believed that the danger was real.

If George Zimmerman was not engaged in an unlawful activity and was attacked in any place where he had a right to be, he had no duty to retreat and had the right to stand his ground and meet force with force, including deadly force if he reasonably believed that it was necessary to do so to prevent death or great bodily harm to himself or another or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony ...

If in your consideration of the issue of self-defense you have a reasonable doubt on the question of whether George Zimmerman was justified in the use of deadly force, you should find George Zimmerman not guilty.

Nelsons jury instructions mirrored Florida Statute 776.012, which describes the justifiable use of force:

(1) A person is justified in using or threatening to use force, except deadly force, against another when and to the extent that the person reasonably believes that such conduct is necessary to defend himself or herself or another against the others imminent use of unlawful force. A person who uses or threatens to use force in accordance with this subsection does not have a duty to retreat before using or threatening to use such force.

(2) A person is justified in using or threatening to use deadly force if he or she reasonably believes that using or threatening to use such force is necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another or to prevent the imminent commission of a forcible felony. A person who uses or threatens to use deadly force in accordance with this subsection does not have a duty to retreat and has the right to stand his or her ground if the person using or threatening to use the deadly force is not engaged in a criminal activity and is in a place where he or she has a right to be.

The law was based on a legal precept called the castle doctrine, which does not require a person with a gun to retreat in the face of danger, but most people know the law by its more famous nickname: Stand your ground.

The jury eventually acquitted Zimmerman of the murder of Trayvon Martin, and for three years, no state could pass a version of the law. It was politically toxic in the age of Black Lives Matter, and every state that tried to pass similar legislation failed.

But in the last few months, under Republican legislatures, Stand your ground has made a quiet resurgence. In September, Missouri became the first state to enact it since Trayvons death. Iowa passed a sweeping gun measure April 13 that lets children handle firearms, allows citizens to sue cities that have gun-free zones and makes Stand your ground state law.

Now Florida is back at it again. According to the New York Times, the Sunshine State is set to strengthen its law by shifting the responsibility of proving immunity from the defendant to prosecutors. In shortin Florida, if you kill another person with a gun and claim that you were defending yourself, it is up to the state to prove that your use of force was not justified.

While this may seem like the usual conservative political gambit, there is something larger than the singular murder of Trayvon Martin at issue. Stand your ground laws have repeatedly been shown to be biased. In fact, study after peer-reviewed study on the issue shows that Stand your ground laws result in more homicides, and there is no doubt who benefits. Research shows that white men who shoot black men are more likely to benefit from such laws, which means that the resurrection of the castle doctrine will most likely mean that more white men will get away with killing black men.

In 2012 John Roman of the Urban Institutes Justice Policy Center conducted a study of Stand your ground data using FBI statistics. He found that states with Stand your ground laws reflect the same disparities in homicide convictions found in states without such lawswith one significant exception:

Whites who kill blacks in Stand Your Ground states are far more likely to be found justified in their killings. In non-Stand Your Ground states, whites are 250 percent more likely to be found justified in killing a black person than a white person who kills another white person; in Stand Your Ground states, that number jumps to 354 percent.

Romans findings were still deemed inconclusive because he used data from 2005 to 2009 and had a very low number of comparable white-on-black homicides in Stand your ground states to compare (25). So Roman doubled back and completed a full, more thorough study and found that when the shooter is black, the homicide is justified in about 1 percent of cases in Stand your ground states. When a white person kills a black person in a Stand your ground state, the murder is justified 17 percent of the time (versus 11 percent in states without such laws).

More from Roman:

Finally, I tested whether these racial disparities remained when we controlled for whether the victim and perpetrator were strangers, the state where the incident occurred, the year of the homicide, and whether the shooting occurred in a SYG state. The racial disparities remain large and significant. In fact, the odds that a white-on-black homicide is ruled to have been justified is more than 11 times the odds a black-on-white shooting is ruled justified.

In another Stand your ground study that looked solely at cases in Florida, researchers discovered that between 2005 and 2013, Florida juries were twice as likely to convict the perpetrator of a crime against a white person as they were to convict in a crime against a person of color. These results are similar to pre-civil rights era statistics, with strict enforcement for crimes when the victim was white and less-rigorous enforcement with the victim is non-white, the report said.

The data is clear: Stand your ground laws benefit white people who kill blacks.

Maybe youve heard the story of Trevor Dooley, the 69-year-old man who said he was protecting his neighborhood, like another certain neighborhood watchman. Dooley went across the street to shoo away a skateboarder and got into a fight with David James, who was 28 years younger, 6 inches taller and 70 pounds heavier.

Dooley pulled out his gun, James lunged for it, they wrestled on the ground and James ended up dead. It sounds eerily similar to the Zimmerman case, except that a judge denied Dooley the use of the Stand your ground defense. There is one other big difference in the Dooley case: James, the dead man, was white, and Dooley was black.

This illustrates the larger point of the racially biased Stand your ground law. Despite all the statistical and mathematical evidence, America has yet to answer one simple scientific question:

Which weighs more: a dead black body or a little white lie?

Michael Harriot is a staff writer at The Root, host of "The Black One" podcast and editor-in-chief of the daily digital magazine NegusWhoRead.

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States Are Quietly Resurrecting a Law That Makes It Easier to Kill Blacks - The Root

Iowa State Representative Ras Smith. [Photo: Kathryn Gamble for The Trace]

Soon after the start of his first term as a black lawmaker in the fifth-whitest state in the country, State Representative Ras Smith brought his hoodie to work. For the eleventh year in a row, elected officials in Iowa were going to take up a stand your ground proposal, authorizing residents to use lethal means to protect themselves in certain situations. In other states, similar laws have disproportionately justified the fatal shootings of African-Americans.

What was different now, in 2017, was the measures likely passage. In November, Republicans, who overwhelmingly support the policy, won a majority in the Iowa State Senate, giving the party control of both the legislature and the governorship for the first time since 1998.

The new composition made Smith feel that passage was close to inevitable. Yet he still hoped he might be able to stop it, by appealing to the moral imaginations of his Republican colleagues. Smith represents a portion of Waterloo, a city of 68,000 about two hours northeast of Des Moines that has the states largest black population. The African-American community has mainly been relegated to the citys east side, in part a product of discriminatory housing policies from the 20th century.

Stand your ground was just one component of a larger omnibus gun bill, which also included a provision allowing citizens to sue local government officials who enforce bans on firearms in public areas. On March 9, before the House voted on the legislation, Smith took the floor to address his fellow lawmakers. He is 29 and six feet tall, a former high-school athlete with a muscular build, close-cropped hair, and earrings. He wore a dark suit, which concealed the tattoos across his chest and biceps, including a picture of a teddy bear that symbolizes his devotion to his 4-year-old daughter.

Smith recounted a story about playing football as a teenager in the rural town of Garwin, which is nearly 100 percent white.

I was called racial slurs more than 10 times, spit in my face, and told, If I could kill you and get away with it, I would do that, he told his colleagues.

Smiths speech lasted less than four minutes. Toward the end, he reminded the other legislators that there is a history in the United States of whites committing violence against black men, out of hatred and out of irrational fear. To emphasize this point, he brought props. Smith took out his gray sweatshirt, which he pulled over his suit jacket. He flipped the hood up, and then put on a pair of large red headphones. Moments earlier, Smith had been dressed the way that ascendant politicians are expected to dress. Now he looked like Trayvon Martin, the unarmed black Florida teenager who was killed by George Zimmerman in 2012 the boy who has come to epitomize the perils of stand your ground.

This is that threat you can perceive every day, Smith declared.

My colleagues say they respect me, he told The Trace. So I wanted to show them what I wear on a daily basis, and to ask: Are they willing to pass legislation that could negatively impact my life?

The answer turned out to be yes. The bill passed largely along party lines, and on April 13, Governor Terry Branstad signed it into law.

For four years, between 2012 and 2016, every state that tried to enact stand your ground legislation failed. But now the policy is again finding its way into law. Last year, Missouri became the first state to break the logjam, followed by Iowa this month. Florida is poised to strengthen its law in favor of shooters, shifting the burden of proof in pre-trial hearings to prosecutors, who would have to convince a judge that someone claiming stand your ground shouldnt be immune from prosecution.

Missouri, like Iowa, is now under total Republican control. The GOP has held the legislature and governors office in Florida for two decades. White rural Democrats, once potential allies of minority legislators representing cities, are practically extinct. The overall decline of the partys power has diminished the ability of black lawmakers to influence policies that directly affect their constituents.

The states that passed stand your ground early on were low-hanging fruit, said Christopher Mooney, the Director of the Institute of Government and Public Affairs at the University of Illinois. As Republicans gain strength in states like Missouri and Iowa, the odds of it passing go up.

An ongoing series investigating the National Rifle Associations influence on state policy and politics.

It was in Florida that the stand your ground movement began, with the National Rifle Association successfully lobbying state lawmakers in 2005 to pass the first such legislation in the nation. Over the next seven years, 21 states followed. Stand your ground removes a persons duty to retreat in the face of grave danger, granting the legal right to use deadly force if the perception of a threat is reasonable. (Critics refer to the statutes as shoot first laws.) After Martin was killed in 2012, stand your ground became a politically toxic phrase, and its expansion stalled.

Defenders of stand your ground argue that all it does is enshrine the right to self-defense, ensuring that people cannot be punished for protecting themselves. They say that the laws built-in standard for assessing a threat that it must be reasonable to necessitate a violent, even deadly, response prevents abuse.

You cant claim the defense when its clear there wasnt a threat to your life or safety, said State Representative Matt Windschitl, a Republican from Missouri Valley and the lead sponsor of stand your ground in Iowa.

Yet a persistent problem with the law is that ones definition of reasonable is relative. Evidence suggests that there is a correlation between stand your ground and increased homicide rates, and that the law disproportionately protects people who shoot minorities. A 2013 study released by the Urban Institute revealed that in stand your ground cases, when the assailant is white and the victim is black, homicides are 281 percent more likely to be ruled justified than if the roles were reversed. Two years later, the American Bar Association published an authoritative report recommending that states repeal the statute because of its implicit racial bias.

If youre white and not learning the value of minorities, then youre reacting to your own narrow frame of reference, which is usually soundbites on TV about criminals and drug dealers, said State Representative Ako Abdul-Samad, a Democrat from Des Moines and one of the black lawmakers who opposed the self-defense law. If thats all you have to go on, you will react with fear.

Across the country, African-Americans make upless than 10 percent of all state lawmakers. Marginalized by political realities they cannot control, there is little they can do to stop the resurgence of stand your ground. In Iowa, there are just five black state lawmakers out of 150; in Florida, there are 27 out of 160; and last year, in Missouri, the figure was 21 out of 197. Of all of these black elected officials, only two one in Florida, and one in Missouri are members of the GOP. They were also the only two to vote in favor of the legislation.

Many African-American legislators see the persistence of stand your ground as a consequence of segregation. Black lawmakers say that the lack of diversity in rural and suburban areas breeds fear and ignorance, which can facilitate deadly encounters.

What a gun means to someone in North Florida is completely different than what it means to someone on the streets of Tampa, said Representative Janet Cruz, the Democratic minority leader in the Florida House. Although someone in a rural area may see stand your ground as a tool to ensure theyre able to keep their family safe, for many in the urban parts of Florida, they see it as a threat to their family.

Representative Matt Windschitl (left), the sponsor of Iowas stand your ground law, speaks with a colleague at the state capitol in 2011. [AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall]

Oscar Braynon, a black Democrat who serves as Floridas Senate minority leader and represents the Miami-area district where Trayvon Martins mother lives, said that the Republicans who serve alongside him arent interested in engaging with data that shows stand your ground too often protects whites who kill blacks.

These people dont understand our struggle, he said. Repealing stand your ground is one of the top two issues in my district, well before cleaning up the environment or lowering taxes. I live in the reality laid out in the data, while some of these other lawmakers seem to live in a theoretical movie.

Braynonadded: Ive heard them argue that African-Americans are committing more crimes than anyone else. So the point of that statement is what? Maybe they need to be shot? Thats the type of thing I hear. They say you need to get control of your people.

For RepresentativeSmith, it is the assumption whites have often made about him and their unwillingness to examine the source of those assumptions that makes stand your ground so dangerous; inherent racism distorts perception. He remembers playing basketball as a teenager in Tama, Iowa, which is less than 1 percent black. During the game, as he was preparing to take a shot from the free-throw line, a white referee approached him and said, Pull up your pants, son. This isnt East Waterloo.

That was an adult asserting himself to a child in that way, Smith said. And I didnt sag my shorts. The truth was opposite. I wore them John Stockton-style, a reference to the Utah Jazzs white former point guard, who was famous for wearing shorts that ended well above the knee.

Last year, when Smith was running for office, several police officers confronted him as he finished an event at a church. He was dressed in khaki pants and a white campaign T-shirt that bore his name. The officers told him that he matched the description of someone who had just committed a robbery a black male wearing a white T-shirt. Despite the fact that the name on his shirt matched the one on his license, he had to submit to a background check.

What would they have done if the description was white male, white T-shirt? Smith said. Even when Im leaving my own campaign event, at a church, wearing my own campaign T-shirt, Im still a threat.

In February, soon after stand your ground was introduced in the Iowa House, Smith was taken aback by something he heard on talk radio. At the time, more than half of Iowans supported the legislation, and as he listened to a caller discuss the issue, he realized it might be impossible to change their minds. The person on the line, a white male, said that if wearing headphones and hoodies gives off the impression of menace, then black men should leave those items at home.

Thats a pretty privileged mindset, Smith said. Its different when your white son wears headphones and a hoodie. Okay. Well, Ive had pretty negative interactions with white people dressed in camo. Does that mean white people shouldnt wear camo?

Representative Windschitl, the Iowa bills lead sponsor, has been the driving force behind the legislation for the last decade. Elected in his early 20s, he is a 33-year-old gunsmith and railroad conductor whose district is almost entirely white. He says he understands the concerns of his African-American colleagues, but prefers to emphasize the new legal protections the law offers his states black gun owners.

Its a two-way street when we talk about stand your ground, Windschitl said. This law doesnt say that if you see a person of color walk into a room you can shoot them. But if a person of color walks into a room, and a white person starts something because he feels threatened by his skin color, then that African-American person, under the law, has a right to defend himself.

He added, This law doesnt start a race war.

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Black Politicians are Fighting a 'Stand Your Ground' Resurgence - The Trace

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By Sam Hoober,Alien Gear Holsters

Stand your ground laws in many ways are a good thing, as it establishes a persons right to defend themselves from an attacks by violent persons. In an ideal world, no one would ever have cause to fear for their safety, but since we live very differently from how we should, that isnt the case in real life. There are bad people out there.

In the states where such statutes exist, the general gist is that a person can defend themselves anywhere they are attacked, with lethal force if necessary. Granted, the exact wording and mechanisms of the law differs from state-to-state; some give a person wider latitude than others. Some states also have a stand your ground law established by case law, rather than by legislation.

However, these laws do come with limitations, just as Castle Doctrine laws do, so it behooves a person to do their homework and familiarize themselves with the appropriate laws in their city and state, especially if they plan to put on a concealed carry holster and carry a gun. Knowing when you can or cant shoot is just as important, if not more so, than knowing how to.

Just like almost all states self-defense laws, Stand Your Ground laws require that any use of force be preceded by a reasonable fear of death or severe injury prior to initiating force on anyone. A person therefore would have to have a reasonable fear that they will be killed or severely injured prior to acting.

For instance, retired police captain Curtis Reeves, 74, was involved in a shooting at a movie theater in 2014. Reeves began arguing with another moviegoer, one Chad Oulson, about texting during the movie. When the other patron threw his popcorn at Reeves, Reeves drew his pistol and shot, killing Oulson. He claimed that he was acting within the purview of the Florida Stand Your Ground Law.

Unfortunately, the court did not agree and in March of this year, Reeves was scheduled to stand trial for second-degree murder. The judge didnt buy the argument, according to the Tampa Bay Times, as evidence (including video surveillance of the incident) didnt corroborate Reeves version of events or that anything worse than a bit of popcorn was sent his way.

While Floridas law has been criticized for being too permissive, there have been people convicted in that state for acting outside the bounds of the statute. Cases from that state tend to be the most widely disseminated as the Sunshine States law was one of the earliest examples as well. For instance, one Michael Dunn was convicted of first-degree murder as well as other charges in 2014 as a result of a Nov. 12, 2012, incident in Jacksonville that involved Dunn.

Dunn, according to NBC Miami, got into an argument with several teenagers in an SUV over their playing music too loud. Dunn claimed he saw something resembling a gun as one of the young men in the car rolled their window down. He fired 10 shots into the car, killing 17-year-old Jordan Davis. Dunn never called police to report the incident, instead heading straight back to his hotel room with his fiance.

Clearly, both incidents would appear outside the bounds of what could be called self-defense. In both incidents, the law was invoked after both parties initiated a conflict with the parties that became deceased. In both incidents, there was nothing that could reasonably be considered a legitimate threat to life or limb.

In both incidents, someone is now dead over something incredibly stupid.

These laws exist to confer legal protection for a person who responded to a real threat on their life or limb, not as a means to shoot people over trifles. A responsible citizen knows not to get into such situations, as quibbles with others over such ephemera is never worth it, and certainly knows not to draw their gun unless facing a serious threat.

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Sam Hoober is Contributing Editor for AlienGearHolsters.com, a subsidiary of Hayden, ID, based Tedder Industries, where he writes about gun accessories, gun safety, open and concealed carry tips. Click here to visit aliengearholsters.com.

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CCW Weekend: Learning The Limitations Of Stand Your Ground Laws - Daily Caller

Jordyn Connell | Published 04/20/17 12:54am

Customers shop for guns at Jim's Pawn Shop in Fayetteville, North Carolina. Josh Hondorp, manages the pawn business at the store, also sells guns and features a shooting range Photo Courtesy ofDavid Zucchino/Los Angeles Times/MCT.

If passed, the Gun Safety Act, or House Bill 723, would change current stand your ground laws in North Carolina.

N.C. Rep. Verla Insko, D-Orange, and Rep. Pricey Harrison, D-Guilford, introduced the bill April 10 to the N.C. House of Representatives.

We have too many horrific, often accidental, gun deaths, and I believe in common sense gun laws that would help control some of that, Insko said.

Insko said she signed the bill because of N.C. House Bill 588 which she believes makes guns and ammunition more available to citizens in North Carolina.

We dont have to have people armed to fight a war by themselves, she said.

There is more than one gun per person in the United States, making it the most heavily armed nation in the world, Insko said.

The stand your ground law is not needed, she said.

Insko said this first revision of the bill will repeal the stand your ground laws, which permit the use of deadly force if you are presumed to be in danger when someone enters your house, vehicle or workplace uninvited.

Thats giving an individual the right to be the judge, jury and executioner all at once, she said.

When there are professionals who are trained in crowd control and know when or when not to use deadly force, Insko said citizens do not need to protect themselves.

Most of the people breaking and entering dont do damage and harm anybody, she said.

N.C. Rep. Larry Pittman, R-Cabarrus, said in an email the bill would limit self-defense to inside ones home.

Currently, it is recognized that citizens have a right to defend themselves outside the home, as well, Pittman said.

Pittman said he thinks House Bill 723 violates the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.

If it were to pass, what it would mean for the State is the reduction of freedom for our law-abiding citizens, he said in the email.

Pittman said the bill presents an unjust requirement for legal gun owners.

I am adamantly opposed to this or any legislation that makes our law-abiding citizens more vulnerable to attack, Pittman said.

Current law already provides restrictions and limitations on those who possess of firearms should only be restricted in limited situations as current law provides, he said.

Every honest citizen has a God-given right to self-defense, wherever they may be, Pittman said.

Paul Valone, president of gun rights organization Grass Roots North Carolina, said the N.C. House continues to introduce similar bills to keep their constituents happy when it knows they will never get to a committee hearing.

(We) shouldnt be wasting time on it because the bill is dead on arrival, Valone said.

Valone said while stand your ground laws are necessary, the Castle Doctrine is key.

The (Castle Doctrine) creates a rebuttable legal presumption that if somebody forcibly and unlawfully enters your home, your motor vehicle or your workplace, then you are presumed to have a reasonable fear of eminent death or great bodily harm, Valone said.

He said he thinks the new bill is no more effective than current law, which already restricts the contexts under which an individual can use force to defend themselves. And Valone said the motivation for the bill is wrong.

(Verla Insko is) utterly wrong and demonstrating the ignorance that gun control advocates generally profess, he said.

Current law was crafted to add protections and allow for judicial discretion, he said.

The idea that someone is going to be wrongfully killed is absurd, he said.

state@dailytarheel.com

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State bill takes aim at North Carolina's 'stand your ground' laws - The Daily Tar Heel

CEDAR FALLS (KWWL) -

The Stand Your Ground law is months away from taking effect in Iowa.

Lawmakers say it will allow Iowans to use deadly force to avoid injury or possible death.

Steven Foote, an employee at Mr. Guns in Cedar Falls, says the new bill is cut and dry.

"You no longer have the duty to retreat if you're confronted with a situation," explained Foote.

Foote says the biggest part of the Stand Your Ground bill is that peopleno longer have to try and run away if they feel they're in danger.

"If you're in the process of being mugged you no longer have to try and run away first, you can simply use what force is necessary to stop the situation right there on the spot," said Foote.

The force used isn't limited to a gun.

"It could be whatever weapon you happen to have on hand," said Foote."You don't always have your fire arm with you soit could easily be a flash light or monkey wrench."

Right now in Iowa the old law still applies.

"The way the law is currently written means that if you're confronted with a certain situation you need to back up and try to run away or get away if you can," said Foote.

Soon Iowanscan stand theirground anywhere.Whether that be on theirproperty or in town. This is something that worries some people.

"Another big misconception is that therewill be blood in the street, which is what they always claim," said Foote. "Every other state in the union that has had the stand your ground lawenactedhas not had blood in the street."

A huge concept Foote stresses is a person's life needs to be in danger before they can shoot or use another weapon.

"You have to be in jeopardy," said Foote."You need to be in great bodily harm or near death, so you have to be in jeopardy in order to use deadly force, period."

Foote says right now people in Iowa still have to try and run away.

Adding a lot of the time it's scary to turn your back on a person who might hurt you, but this bill will solve that problem.

The Stand Your Ground bill goes in to effect July 1.

Right now Iowa law remains the same. Lawmakers say you must try and retreat before using deadly force.

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Explaining Stand Your Ground law - kwwl.com