SB 436: Stand Your Ground Law

SB 436: Stand Your Ground Law On April 26, 2005, Florida Governor Jeb Bush signed into law SB 436 or what is currently known as the Stand Your Ground law. While the government recognizes a person’s right to use self defense, including deadly force, to protect one’s self, the highly controversial law expanded the right to use deadly force in Florida. Before SB 436, common law was meant to ensure each persons protection with two exception. The common law state that the use of deadly force was justified to use against another person if it was a necessity, if the proportionality in which force was used was equal to the amount one was being threatened with and if another person in the same position would reasonably react in the same manner. However

Under the protection of the SB 436, it is more difficult to charge people with a crime and more guilty people are going free. The SB 436 law has also increased the number of crime and homicide rates. The current SB 436 law has also lead to third party policing vigilantism, in which citizens take the law into their own hands. Finally SB 436 strength “racial animosity and negative stereotypes, both white and black” (Lawson, 273), increasing hostility toward certain

There have been increases in robberies, suicides, and homicides. “The Stand Your Ground statue increased the ‘availability’ of firearms, thus resulting in more crime and suicide” (Gius, 330). A study by Cheng and Hoekstra (2013), using state level data from the Uniform Crime Reports and Supplementary Homicide Report showed that the Stand Your Ground law “lead to an 8% increase in the number of reported murders and non-negligent homicide” (Gius, 330) The law comes at a high cost. The current self defense laws allow individuals to liberally turn their guns onto other human being. Stand Your Ground laws reduce the cost of using lethal force to stop crime. As a result, a shooter [person defending themselves] “need not be correct in his perception of danger,” and can lead to them being wrong and “a victim’s life is lost needlessly” (Lawson, 300), thus leading to an increase in homicide rates under the Stand Your Ground law. With the Stand Your Ground law an unarmed man can be shot by “armed citizens who claimed a right of self defense due to perceived threatening behaviors” (Gius, 329). Looking specifically at homicides and using a larger data set, US Vital Statistics, a study by McClellan and Tekin (2012) also found that “Stand Your Ground law resulted in an increase in homicides” (Guis,