Florida Stand Your Ground Shooting

[Rev. Rye]

SMDH, the stand your ground law is retarded.

I do believe such a law can, in fact, be defensible (like, say, if someone is being mugged, and if it turns out the victim is actually packing heat and the perp isn't deterred by the threat of someone potentially killing him.) That said, I believe if you have this law, you REALLY need to be strict about the application.

With regards to this case, shooting a guy who has just shoved you to the ground seems like a pretty good case of self-defense. The shooter may be an argumentative SOB who was looking for an argument over a handicapped space, but the victim's response was way over the line, and his response to this would seem to be legitimate.

Sometimes, both sides in a given conflict are gaping assholes (hassling someone over a handicapped space vs. throwing someone to the ground over it), but even in those cases, there's a distinct possibility that someone might actually have some sort of moral high ground, and in this case, as much as I hate to admit it, the ornery sumbitch who shot the guy does, in my opinion. I know race can make relatively innocuous gestures seem threatening, but, really, if, for example, Liam Neeson (white action hero from the whitest country on Earth) threw me to the ground and I was packing heat, I'd fucking pull the trigger.