Please don't confuse "Castle Doctrine" with "Stand Your Ground".

[moriah]

The first has to do with incidents that occur on your own property or inside your own home. The second with incidents pretty much anywhere else.

I'm very much for Castle Doctrine -- the presumption that if you shoot someone breaking into your home while you are inside that it was in self-defense, barring other evidence to the contrary, and that you should not have to compromise your safety to retreat as far as possible if there is a better place to use a distance weapon from.

An incident where a person in their own home retreated absolutely as far as she could before shooting:

-- Her attacker ended up dead, but not before he had his hands around her throat.

Another instance, but this time going by Oklahoma's more Castle Doctrine-ish laws. This person, when confronted with someone attempting to break in, chose a tactical position to shoot from, and waited until they broke through her locked door into her home before shooting:

-- Despite the fact she was dealing with two attackers and one of them had a knife, she and her child were uninjured.

-----

I don't think there's a soul on this board who would disagree that the woman in the first video was absolutely engaging in self-defense in her use of a firearm, and she made it out alive so I'm not going to second-guess her decisions. What about the second? If you think it was justified to shoot before initiating conversation, is it just because she had an infant? Because the person was carrying a knife? Because there were two assailants? (BTW: there's not a lot of good video footage in either of those links, so if you're like me, feel free to read something else while listening to them).

If a person doesn't have the right to presume that a person forcibly breaking into their home is up to no good, the second was a bad shooting. I think it was obvious from the call she was waiting for the person to break in and that she was going to shoot whoever came through -- her decision was made before she even saw the knife.

I think for self-defense in the home, the laws are as they should be.

Self-defense outside the home is what "Stand Your Ground" laws are about.... please don't confuse the instances like the second video above with "human hunting".

[ProgressiveProfessor]

1. The laws in this area are quite a mash up and all involve the concept of "duty to retreat"

- Some state have expressly removed no duty to retreat" and substituted some version of SYG
- Some states never enacted a duty to retreat
- Some states have a duty to retreat in all circumstances (no Castle Doctrine)
- Some states have Castle Doctrine but require retreat outside of the home

Additionally, the laws all vary somewhat from state to state. However, all states have the same requirement for using deadly force in self defense (reasonable fear of GBI or death). These kind of details are critical to anyone wanting to make changes.

Many of the posts here on Miller killing and SYG in general are ill informed at best. I appreciate the passion, but emotional rants are not going to solve anything. Calm arguments based on the actual laws is what will change things.

[no_hypocrisy]

2. And Zimmerman was *ordered* to retreat by the police dispatcher.

Once he was told not discontinue following Treyvon Martin, Zimmerman should have dropped back.

[moriah]

3. Exactly. Zimmerman's actions have nothing to do with Castle Doctrine.

OR with "Stand your Ground".

He was the aggressor. He was not acting in self-defense. Regardless of which state he was arrested in.

[TheKentuckian]

5. I find the zeal to ignore this critical piece disturbing and suspicious.

There is no hunt the human law, Zimmerman went there and is outside of any self-defense law.

[moriah]

8. I'm with you, but I'll also say this.

If having the right to not back down *from a threat* on the street is having the right to go "human hunting"...

... then not having to back down in your home is when the hunting comes to you. And this may sound awful. It may sound like I have no value for human life when I say this to some. And it's not meant to, it's just a *fact* -- if you're breaking into someone's home, you just might be volunteering to be hunted.

No one should be considered to be "volunteering to be hunted" by walking down the street.

Nor should just walking down the street be something one considers so threatening that they would consider their lives to be in danger. The concept of not having a duty to retreat outside the home is new, and may need to have more stringent guidelines to protect those it's meant to protect while not giving asshats like Zimmerman the perceived ability to hide behind the law and idiotic racist police departments the excuse not to investigate a murder.

Maybe the law itself is good, but the implementation of the law is bad enough to outweigh it without amendment to prevent those bad implementations.

[TheKentuckian]

9. I don't think anyone thinks that just walking down the street is a threat

and cannot be reasonably argued as such or it would be an open season on anyone, anywhere, any time and essentially remove any need for law at all.

Crooked cops, evil prosecutors, and shitty juries have found ways to protect evil crackers forever when they murder young black men on whim.

As a male of color living in Kentucky, I'm not giving Zimmerman a pass or defence. I'm strongly supporting my right of defense against a Zimmerman. It is too easy for an overzealous prosecutor to go after me for some missed opportunity to retreat or a bigoted jury to send me to jail for killing a white man in self defense by hanging on a loophole. I see no "fix" other than a reasonable interpretation by those who are charged with enforcement and prosecution.

Fixing the police culture and not rewarding prosecutions both in the job and as a path to political promotion seems a hell of a lot more effective a route to me but folks seem to like law enforcement to run amok and have no desire to make the police accountable as stewards of the public safety or prosecutors as stewards of the truth and agents of justice rather than tee'ing them off to relentlessly go for convictions.

[moriah]

10. "I'm strongly supporting my right of defense against a Zimmerman."

I am very supportive of that right, too.

Obviously Zimmerman is mentally unbalanced to some degree or another, to think that he had the right to question a young man walking down the street. To think that he *needed* to question a young man who was just walking down the street. The 911 call shows just how unbalanced. Because he thought that it was a threat, for someone to just walk down the street.

It's that kind of unbalanced psycho that people need to be able to protect themselves from.

[moriah]

4. What do you see as "emotional ranting"?

Please, do tell.

The fact that I showed two instances where a person defended their home?

Or the fact that the second, without the legal presumption that a person breaking into your home is up to no good ("Castle Doctrine&quot , would be a bad shooting?

[TheKentuckian]

7. I think they may well be addressing the threads chock full of emotional rants, not your OP

but I reckon they will have to speak for themselves.

Any presumption besides up to no good, when someone is breaking into your home is a dangerously bad one that might result in watching your children being molested before your afternoon dirt nap.

I will also add that the right to self defense should not be abridged whether on is at home or in their car or on the bus or on the streets.

Those that don't believe in self defense should refrain from defending themselves and remove their suicidal and authority worshiping tendencies out of the gene pool.

[yardwork]

6. Who is Miller?

[TeamsterDem]

11. Excellent post, can't rec it enough!!!!! nt