While legislators plan to expand current stand your ground laws, Trayvon Martin & Jordan Davis’ mothers continue fighting to have them outlawed after losing their sons.
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Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis’ deaths have sparked outrage in Florida over the “Stand Your Ground” law. But what most people don’t realize, instead of repealing the law, Florida lawmakers are actually trying to expand the law. Lawmakers are considering two bills that would let anyone in fear of his life to fire a warning shot.
Florida State Republican Rep. Neil Combee, one of the bill’s sponsors, said of the warning shot, “I think it’s a clarification.”
Combee wants reform for people like Marissa Alexander. In 2012, she fired a warning shot during a domestic dispute. A court rejected her “stand your ground” claim, and sentenced her to 20 years under Florida’s gun laws.
On Monday, hundreds of protesters, including the parents of Trayvon Martin and the mother of Jordan Davis, protested on the Florida state capitol on Tallahassee to demonstrate against the law.
“To have laws that tell people that they can shoot first and then ask questions later is a violation of our civil rights. I believe that law is inherently wrong,” the Rev. Al Sharpton said, speaking to the crowd of protesters. “The law in effect says based on your imagination — if you imagine I’m a threat — you have the right to kill me.”
Before the protest CBS News’ Mark Strassmann interviewed Sybrina Fulton, Trayvon’s mother, and Lucia McBath, Jordan’s mother.
Fulton said, “We don’t have to have a law in place that says, ‘I need to shoot and kill someone and then ask questions later’. … These two moms are going to make positive change to make sure that ‘stand your ground’ doesn’t continue to happen.”
McBath called the potential expansion of the law to include warning shots “heinous.”
“More lives are at risk,” she said. “More people will shoot their guns and claim, ‘Well, I was just — you know, It was just a warning shot’.”
Take a look at their interview below:
Originally appeared at Clutch Magazine
Photo: Tes One/Flickr
Not mentioned in this article article is the fact that Stand Your Ground (SYG) laws played no part in either of the cases for Zimmerman or Dunn. Both cases dealt with whether there was cause for the use of lethal force. That is a self defense (SD) issue, not a SYG issue. SYG questions only arise after a case has been proven that SD is entirely warranted. In states with SYG laws, once the lethal force threshold is reached, the defendant does not have a legal responsibility to try and retreat before using lethal force. In the Zimmerman case, it… Read more »
A jury in Texas recently acquitted a homeowner who shot and killed a SWAT cop during a 6AM
“no knock” raid on his house. They recognized that he had no way of actually knowing they were
police until it was too late, and that the cops behaved in a criminal fashion. This is why Stand Your
Ground is needed, and it applies to everyone, regardless of race or gender.