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stand your ground
The Insidious and Bloody Result of ALEC's Stand-Your-Ground Laws
This promotion of vigilantism has resulted in a shoot-first-ask-questions-later culture that has made us all less safe, not more.
Oct 29, 2023
In early October, a Florida state senator introduced legislation to repeal the state’s controversial “Stand Your Ground” law allowing individuals to use deadly force in self-defense outside their homes. Florida was the first state to enact such a measure, and in the 18 years since its passage, studies have shown that more Floridians are dying because of it.
“The data is clear: homicide rates and gun deaths are higher where these discriminatory, dangerous policies are on the books,” Sen. Shevrin Jones (D-34), the bill’s sponsor, told the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD).
What’s less widely known is the pivotal role the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) has played in ensuring the widespread adoption of such laws.
Since its founding 50 years ago, ALEC has brought together Republican state legislators and corporate donors to draft model legislation repealing labor protections, rolling back environmental regulations, and encouraging the privatization of education. Yet one of ALEC’s ugliest efforts has been its collaboration with the National Rifle Association (NRA) to legalize an individual’s right to shoot to kill in public — the bloody legacy of its Stand Your Ground model legislation.
From Castle Doctrine to Stand Your Ground
Stand Your Ground laws are an expansion of what’s known as the “Castle Doctrine,” the common law principle that people are entitled to defend their own homes, even with lethal force. While the Castle Doctrine is legally upheld in most jurisdictions, applying that same principle to public spaces is more controversial. Individuals in states that have not passed Stand Your Ground laws are generally obligated to retreat from a public danger or threat — real or perceived — as long as they’re able to do so, whereas in states with these laws people are allowed to use force to meet the threat.
“A person who uses or threatens to use deadly force,” the 2005 Florida statute reads, “does not have a duty to retreat and has the right to stand his or her ground” as long as that person is in a public place and is not engaged in any criminal activity.
Applauded by the NRA and ALEC, the law has proven to be a game changer, enabling people to use deadly force in public with impunity.
Former NRA president and lobbyist Marion Hammer conceived of that first bill and worked with two Florida legislators who were members of ALEC at the time, State Sen. Durell Peaden and Rep. Dennis Baxley, to get it passed. Baxley, a far-right legislator who is a member of a neo-Confederate organization, had won the NRA’s Defender of Freedom award the year before. “Disorder and chaos are always held in check by the law-abiding citizen,” he said when the bill passed.
The NRA considered the legislation as the “first step of a multi-state strategy,” NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre told a reporter for The Washington Post. And ALEC was the perfect front group to execute that strategy.
Shortly after Stand Your Ground was signed into law in Florida, Hammer proposed that ALEC’s Criminal Justice Task Force adopt it as a model bill. A month later, ALEC’s board approved it. Since then, the language of ALEC’s model legislation — misleadingly dubbed the “Castle Doctrine Act” — has been incorporated into law in 29 more states, with some adopting especially broad versions of the legislation.
Stand Your Ground proponents like the NRA and Rep. Baxley claimed that these bills would reduce violent crime and make citizens feel safer. Yet countless lives have been lost due to the lethal force they permit. A study published last year in JAMA, the Journal of the American Medical Association found a significant increase in homicides in states with Stand Your Ground laws. An earlier study found that in Florida alone, the rates of homicide increased 24% and gun-related homicide increased 32% between 2005 and 2014. A meta review of 16 previous studies on the impact of Stand Your Ground also concluded that these laws lead to increased rates of homicide, especially due to deadly gun violence.
The American Bar Association called for the repeal of Stand Your Ground laws in a 2015 report, noting that they are racially biased and provide “a low-cost license to kill.”
The Two Faces of ALEC
In the wake of George Zimmerman’s murder of Black teenager Trayvon Martin in 2012, the tides appeared to turn against ALEC and its legislation supporting gun violence. Given the state’s Stand Your Ground law, Florida police had refused to make an arrest, spurring national outrage. At the time, research by CMD traced the bills back to ALEC and the NRA. When the civil rights group Color of Change called for a corporate boycott of ALEC, multiple corporations — including Kraft Foods, Coca-Cola, and PepsiCo — pulled out from the organization. In a statement, ALEC called Martin’s death a “tragedy,” and attempted to distance itself from the Florida legislation.
Yet when ALEC announced that it would disband its Public Safety and Elections Task Force in 2012 (formerly the Criminal Justice Task Force) — which had shaped Florida’s law into a cookie-cutter Stand Your Ground model bill — the chair of the task force made quiet assurances that the work would continue through other channels. “ALEC’s decision won’t impact the important issues we’ve worked on,” former Texas State Rep. Jerry Madden told The Christian Post. Since 2012, Stand Your Ground laws have continued to surface across the country.
ALEC has never repudiated its support for Stand Your Ground laws or pushed to undo any of the legislation. And as recently as 2021, ALEC CEO Lisa Nelson assured concerned members that although the organization no longer explicitly pursues social policies, it’s able to push its agenda through other means.
Justice Delayed, Justice Denied
Just 80 miles north of the luxury hotel in Orlando where ALEC held its 50th annual meeting, Florida’s Stand Your Ground law came into national focus again in June when Susan Lorincz, a 58-year-old white woman, shot and killed her 35-year-old Black neighbor, A.J. Owens, through Lorincz’s closed front door. She later admitted to having used racial slurs in verbally harassing Owens’ four children.
Although Lorincz was inside her home when she killed Owens, the local sheriff cited the state’s Stand Your Ground law as a reason to hesitate making an immediate arrest. “We have to rule out…whether this deadly force was justified or not before we can even make the arrest,” Marion County Sheriff Billy Woods told the press on June 5.
What makes Stand Your Ground laws especially insidious is that they flip the burden of proof. “Now police and prosecutors must prove a negative — that a shooter was not in fear for their life — to even bring a case,” Reveal reported. “According to legal experts, that’s an almost impossible standard to meet, meaning that many shooters won’t face charges for crimes as serious as murder.”
“‘Stand Your Ground’ laws threaten public safety, encourage armed vigilantism, and promote a culture of ‘shoot first, ask questions later,’” Sen. Jones told CMD.
“The National Rifle Association and the American Legislative Exchange Council have a stranglehold on Republican lawmakers here in Florida and across the country,” he continued. “These entities have traded campaign checks in exchange for fealty from legislators, and as a result, our communities are less safe.”
Lisa Graves and Arn Pearson contributed to this article.
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In Gun-Obsessed US, 'Stand Your Ground' Laws Blamed for Fresh Spate of Shootings
"Wrong-house shootings are a bleak reminder how many of our fellow Americans are armed and waiting for an opportunity to kill," said one historian.
Apr 19, 2023
Numerous shootings of people who have mistakenly approached the wrong property have raised alarm among gun control advocates, as the United States faces what one columnist called the effects of a "national experiment in freely giving deadly weapons to anyone who wants one."
Wednesday morning brought the latest news of a young person who was shot after making a common mistake, as a man in the Austin, Texas area was arrested for opening fire on a group of teenage girls after they mistook his vehicle for their own in an H-E-B supermarket parking lot.
Payton Washington, 18, was shot twice and is in critical condition at a nearly intensive care unit, while Heather Roth was grazed by a bullet and was treated at the scene. Roth told reporters that the girls approached the car of the suspect, Pedro Tello Rodriguez, and opened the door before realizing it wasn't theirs.
Rodriguez got out of the car and began shooting at Washington and Roth as well as two other high school students they were with. The girls were members of a cheerleading team with Woodlands Elite Generals and were preparing for the World Championships in Orlando this weekend.
"We are becoming a heavily armed nation, so fearful and angry and hair-trigger anxious that gun murders are now just the way in which we work out our frustrations."
The shooting took place days after 20-year-old Kaylin Gillis was fatally shot in Hebron, New York, after mistakenly driving up the wrong driveway with a group of friends while looking for a friend's house. A 65-year-old man named Kevin Monahan has been charged with second-degree murder.
The group had already realized their mistake and turned around when Gillis was shot on Saturday night.
"There were no words exchanged," Washington County Sheriff Jeffrey J. Murphy told reporters. "They were turning around, leaving... there certainly was no threat."
As Common Dreams reported Monday, 16-year-old Ralph Yarl was shot in the head and arm as he stood on the front porch of a home in Kansas City, Missouri where he believed his younger brothers were. He had mistakenly arrived at the wrong address and the homeowner, Andrew Lester, shot Yarl without "any words" being exchanged, according to prosecutors. Yarl had surgery to remove the bullets and was able to walk out of the hospital on Sunday and is expected to make a full recovery.
Prosecutors say "there was a racial component to the case" involving Yarl, who is Black.
Both Missouri and Texas have so-called "stand your ground" laws which permit people to use deadly force without retreating first if they believe they're being threatened with a crime, including robbery or burglary. Stand your ground laws apply "anyplace where a person has a legal right to be, not just at home," according to The New York Times.
About 30 states have stand your ground laws, and the majority have been enacted in the last 25 years—with Republican lawmakers enabling citizens to use deadly force to protect themselves from criminals even as crime rates significantly declined over the last three decades.
"This is literally the exact path everyone had predicted for years that the Republican obsession with looser gun laws and 'stand your ground' would lead," said podcast host and writer Fred Wellman. "We said it would get innocents killed. They don't care. That's the price we pay for their fear, racism, and guns."
Ari Freilich, state policy director for the gun control advocacy group Giffords Law Center, told The Guardian Wednesday that none of the suspects in the three cases should be permitted to invoke stand your ground laws in their defense.
"There's no state in the country where the existing laws are such that you can lawfully shoot someone for ringing the doorbell at the wrong house," said Freilich, adding that the cases "fit the pattern we've seen over and over again of racist fear intersecting with really widespread unvetted firearm access, combining in our country to make gun violence the leading cause of death by far for young Black men."
While New York does not have a stand your ground law, gun control advocates this week said the same worldview that has driven states to adopt such statutes, and led the U.S. population to amass about 120 privately owned guns for every 100 Americans, was also likely in play when Monahan allegedly shot Gillis.
\u201cThis has been building for a long time. It has just gone under the radar. But when you live and report where I have the past few decades, you couldn\u2019t not see it. Also, changing demographics are also a huge source of fear for some folks. It\u2019s a lot to grapple with.\u201d— @ijbailey (@@ijbailey) 1681815054
"This week, this country is convulsed by a series of horrific shootings where mistakes and minor slights are being met by gunfire," said U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) on the Senate floor on Wednesday. "We are becoming a heavily armed nation, so fearful and angry and hair-trigger anxious that gun murders are now just the way in which we work out our frustrations."
\u201c\u201cMinor slights ... are becoming potentially deadly. We are becoming a heavily armed nation, so fearful and angry and hair-trigger anxious that gun murders are now just the way in which we work out our frustrations.\u201d\n\n\u2014 Sen. Chris Murphy (D-CT) on shootings this week in the U.S.\u201d— The Recount (@The Recount) 1681923944
Times columnist Jamelle Bouie said the shootings demonstrate the consequences of the $28 billion gun industry's relentless selling of "the fantasy of blowing away anyone who intrudes on your property."
"Wrong-house shootings are a bleak reminder how many of our fellow Americans are armed and waiting for an opportunity to kill," said writer and historian Peter Manseau. "Expect more in the future: It's what happens when people have been sold weapons as 'home defense' for decades; they are desperate to get what they paid for."
\u201c\u201cHome defense\u201d is a marketing strategy. The gun industry began pushing it as numbers of hunters and sport shooters declined. It\u2019s like they looked across a warehouse full of guns and said \u201cHow are we going to get people to buy all this?\u201d The answer: Bad guys are coming for you.\u201d— Peter Manseau (@Peter Manseau) 1681869679
"What 'home defense' has done is put Chekhov's gun in millions of American homes," he added. "Sooner or later, many will go off. And when they do, for the most part they will not be used for actual protection. They'll shoot innocent strangers, or family members, or the gun owners themselves."
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Advocates Demand Justice for Kansas City Teen Shot After Knocking on Wrong Door
"There can be no excuse for the release of this armed and dangerous suspect after admitting to shooting an unarmed, non-threatening, and defenseless teenager that rang his doorbell," said a lawyer for 16-year-old Ralph Yarl's family.
Apr 17, 2023
Gun control advocates were among the progressives calling for criminal charges on Sunday for a Kansas City, Missouri resident who allegedly shot a Black teenager last week when the 16-year-old mistakenly knocked on his door.
Ralph Yarl reportedly meant to pick up his two younger brothers at a home on 115th Terrace in Kansas City on Thursday evening, but accidentally went to a house on 115th Street and rang the doorbell.
A suspect who has not been identified allegedly opened the door and shot Yarl once in the head and then in the arm after he had fallen to the ground.
Attorneys for Yarl's family say the shooter was a white male.
Yarl was able to run to three different neighbors' houses before finally reaching someone to ask for help, and has been hospitalized with a "life-threatening injury," according to The Guardian.
Protests broke out in the city over the weekend after the suspect was released, under Missouri law, from a "24-hour hold" and allowed to walk free without being charged.
Kansas City Police Chief Stacey Graves has said the police department is currently compiling evidence and needs a victim's statement in order to press charges, but attorneys for Yarl's family have joined local community members and gun control advocates in demanding a prompt investigation and charges for the suspect.
"There can be no excuse for the release of this armed and dangerous suspect after admitting to shooting an unarmed, non-threatening, and defenseless teenager that rang his doorbell," said civil rights attorney Lee Merritt, who has been retained by Yarl's family.
The Kansas City Defender, a local news outlet, reported that community members assembled in front of the house where Yarl was shot on Sunday, holding a protest that "was absolutely unprecedented in this area of Kansas City."
\u201cA massive crowd has amassed in front of the white man's home who attempted to murder 16 year old Black boy Ralph Yarl in Kansas City Missouri\u201d— The Kansas City Defender (@The Kansas City Defender) 1681679130
Shannon Watts, founder of the national gun control advocacy group Moms Demand Action, said volunteers with her organization joined the protest, where supporters called on prosecutors to charge the suspect with a hate crime.
\u201cMissouri @MomsDemand volunteers joined a protest today to support Ralph Yarl, a 16-year-old who was shot twice by a white man in Kansas City after he rang the doorbell of the wrong home. The shooter has not been charged.\n\nHere\u2019s the family\u2019s GoFundMe: https://t.co/ky8SvAFIuR\u201d— Shannon Watts (@Shannon Watts) 1681690299
Graves said in a statement that police are investigating whether the suspect may be protected legally by Missouri's "stand your ground" law, which permits residents to use deadly force if they believe they are at risk of a crime including a robbery, burglary, or murder. A defendant in a stand your ground case only needs to convince a jury that they believed their safety was at risk before they shot someone, not that they were actually in danger.
Missouri also has a law called the "castle doctrine," which allows a person to use deadly force to protect their home from an intrusion.
Benjamin Crump, another civil rights attorney who is representing Yarl's family, told the Kansas City Star that prosecutors should charge the man regardless of Missouri's pro-gun laws.
"You can't just shoot people without having justification when somebody comes knocking on your door and knocking on your door is not justification," Crump said. "This guy should be charged."
As Common Dreams reported last year, a study by public health researchers found that stand your ground laws that went into into effect between 2000 and 2016 were linked to an "abrupt and sustained" 11% spike in gun deaths.
Missouri saw one of the most dramatic increases in gun deaths over those years, with a 31% rise.
Civil rights advocate Bernice King noted that justice is "a continuum" and won't be secured in Yarl's case just through criminal charges for the suspect.
\u201c#RalphYarl. My goodness\u2026let\u2019s be for justice, which is a continuum. That means the man who did this should be charged AND we need to work for the legislative and heart change to prevent these tragedies. \n\nUse the contact info below\u2026\u201d— Be A King (@Be A King) 1681690296
Justice, she said, "means the man who did this should be charged AND we need to work for the legislative and heart change to prevent these tragedies."
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