Stand Your Ground

“States That Have Stand Your Ground Laws” Many states have passed laws allowing one to ‘stand your ground’ in potentially life threatening or serious injury situations. These laws let the victim surpass attempts to retreat, and allow them to directly use self-defense if their life or serious bodily harm is being threatened. Some states retract from this a little, only making the law applicable when the victim is on their own personal property, such as their house, office, or even car. Other states go even further, only allowing an individual to fight back in self-defense if they have already tried to retreat. In my opinion, there are two sides to this. On the first hand, I think everyone should have a legal right to fight back in self-defense …show more content…
The ex-husband of his wife, on their wedding day, entered their home and began attacking them. Having justifiable reason to believe that his life or serious injury was in danger, the man shot and killed the unarmed ex-husband. While they are very similar, “Stand Your Ground” and self-defense are defined differently, depending on what state you are in. While self-defense only excuses that if you believe you are in danger of serious injury or death and killing your attacker is necessary to save yourself from that danger, stand your ground accepts that as long as you are not doing anything unlawful, are in a place where you have the right, and are met with danger or the threat of death, you may fight back with force. It does not matter whether you had the possibility to retreat or not, so long as it is reasonable to consider the situation a hazard to your life or a threat of great bodily harm. I think it is entirely reasonable to be able to fight back in a life or death situation. People should be encouraged to fight back if their life should come into danger. To be honest, in George Zimmerman’s position, if a hooded figure came at me, I would use any force or means necessary to defend myself. Stereotype or not, generally when a person wears a hood and is sneaking around at night, it is because they do not want their face to be seen as they commit a crime. …show more content…
Many people don’t realize that it is still incredibly prevalent in the daily life of many people. Fifty-three point six percent of hate crimes were fueled by racial discrimination and hate. Others include sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity, and disability based hate crimes. Normally the punishment for these hate crimes is a mild sentence, if there is any punishment at all. The law does not even protect hate crimes committed against someone who is attacked for their sexual orientation or some form of disability. One of the most unreported yet popular hate crime is against the homeless. It goes largely unreported, but is one of the top forms of hate crimes. I have found that a form of “harmless” hate crime that is becoming more and more popular is leaving hateful notes on cars parked in a handicap spot with handicap tags, yet the driver does not appear to be handicapped. Generally a disgruntled pedestrian writes down an angry note and leaves it for the person, who is more often than not, actually handicap with some form of disability that cannot be seen at first glance, such as Crohn’s Disease flare ups, spine problems, and other internal injuries or ailments that may force the person to need the handicap spot, yet most of the time is not very noticeable to a passerby. Hate crime is a very prominent part of our society, one that is often pushed under the rug as “playing the victim” and “oversensitivity”. Comics complain that