But regarding "Stand Your
Ground," Florida certainly isn't alone among states with laws that reflect
whatever logic is to be made in support of the concept behind the law. In 1982 the town of Kennesaw,
Georgia passed a law -- still in effect -- mandating a gun in every
household. And there are well over a
dozen other states that carry "Stand Your Ground" laws. But, in Sanford, not only are gat-packers
permitted -- on any occasion upon which they consider themselves threatened -- to
use lethal force against anyone, anywhere; virtually anyone is eligible to pack
a concealed weapon.
That includes those with a violent
criminal record like George
Zimmerman , the Neighborhood Watch "patrolman" who has admitted to killing unarmed
17-year-old Trayvon
Martin . It causes the name of one of
Florida's professional sports teams -- "The Heat" -- to take on an ominously deeper
meaning. It's easier to see that name as
being more related the kind of accoutrements packed by a large part of a
certain segment of Florida's population than to Miami's typically high
temperatures.
As earlier noted, many stupid
laws represent archaic relics of an earlier, more idiotic period of America's
cultural and social evolution.
Understanding this goes a long way in helping to put in perspective, the
inherent lunacy of many of these laws.
But the benighted "Stand Your Ground" law, which seems to suggest that increasing the homicide rate is a good
way to reduce incidents of aggravation
as well as burglary and petty crime rates -- an approach, by the way, extolled
as "common sense" by former Florida Governor Jeb Bush -- would seem better
described as a conceptual harbinger emerging from a non-rational school of
ass-backwards post-Millennial thinking.
After all, it was enacted in 2005,
not 1865 !
Not surprisingly, except
perhaps only to those who believe that a floor exists on the depths of human
depravity, the result of permitting Joe Citizen to legally "stand his ground" by
way of deadly force has been the well-documented
explosion of Dodge City-esque, "Stand Your Ground" shootings and killings that
have darkened the landscape of Florida. According
to the state's
Department of Law Enforcement ,
justifiable homicide deaths averaged 12 a year from 2000-2004. In 2005, the
year "Stand Your Ground" became law, that number almost tripled to an average
of 35 a year, an increase of 283% from 2005-2010.
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