Lakeith Joyner
Ms. Sweeley
English III
28 Nov 2012

A Law to Kill Freely? Just imagine, you’re walking alone at night time, and suddenly you get attacked. You are now fighting for your life and winning. All of a sudden the attacker pulls out a gun and kills you, but he gets away with it because he claims “self-defense”. Some people think it’s a racist law, some people think it’s a good law, but I think it’s a bad law altogether. Stand your ground laws should be abolished because it lets people get away with murder. Homicides, murder and manslaughter were said to increase in the states that have adopted this law. A lot of people have walked free using the stand your ground law, this includes gang members involved in shootouts and drug dealers fighting with their clients. The law could be a good law but it is very controversial. Yes the law should be abolished, because the only thing it seems to do is kill innocent people, let killers walk free, and raise murder rates. Victims of the stand your ground law are just accused of doing something wrong. Trayvon Martin, a seventeen year old boy killed innocently in Florida. George Zimmerman followed Trayvon when the police specifically told him not to. Zimmerman and Trayvon met and had a fight, the end result Trayvon was shot and killed. Zimmerman, who was told not to follow Trayvon, told the police he used “self-defense”, although he followed and killed Trayvon, Trayvon was innocent. The law seems as if it is made to let people kill freely and claim self -defense. Kris Hundley, Susan T. Martin, and Connie Humburg found in November 2007, a Houston-area man pulled out a shotgun and killed two men whom he suspected of burglarizing his neighbor’s home, and in another case a man was shot as he lay on the ground. Those people were innocent, and their killers walked free. The Tampa Bay Times has identified nearly two-hundred “stand your ground law” cases. Among these findings nearly 70% have walked free, defendants who claim the victim was black are more likely to prevail in a court of law 73% to 59% rather to those victims who were white. In the states that have the “stand your ground law”, when white shooters kill black victims, 34 percent of the resulting homicides are deemed “justifiable”, while only 3 percent of deaths are ruled “justifiable” when the shooter is black and the victim is white. The man who killed the two unarmed people walked out of jail, others went free after shooting their victims in the back. The Times analyzed in nearly 1/3 of the cases the defendants started the fight, shot an unarmed person or pursued their victim, and still went free. The law is being made a mockery because people are killing and calling it