On Monday, Everytown’s Lucy McBath slammed Stand Your Ground laws in an opinion piece in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. In an emotional lead, she related how her son’s killer attempted to use Florida’s Stand Your Ground law as a defense for his actions.
McBath claims that SYG laws “encourage and empower people like the man who shot and killed my son” to shoot first and ask questions later. She goes on to state, “These laws go so far as to grant untrained civilians more leeway to shoot than the U.S. military gives soldiers in a war zone.”
It’s not until near the end of the op-ed that McBath drops this bombshell: Her son’s killer was convicted of first-degree murder. Truth is, bad guys have been claiming self-defense forever, and will continue to do so. Removing the requirement that a lawful citizen must retreat before exercising the human right of self-defense does not, and will never, empower criminals to commit murder.
