Research Paper on Effects of Stand Your Ground Laws: Increase in Violence & Deaths

Introduction

In the last decade, the number of gun violence and deaths have been on the rise to levels that have raised eyebrows among the legal institutions in the nation. What saddens most is the fact that some perpetrators of the offense have walked scot-free before the law by being provided immunity with the jury for perceiving that they acted in accordance to the self-defense law. The incidences have led to debates over the gun ownership law and the self-defense act, with the media criticizing the laws that justify the inhumane actions. One of the most controversial incidents ever reported is the shooting of a 17-year-old boy in Florida who was fatally shot with community coordinator, Zimmerman in a gated community in Sanford (Gerney & Parsons, 2013).

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According to the witness account of the community coordinator, he exclaimed that he was forced with the circumstance to use excessive force to defend in his territory. In such an act, a lesser force can be applied to anticipate the situation, but with some disparities in the sections of the law, the statutesare overused to harm the rest of the community (Cheng & Hoekstra, 2013). In the legal system of the nation, such traumatizing incidents are justified with the Stand Your Ground (SYG) laws. The laws stipulate that an individual is allowed to use force which is not limited to lethal force in self-defense when there is a threat to one's life and property, without any act of retreatment.

Under the American Law, people have a right to protect themselves from intruders that threatens their life or property without a duty of retreatment at which s archived in the principle of the 'Castle Doctrine'(Cheng & Hoekstra, 2013). The notion of the principle known to many people is that a person's home is compared to a 'castle' thus, a person is mandated to use lethal force without retreatment in protecting whatever belongs to them in their territory. However, the new wave of the SYG laws has redefined the castle to include other external places apart from homes which include in personal cars, workplace, and any other place where one perceives that it has legal obligation to be at the location. The statutes provide additional places where force is allowed as an act of self-defense when other options of intervention are available.

The SYG law was first enacted in Florida, and other states have subsequently adopted the bill in their jurisdiction. The controversies around the bill have split the public into two opposing sides with each of them having their stand about the policy (Xenakis, 2018). The proponents of the bill assert that the policy intends to enhance public safety without the necessity of police force to intervene in emergency cases such as terrorist attacks and street gun shootings. Equally, the laws warrant the public self-protection without worry of the civil penalties incase an excessive force is used. On the other hand, the opponents of the bill assert that the law seems to provide a license to kill to the private citizens by justifying acts of excessive force in self-defense rather than using other alternative measures.

The laws are feared that they open access to the villains in the society, the gunmen and robbers to conduct illegal activities, possess firearms and willingly use them. Finally, they argue that the laws intoxify the ego of citizens to use force by standing on the ground in situations that they could have just let go and walk away (Xenakis, 2018). The emboldened individuals are likely to end up in violence which could result in fatalities and injuries by protecting a shared castle. Another provision of the policy is the 'no duty to retreat,' and whenever it happens in public ground, it places the bystanders and the general public to risk due to an increased level of violence used with the conflicting parties.

The objective of the paper is examining the impacts of Stand Your Ground laws on the reported levels of deaths and violence in states that have applied the bill. The study paper hypothesizes that the Stand Your Ground laws have led to an increase in deaths and violence.

Existing Literature on the Stand Your Ground Laws in the US States

Here in America, at least fourteen states have passed and adopted the SYG laws during the first phase of the passage of the bill between the years 2005 and 2007 (Guettabi & Munasib, 2017). Each state tooka different section of the bill that ought to be appealing to them, as such each of the rules has been influenced differently with the SYG policies. This aids in the case study analysis of the paper to identify the incidences of homicide and violence reported in each state that relates to the adoption of laws. According Munasib et al. (2018), when conducting a meta-analysis of the overall performance of SYG in the states, it's vital to consider the broad conclusions, treatments, and heterogeneity of statutes on the people. The assumption of the universal impact of policy across all states is biased since they differ in history, size and population; hence they host varied observed and unobserved characteristics. As denoted with Munasib et al. (2018), the model would be inapplicable where one tries to find uniformity in the effect of the policy as it has different impacts on states.

The SYG policy has the following salient features that are adopted differently in the states. It has an exemption of 'duty to retreatment' in case of self-defense and protection of others from the public threat or felony; the clauses of aggressor and prosecutorial immunity for the criminal and civil (Randolph, 2014).The basic common facet of the SYG laws across all states in the US is 'the duty to retreat' that is prohibited in one's residence, whereby it legal if one uses a deadly force when protecting its jurisdiction from the intruder. In Florida, Texas, Kansas, Oklahoma the duty to retreat has been waivered to any place that a person has a right to belong which is not limited to an occupied car. In Nevada and Georgia, the law obligates the use of excessive force in protection of property even away from the habitation area.

The SYG waves of Texas, Alabama, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Florida stipulate a prosecution immunity to a conscious act where a person used deadly force in protection of its Castle and self-defense. In Indiana, the adopted bill provides a detailed account of what makes the reasonable treat that is protected under the law. In Arizona and Florida, the legal systems define what's justified as self-defense and application of deadly force in preventing a felony in our jurisdiction.

The clause of the first aggressor asserts that a person invoking the SYG waves is protected from being the primary aggressor. Thus, states that have adopted the provision include Nevada, Indiana, Alaska, Utah, Montana, Mississippi, New Hampshire, Texas, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. States such as Florida and Louisiana have not abode the clause; thus; they rely on court language to identify the first aggressor. Another term, the prosecutorial immunity protects the civilians from criminal prosecution and civil action when using deadly force but in accordance to the SYG statute. States that have adopted the clause include Kansas, North Carolina, Texas, Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, and South Carolina which use the immunity in case of arrest or civil action. In most states, they have limited civil immunity suits for certain parties in court. As such, there are differences in terms of awarding litigations expenses to people beseeching the SYG defense.

Cheng and Hoekstra 2013 studied the crime patterns related to the SYG which assimilates to the objective of the paper. The conducted a cross-sectional evaluation of crimes between the adopters and non-adopter states of SYG statute and found the differences in the reported incidences of gun-related homicide and other violent incidents. They obtained their data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Uniform Crime Reporting system from 2000 to 2010 from where they assessed the generic impacts of SYG statutes on justifiable homicide. Also, they conducted the falsification test on the reported car theft incidents and apprehended ones. The finally concluded that states that have adopted laws have reported a 10% increase in the homicide prevalence rate compared to non-adopter and that the SYG policies contribute to 600 homicide incidents each year (Munasib, Kostandini & Jordan, 2018). Furthermore, it was established that within the period 2000-2009, the SYG laws contributed to the firearm assault, whereby White males were most reported to injure themselves and counterparts with the guns. Equally, they showed a high rate of gun fatalities reported in emergency rooms and hospitalization in states that adopted the SYG policy (Gerney & Parsons, 2013).

Study Methodology

Study Design

The study used a comparative research design to assess the periodic rates of homicide and violence reported in states that are an adopter of the Stand Your Ground laws and non-adopters. The data of the study was collected over time and usually recorded in yearly intervals. The research deployed a difference-to- difference analysis to establish the significant contrast of effects in which some states; the adopters of SYG laws presumptuously had high rates of gun-related homicides and violence than non-adopters (Abadie et al., 2015).

Data Sources

The study used secondary data sources that include hospital reports, statistical figures, hospital records and briefings from law enforcement authorities on incidences of gun-related homicides and other fatalities. The study obtained vital statistics from the Center for Disease Control (CDC)from where information on firearm-related deaths, suicide (intentional or accidental) by guns and suicide by any other force are documented.Data from the UCR information system of FBI on murders and non-negligent manslaughter from 1991-2012.Additional data were obtained from the Bureau of Justice Statistics, Criminal Justice statistics, the US Census inter-censual estimates and the Bureau of Economic Analysis (Abadie et al., 2014). The information received from the data sources rangesfrom crime rates, incarceration rates, population dynamics such as the race, age, gender, poverty levels, urban residence, income per capita and expenditures in legal, police, justice and correction systems. The reported incidences wereclassified by the following criteria, place of occurrence, and cause of death: either suicide or homicide, mechanism: by gun or other means, and the time interval of occurrence (year).

Measurables

The independent variable of the study include the gun deaths calculated through exception of gun suicides or firearm deaths of unspecified intent from a cumulative statistic of all deaths by guns. The dependent variables of the study include all suicides, homicides, gun-related homicides, gun-related suicide, and firearm-related injuries and fatalities.

Data Analysis

The study assessed the trends in homicides and firearm-related homicide trends at pre-SYG laws intervention period and post-intervention period in states that applied the policy. A comparative analysis of trends over the period was used to estimate the effect taking into account the underlying trends (Humphreys et al., 2017). The study hypothesized that states that have adopted the policy had an immediate and longstanding impact. The validity test was made by comparing Florida, Michigan, and Alabama (adopter of SYG) and other states that have not adopted the policies using the single model of intervention. A sensitivity analysis was conducted by examining the suicide and firearm-related suicides as a control experiment between Florida and other states.

The known st...