I don't have any kids yet, but I've convinced my girlfriend to get her CC permit. If she was ever in danger, a 110 lb girl in heels has no chance to run away/fight back against a grown man.

Walk into a crowded store, go to nearest police/fire station. Call 911 but keep walking.
Why, on God's green earth would you want to stop, confront and fight someone following you.
Maybe you are paranoid and they are going the same direction? Maybe they are dickheads who see you are scared and only want to scare you.

if they do not put a hand on you, you really have no ground to stand upon. If you attack someone walking the same direction as you, you lose....

But obviously, I can't open fire on anyone I suspect of intending me harm... What to do?

The law (in must jurisdictions) attempts to address this problem by stipulating that one must have "reasonable belief" that one is about to be subjected to significant harm before the use of deadly force is permitted. This is a necessarily subjective criterion, and we've seen how the courts can get it very, very wrong. It's a damned difficult situation from an ethical perspective.

Yes, most murder victims do know their attackers. Mafia members know each other, gang members know each other, drug dealers know their suppliers and their customers and other dealers, pimps know their hookers and the johns, thieves know their fences...get the idea? Even in domestic violence murders, the guy most often has a criminal record. Living with a violent criminal is extremely dangerous.

It's that you will be underneath unable to get away and the only thing that could save you is your gun or other weapon.

That is why we need to preserve self defense as an exception.

Those are the odds.

What kind of society says I have no option but to be beat up and killed? That is messed up.

I have no illusions that I can defend myself physically. Maybe if I can push their nose bone up into their brain, but that is it, my one shot. I don't have the size nor the weight nor the strength.

That is messed up.

Works both ways.

If I am being beaten up I want to be able to defend my life. If I had done exactly as Zimmerman did, follow Trayvon and he started beating on me and I shot him, would you throw me in jail for defending my life?

You should be ashamed of yourself for posting this garbage. The fact that you aren't is very telling on many levels.

Being whoop assed...

Is his head harder, is he more able to survive a beating than I am if he is pinned and I am pinned?

What if its you that is ever pinned? Are you going to keep being beat and beat and bashed and pounded? God forbid you see a gun that you could possibly use. You would forego that option I suppose out of pure principle that guns ought to never be used.

With a whiff of the ad-hominem attack.

At least if you're still armed you have a fighting chance to save your life.

Just sayin'

what a shit world it is where people don't look at each other, carry objects is a defensive weapon at all times in public, walk in the street like you fear everyone is an enemy and assume stalkers are following you and therefore must be attacked. What's there to live for?

This really sounds like you're caught up in a circle of fear and hate that has exploded into paranoia. The fear does not justify the facts.

I do not want to be in your world. You go ahead and live like a luminous animal, I'll live for a better humanity.

Exactly. If we are all in this much fear and distrust of each other that we feel we need to carry weapons around to protect ourselves from each other, maybe the solution is not to carry the weapon around but to find a safer country?

centers around the duty to retreat. Absent stand your ground, you have a duty to retreat if you can do so safely. Stand your ground means you don't have to retreat, even when safe to do so. it is enough to show a reasonable person would feel fear in that situation. Since most whites are taught to fear black males, the mere presence of one is seen as a reasonable fear to many judges and juries.

Remember that Marissa Alexander, a battered African American woman, tried to invoke Stand Your Ground when her abusive husband was coming at her. She fired a shot into the air rather than shooting him. The jury took 12 minutes to convict her. That law is not made for women. It was created by Alec, the NRA, and the Koch brothers to encourage more violent use of guns. It is successfully invoked 11 times more by whites who kill blacks than the other way around. SYG is fundamentally racist in its application, just like the death penalty.

She didn't stand her ground. It has nothing to do with her skin color.

The reason Alexander is in prison right now is because people wanted strict and harsh sentences when someone misuses a firearm.

I agree 20 years for what she did is absolute bullshit. And Angela Corey needs to be fired. But the problem isn't self defense laws...the problem is the minimum sentencing laws.

She tried to invoke SYG and was denied by a court. That SYG is successfully invoked by whites who kill blacks 11 to 1 over blacks who kill whites is a fact. The law is racist. Pretending otherwise is absurd.

open an investigation into those laws?

The 11 to 1 figure has been reported in several sources. It is not just for Florida but for all states. Your point is nonsensical. How could it help African Americans? The law legalizes murder of African Americans. Do you think the death penalty helps Afrcan Americans as well?

Here are some sources.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2012/06/nra-alec-stand-your-ground
http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2012/11/stand-your-ground-task-force-rick-scott-trayvon

http://msmagazine.com/blog/2013/07/14/stand-your-ground-increases-racial-bias/

as somehow evidence that SYG had nothing to do with Marissa Anderson's case doesn't make sense. Had Zimmerman been convicted, he would have been sentenced under the same laws. He, however, was able to take advantage of the way SYG has reshaped Florida self defense law, while Marissa was not. The law creates a perverse incentive to kill. Marissa's husband lived, so he testified and gave a version of events that conflicted greatly from his initial statement to police. If she had killed him, she might have stood a better chance of invoking SYG because he couldn't give a different version of events. Yet she was in her home, so SYG shouldn't have even been necessary for her to claim self defense without retreat.

SYG laws were written by Alec, the NRA, and campaigns to get them passed were financed by the Koch brothers. You can look in my journal for OPs showing that. They are not laws that any progressive should support.

A big part of the problem are prosecutors like Corey who likes to overcharge cases, but minimum sentencing laws that don't allow a judge to weigh the circumstances of the case is a problem too.

SYG isn't the big problem here. And if you repeal just that, nothing would change...Zimmerman would still be free and Alexander would still be in prison.

Now in Zimmerman's case, when he shot Trayvon, he didnt break free and run to get his gun out of the car. He shot him while in the middle of the fight. If Alexander was being beaten and pulls out a gun and shoots her husband...no jury in the country would have convicted her. What she did was leave the scene and remove herself from danger. She then got a gun and re-entered the scene. Technically by law, she is now the aggressor.

And by the way, in reference to your other post...Im against the death penalty. I dont particularly support SYG laws. But it irritates me that everyone is focusing on the wrong thing.

how is that SYG?

In Florida to date there have been 61 white on white SYG cases. There have been 11 white on black, 10 black on white and 26 black on black cases.

The results:

For white on white: 32 justified, 25 convicted, 4 pending

For white on black: 6 justified, 1 convicted, 4 pending

For black on white: 4 justified, 2 convicted, 4 pending

For black on black: 16 justified, 6 convicted, 4 pending

You are talking about one more conviction in a sample size of 3 in the interracial shootings - 2 v 1. If you want to hang your hat on that small sample size and yell racism then knock yourself out

Notice the black on white SYG cases - it would appear that black shooters "get away with murder" just like white guys do.

Notice that white shooters in general have a higher conviction rate than blacks.

http://www.tampabay.com/stand-your-ground-law/fatal-cases

was in the air but it said she fired a second shot at her ex while he was running away with their kids. Unless I read a misinformed article?

You're re-derailing a thread already derailed by hand-wringing and ad hominem. What were you thinking?!?

On a more serious note, excellent presentation of why SYG is NOT bad law (although I'd urge a modification to explicitly stipulate that the person initiating the confrontation is not subject to its protections).

and the live person is free to tell the only side of the story. So yes if you attack your stalker and they kill you they are free to say you stalked them, jumped them and attacked them and they killed you and you are around to say any different. If you attack you leave physical evidence that might support the stalkers bogus story, if you do nothing they get to attack, rape... you. So you are pretty much in a no win situation. The best thing you can do is run and hope their are witnesses.