Stand Your Ground

The trayvon martin trial caused much division and sparked a nationwide debate over stand your ground laws.

Trayvon's mother wished SYG to be removed because she believes that it was the cause of her son's death. she forgets that SYG was not part of any defense brought forth by Zimmerman nor was it part of jury deliberations and only one juror gave it any creedence

I don't know what happened on that night and like others I thought that when it went to trial Zimmerman would be found guilty UNTIL it came out that there was no eyewitness and no videotape of the encounter. The prosecution was bullied into going to trial because as far as anyone was concerned the media hype had alred decided that "a white man killed an unarmed black teen"

I knew then that there was no way GZ was going to be convicted because you cannot convict someone one a gut belief and in the absence of GZ taking the stand, I find that there may have been some "cop playing" on his part so he never would have withstood a cross examination

SYG was created because people were tired of restrictive self defense gun laws that required a person to retreat from a fight before lethal force was employed.

the idea that when faced with lethal force in the form of a crime in your home or business was simply no longer palatable to the law abiding public so (in the case of florida) the duty to retreat was removed (with the hope) that the offensive party(person committing the crime) would retreat KNOWING the other party didn't have to and would be justified in using deadly force

SYG might need some tweaking but removal...NO

having to retreat from your home, business or vehicle just because a group of criminals want a looser legal hand is simply stupid and the claim that a law targets blacks is simply a statement of a fact that like blacks, whites commit crimes too.

as a person of color I see changing a self defense law that someone believes targets my race more than others as a crutch or excuse to justify bad personal choices and behavior.

Elimination of SYG would empower the criminal element by putting the duty to retreat BACK on the victim and in the presence of a removed SYG creation and JUSTIFICATION of more trayvon martin's BECAUSE if SYG didn't exist (since trayvon was not a resident) it could have been argued that he had no right to be there and GZ (regardless of how the physical altercation started) would have been justified in shooting him because TM had no right to be there---{a stretch of law I admit} but GZ could have taken the stand and said "he didn't live there and while he has free right of passage, all I did was ask him a question and he hit me first" making it a self defense case