Stand Your Ground vs. Duty to Retreat: The Case for Repeal
This essay argues that Stand Your Ground laws, adopted across many Southern and Western states, should be repealed in favor of Duty to Retreat or Castle Doctrine statutes. The paper presents two primary arguments: first, Stand Your Ground laws are less effective deterrents of violence than Duty to Retreat laws and are correlated with rising homicide rates; and second, these laws can be — and have been — invoked to justify shooting law enforcement officers. Drawing on case studies from Florida, Nevada, Georgia, Texas, and Louisiana, as well as scholarly and legal sources, the paper contends that a retreat-first framework promotes safer, more rational conflict resolution and that Stand Your Ground's "shoot first" mentality endangers both civilians and police.
- Introduction: Two Legal Frameworks: Contrasts Stand Your Ground and Duty to Retreat by state
- Stand Your Ground States vs. Duty to Retreat States: State-by-state evidence linking law to higher violence
- Case Studies in Stand Your Ground Violence: Named cases where Stand Your Ground justified homicide
- How Stand Your Ground Negatively Impacts the Law Enforcement Community: Law used to justify shooting police officers
- Conclusion: Call to repeal Stand Your Ground to reduce violence
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What makes this paper effective
- The paper grounds its argument in concrete, named case studies — Zimmerman/Martin, Joe Horn, Byron Thomas, Bo Morrison, Paul Burgarello, Keenan Finkelstein, and Elton Bandoo — giving the legal critique real-world specificity rather than relying on abstraction alone.
- It makes an original and underappreciated second argument: that Stand Your Ground can be used against the police, which broadens the paper's appeal beyond the usual civilian-victim framing and strengthens the case for repeal.
- The geographic contrast between Northeastern Duty to Retreat states and Southern/Western Stand Your Ground states provides a structural organizing principle that makes the comparative argument easy to follow.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper uses a comparative policy analysis structure, systematically contrasting two legal regimes across multiple dimensions — legislative design, empirical outcomes, and specific incidents — before drawing a normative conclusion. Citing a mix of peer-reviewed law review articles, working papers (NBER), and news reporting gives the argument both scholarly grounding and illustrative depth.
Structure breakdown
The essay opens with a geographic and philosophical contrast between the two legal frameworks, then states its thesis. The body is divided into two main argumentative sections: the first surveys state-by-state evidence that Stand Your Ground increases violence, while the second focuses specifically on the law's threat to police. A brief conclusion restates the call for repeal. The structure is linear and thesis-driven, making it accessible as an undergraduate policy essay.
Introduction: Two Legal Frameworks
Florida, Georgia, Texas, Louisiana, North Carolina, and Nevada have all passed Stand Your Ground laws, whereas Maryland, New York, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Delaware have all adopted Duty to Retreat or Castle Doctrine laws. Simply acknowledging the geographical location of these states and their respective laws reveals a common theme: Northeastern states take a more cautious approach, requiring that a person retreat to a place of safety if possible rather than impose violence on another; Southern states, by contrast, hold a more assertive position — if one has a right to be somewhere, one has a right to fend off any attack and to use physical force if physical force is used against oneself.
The critical difference between these two perspectives is that the latter is more likely to lead to violence than the former, which essentially holds that violence must be avoided so long as it reasonably can be avoided. (For example, if one is attacked in one's home — considered a "castle" and a secure zone — one has the right to resist the attack with force.) This paper argues for repealing Stand Your Ground laws on two major grounds: first, when compared to Duty to Retreat and Castle Doctrine laws, they are far less effective deterrents of violence (Lave, 2013; McClellan & Tekin, 2012); and second, Stand Your Ground laws can be invoked to defend civilians who shoot police officers.
Stand Your Ground States vs. Duty to Retreat States
The Stand Your Ground law is dangerous for all because it is confrontational and more likely to lead to physical harm than are Duty to Retreat or Castle Doctrine laws. It encourages individuals to resort to violent confrontation on the pretext that they are defending their rights. While individuals may have the right to assert themselves, the fact remains that a police officer also has a duty to police, and if an officer views someone acting suspiciously there is every reason to be on guard. Law-abiding citizens should be aware of that reality and not be quick to challenge a police officer — doing so will more than likely result in someone being seriously injured. The most appropriate course of action is to retreat. If one feels that one's rights have been violated, a grievance can always be filed afterward. If an offense has truly been committed by the officer, an inquiry will reveal that and appropriate consequences will follow.
It does not benefit anyone for a citizen to escalate an already tense encounter. Conventional wisdom applies here: let cooler heads prevail. The street is not a court of law and is not an impartial jury — on the street, tempers can flare quickly out of control. It is better to follow the Duty to Retreat principle in such situations. The Stand Your Ground law simply encourages inappropriate conduct and justifies it on the basis of asserting one's right to protect oneself. Yet what genuine protection is provided when the likelihood of someone being injured is raised substantially? Better protection is to retreat and live to see another day.
As of February 2014, for example, Florida's Stand Your Ground law had led to the deaths of "at least 26 children or teens," with the state turning into a new kind of Wild West (Flatow, 2014; Cameron & Higgins, 2014). By October 2014, 75 cases of violence had been justified under Stand Your Ground, 45 Stand Your Ground defenses had been rejected and the defendants convicted, and 14 cases were still pending — more than 100 cases for a law that was not even ten years old.
In Maryland, the rules of engagement are different. The state has a Duty to Retreat law that requires retreating before using lethal force. This law is designed to avoid violent confrontations that can lead to death. University of Baltimore Law School Professor Byron Warnken notes that "if you eliminate the need to retreat first, you probably increase the use of deadly force, which probably means you increase deaths" (Collins, 2013).
In Georgia, Stand Your Ground has been law since 2006, but it came under scrutiny by federal courts after a lawsuit was filed by a civil rights advocate challenging the law's appropriateness in the wake of the Trayvon Martin killing in Florida — a case that received national and global coverage because it so clearly encapsulated the dangers posed by Stand Your Ground (Wallace, 2012). Nonetheless, a new Georgia gun law extended the state's Stand Your Ground legislation to protect convicted felons who kill using illegal guns (McVeigh, 2014). Essentially, everyone — whether dangerous or with a record of being dangerous — was granted the right to kill if they suspected another person of intending harm. Legal experts in Georgia described the recipe as one ripe for "disaster" (McVeigh, 2014).
In New York, citizens have a duty to retreat unless an intruder enters their own home, which is regarded as a secure, safe zone (Del Pozo, 2008). In Texas, it is the opposite: the individual has the right to use force anywhere he or she has a legal right to be, upon perceiving a threat to bodily safety. The Northeastern attitude is clearly distinct from the Southern mentality, and this difference is reflected not only in the laws themselves but also in the body counts and the number of violent acts being excused under the Stand Your Ground defense.
According to a Texas A&M study, homicide rates have "soared" in states that have passed Stand Your Ground laws, including Texas, Louisiana, North Carolina, and Nevada (Vedantam, 2013). The reality is that the law functions as a prop for vigilante justice. With the proliferation of a street-justice mentality — reinforced by popular superhero films — more individuals view themselves as above the law, emboldened by Stand Your Ground to arm themselves and take pre-emptive action against anyone perceived as a threat, whether or not one actually exists.
In Duty to Retreat states such as Rhode Island, Connecticut, and Delaware, the atmosphere is markedly different. The pre-emptive mentality is not promoted; instead, one has the right to retreat if a threat is suspected. Force cannot be used until retreat has first been attempted. The only exception is that if one is in one's home, car, or designated sanctuary, deadly force can be used if it is the only means of protection from harm — and even then, individuals should first attempt to call 911 or seek assistance from law enforcement if time permits. This framework, which treats deadly force as a last resort, brings the most level-headed, common-sense approach to the discussion, because it requires consideration of all other options before granting license to use lethal force.
This dynamic played out in Nevada, when Paul Burgarello, 73, entered a vacant building he owned and found a woman and a young man there, both high on methamphetamine. He shot both, killing the young man. Burgarello was arrested and charged with murder and attempted murder, but his defense rested on the Stand Your Ground law. Prosecutors asked whether Burgarello could genuinely have felt threatened by two individuals who were resting or sleeping. In Nevada, the "shooter cannot be 'the original aggressor'" (Sonner, 2014), and prosecutors argued that Burgarello was exactly that. What is most troubling is that the situation arose at all. Had there been no such law, Burgarello might have chosen instead to retreat and wait for law enforcement. Because of Stand Your Ground, the danger of rash thinking and acting is exponentially greater than it was before.
Conclusion
It should be clear to all that Stand Your Ground laws pose a serious threat to law and order in this nation because they promote a Wild West mentality that is dangerous to communities. Whether one considers the Trayvon Martin case or the nationwide protests that erupted in its wake — causing strife in communities hundreds of miles away — it is not difficult to see that Stand Your Ground is responsible for considerable violent conflict in America and should be repealed.
The unnecessary taking of lives must stop. The pre-emptive mentality is harmful not only to civilians but also to law enforcement officers who must respond to calls and now face the prospect of being shot at simply for arriving on the scene. If one pauses to think, the best option for dealing with conflict is to seek a peaceful resolution first, wherever possible. One should at least make an effort to let cooler heads prevail and not rely upon the law as justification for aggressive behavior.
References
Cameron, D., & Higgins, W. (2014). Florida's Stand Your Ground law. Tampa Bay Times. Retrieved from
Collins, D. (2013). Lawmaker calls for stand your ground law in Maryland. WBALTV. Retrieved from http://www.wbaltv.com/politics/lawmaker-calls-for-stand-your-ground-law-in-maryland/21581192
Del Pozo, E. (2008). Retreat does not equal surrender: Defensive deadly force in dwellings after People v. Aiken. St. John's Law Review, 82(1), 359–382.
Flatow, N. (2014). Florida Stand Your Ground cases. ThinkProgress. Retrieved from http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2014/02/05/3252511/jordan-davis-26-children-teens-died-florida-stand-ground-cases/
Lave, T. (2013). Shoot to kill: A critical look at stand your ground laws. University of Miami Law Review, 67, 827–860.
Lee, S. (2012). Five Stand Your Ground cases you should know about. ProPublica. Retrieved from http://www.propublica.org/article/five-stand-your-ground-cases-you-should-know-about
Martinez, R. (2014). Judge rules against 'Stand Your Ground' defense in cop shooting. RT. Retrieved from https://www.rt.com/usa/judge-against-syg-defense-cop-582/
McClellan, C., & Tekin, E. (2012). Stand your ground laws, homicides, and injuries. National Bureau of Economic Research, Working Paper No. 18187.
McVeigh, K. (2014). Critics say Georgia stand your ground gun law recipe for unnecessary killing. The Guardian. Retrieved from http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/mar/27/georgia-gun-law-stand-your-ground
Rivero, D. (2015). This rapper shot a police officer. Will Stand Your Ground set him free? Fusion. Retrieved from http://fusion.net/story/136443/this-rapper-shot-a-police-officer-will-stand-your-ground-set-him-free/
Sonner, S. (2014). Nevada's stand your ground law in spotlight. Las Vegas Review-Journal. Retrieved from http://www.reviewjournal.com/news/nevada/nevada-s-stand-your-ground-law-spotlight
Vedantam, S. (2013). Stand Your Ground linked to increase in homicides. NPR. Retrieved from http://www.npr.org/2013/01/02/167984117/-stand-your-ground-linked-to-increase-in-homicide
Wallace, P. (2012). Georgia's Stand Your Ground law. GPB. Retrieved from http://www.gpb.org/news/2012/05/07/georgias-stand-your-ground-law
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