The ABA report on SYG laws

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The American Bar Association's National Task Force on Stand Your Ground Laws preliminary report and recommendations.

Presented without comment.

http://www.abajournal.com/files/GunReport.pdf

SYG favors victims at the expense of aggressors, it should be a deterrent to those that initiate force against another. It is hard to work up much sympathy for a would be home invader or rapist or whoever.

The thing is, SYG laws have nothing to do with defending your home. You have no real duty to retreat when in your home (with exceptions in a few states, most of which are lacking in SYG laws to begin with). SYG specifically applies to public spaces. I most certainly agree with the intent of the law, but the way the laws are written and applied are quite flawed and they seem to have the opposite effect that they should.

The gist of the report is:
Almost all defense lawyers are in favor of SYG laws, most Republicans are in favor of most aspects of SYG laws, most police and prosecutors are against most aspects of SYG laws, and most Democrats and almost all civil rights groups are against SYG laws.

Other than that, the report found that homicides slightly went up in states with SYG laws, with higher increases in states eliminating any civil liability for injuring/killing innocent bystanders (although it is argued by some that the reason is more criminals being killed).

It also found evidence supporting the idea that criminals were using the SYG laws as much as or more than non-criminals (although that part is mostly anectdotal evidence based on police testimony, with one local analysis supporting t in a limited population dataset).

In a nutshell, the report found that more study is needed and that SYG laws should be revisited and revised.

1. The study shamelessly wastes little time making SYG a racial issue.

2. The study was done by the ABA which makes it kind of a no-brainer. SYG reduces the number of criminal and civil trials in the wake of a justified defensive shooting therefor reducing the need for attorneys. Obviously SYG is breaking the collective rice bowl of practicing trial lawyers and their teams. Lawyers are some of the greediest and most conniving MFers to walk the face of the earth.

3. The OP has repeatedly demonstrated himself to be an anti-gunner who claims not to be an ant-gunner under the guise of concern that if we don't adopt his draconian gun control measures (i.e. gun registration, compulsory safety training, special controls on "assault weapons", etc....) that worse measures will follow in the wake of the next massacre. Call #3 an ad hominem attack on my part but the track record of the OP speaks for itself and makes it more a case of calling a pigs ass pork.

Honestly, I did not even read the entire thing but its tone and intent throughout are clear enough.......

http://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/2014/0 ... n-control/

The ABA is now an openly gun control supporting group, treat their studies appropriately.

Here is a figure showing the racial disparities in SYG defenses in homicide cases.



I got it from the following link:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline ... ound-laws/

The ABA report uses a slightly different figure - see page 21-22 - but it is based on the same data from the same author (John Roman from the Urban Institute).

I fully support SYG and I don't think it's the laws themselves that are the problem, but an ever present implicit racial bias in our justice system. There was a case of a black woman who probably should have been covered under SYG, but got convicted and sentenced to 20 years in prison.

What?Someone can do time for a warning shot?!?
They'd have to lock half this state up.

I remember that case, but didn't know that the woman was black. Discharge within the city limits is usually illegal. We've had a few kids killed in Minneapolis by stray bullets, so it wouldn't be surprising if some states have draconian punishments for firing.

We have tons of laws on the books that are really inconsistent. For example, we just locked a few kids up for murder after they gave synthetic drugs to their friends. We're talking decades in prison here. Nevermind that legal drugs like alcohol are also dangerous, or that a deliberate assault leading to death can result in a much shorter sentence. Kids jump off of bluffs into shallow rivers all the time, and I would guess that the risk of death is similar. Should we charge the friends who egged them on with murder?