Nearly 30 states across the United States have enacted the controversial 'Stand Your Ground' law, legislation that's come under further debate since Netflix's The Perfect Neighbor doctumentary. This legislation removes the obligation to retreat when you're in a dangerous situation and allows people to use deadly force if they need to defend themselves.
Stand Your Ground laws are highly controversial and have sparked heated public debate for years, and they fundamentally change how self-defence claims are evaluated in criminal cases.
Critics argue these laws lead to excessive use of deadly violence and encourage vigilante behaviour, essentially giving people legal cover to shoot first and ask questions later. Meanwhile, supporters believe the laws empower law-abiding citizens to protect themselves and their families effectively without being prosecuted for defending their lives.
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These laws have gained more attention following the release of Netflix's new documentary The Perfect Neighbor, which examines the 2023 fatal shooting of Ajike 'AJ' Owens by her neighbour Susan Lorincz.
The case has reignited debate about whether these laws protect legitimate self-defence or enable violence that would otherwise be prosecuted as murder.
According to Newsweek, there are almost 30 states that have Stand Your Ground laws, including:
- Utah
- Nevada
- Arizona
- Alaska
- Montana
- Idaho
- Wyoming
- Iowa
- Nebraska
- South Dakota
- Kansas
- Oklahoma
- Arkansas
- Missouri
- Louisiana
- Michigan
- Indiana
- Alabama
- Mississippi
- Tennessee
- Kentucky
- Florida
- Ohio
- Georgia
- North Carolina
- South Carolina
- West Virginia
- Pennsylvania
- New Hampshire
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The states upholding these laws aren't coincidental, they stem from America's history of gun regulation, race and regional politics.
Caroline Light, senior lecturer and director of undergraduate studies for the program in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Harvard University, explained that many of the states that passed the first Stand Your Ground laws between 2005 and 2007 were former Confederate states.
These were states that seceded from the Union during the American Civil War following Abraham Lincoln's election, in opposition to the movement to abolish slavery.
Light said that promoters of the laws 'deliberately started with the states that have fewer gun regulations." Many of these former Confederate states had long invested in 'firearm deregulation, rooted in historic ideals of safety and security, including the need, under slavery, for white men to carry firearms openly in order to prevent uprisings.'
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Florida became the first state to implement a Stand Your Ground law in 2005. It's also where the case featured in The Perfect Neighbor took place.
Susan Lorincz, who is white, shot and killed Ajike Owens, who was Black, following a two-year dispute centred around Owens' children playing near Lorincz's property.
The Netflix documentary has drawn renewed public attention and debate about the far-reaching impacts of Stand Your Ground laws.
Supporters of the laws 'promote a faulty, baseless message that guns save lives, and that "the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun,"' Light said.