“Stand your ground” laws are up for debate, according to that once-illustrious newspaper known as The Wall Street Journal. (Note: There’s a big difference between the editorial board and the news desk.) These laws allow potential victims to use deadly force if their lives or the lives of those around them are threatened with death. For example, if a woman is confronted by an aggressor in a road rage incident, she does not have to attempt running away first; she can stand her ground and defend herself.
This is very ominous, according to a Journal report, which states:
It’s easier than ever to kill someone in America and get away with it.
In 30 states, it often requires only a claim you killed while protecting yourself or others.
While Americans have long been free to use deadly force to defend themselves at home, so-called stand-your-ground laws in those 30 states extend legal protections to public places and make it difficult for prosecutors to file homicide charges against anyone who says they killed in self-defense.
The number of legally sanctioned homicides by civilians in the 30 stand-your-ground states has risen substantially in recent years, The Wall Street Journal found in an analysis of data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Justifiable homicides by civilians increased 59% from 2019 through 2024 in a large sample of cities and counties in those states, the Journal found, compared with a 16% rise in total homicides for the same locales.
The Journal even includes charts to document this increase in justified killings. However, the number of deaths per year that are covered by “stand your ground” laws doesn’t even exceed 200. By contrast, the city of Chicago has already exceeded that number in murders — and 2025 isn’t even done yet.
Hot Air’s Ed Morrissey further points out, “While justifiable homicides peaked at 200 cases in 2023, that represents about 1% of all homicides in the US for that year. … Clearly, saying an incantation at the scene of a homicide does not provide one with a magic Get Out of Jail Free card.”
In other words, the Journal hopes readers don’t look too closely at the statistics, because otherwise its attempt to spread hysteria will be stopped in its tracks. At least the reporters didn’t pull out the worn-out trope that “stand your ground” laws are racist. But even if they had, remember that even some blue states recognize that poor minorities who live in dangerous neighborhoods stand to gain the most by these laws. (See then-State Senator Barack Obama circa 2004).
In 2013, Crime Prevention Research Center President John Lott testified before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee’s Subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Human Rights, where he addressed the flaws of this particular criticism:
Apparently forgotten are the reasons that “Stand Your Ground” laws exist. They originated to solve the real problems with the requirement to retreat. The required delay sometimes prevented people from defending themselves. Requiring an “appropriate retreat” adds additional confusion to those defending themselves and the concept is left to prosecutors to define. Sometimes overzealous prosecutors claimed that people who defended themselves could have retreated even farther…
Despite the ruckus over the law after the [George] Zimmerman acquittal, his defense team never raised the “Stand Your Ground” law as a defense. This should be no surprise. After all, if Zimmerman was on his back, and [Trayvon] Martin held him down (as the forensic and eyewitness evidence indicates), Zimmerman had no option to retreat. So the law was completely irrelevant.
Lott went on to say that the real measure of “stand your ground” laws is the number of lives that have been preserved.
With so many states having these laws for so many years without controversy, possibly the most surprising fact is that no state that has adopted such a law has ever rescinded it. The only way that we can evaluate Stand Your Ground laws is by looking at their net effect on lives saved.
One has to wonder why The Wall Street Journal is even bringing this up. What does it have to gain by fomenting fear about Americans with Second Amendment rights defending themselves with deadly force? In a climate where left-wing violence is metastasizing, one can only speculate. But the timing sure seems suspicious.
