You Can Now Kill at Will
Ohio's "Stand Your Ground" law goes into effect today. What could go wrong?
Welcome to the Thunderdome. Today marks open season of gun fanatics’ wet dreams: the first day of what are called “Stand Your Ground” laws.
Ohioans have enjoyed expansive rights to shoot people dead from the comfort of their homes and vehicles for 13 years under the castle doctrine.
I don’t disagree with that. Play stupid games like breaking and entering into somebody’s house, don’t be surprised if you win a stupid prize like a free trip to the morgue. This is America, and it’s safe to assume everybody has a gun and is willing to murder somebody over their private property.
In August 2019, which feels like 20 years ago despite being not even two, Governor Mike DeWine attended a vigil for the nine people who were murdered and the 27 who were injured when a mentally disturbed man unleashed 30 seconds of Hell in the Oregon District in Dayton.
“Do something!” Somebody shouted in a cry that soon became a deafening chant of those in attendance.
The chant would have prevented DeWine from saying anything, which would have been a fitting fate for a man who belongs to a party that unleashed the wave of assault rifle violence that plagues this country.
But no, Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley quieted the crowd that was being mean to her friend. DeWine got to give his sorry little speech and pledge he would do something.
DeWine, formerly a strong advocate of gun control, knows which way the wind blows in Ohio. Even if his tepid proposal that included red flag laws and universal gun background checks — stuff favored by a large majority of Ohioans — were dropped when the State Legislature and gun rights advocacy groups told him to go fuck himself.
In the end, the only thing DeWine actually did on guns was sign the Stand Your Ground Law, which is a slap in the face to every victim of gun violence in this state.
Until to day, you used to have to attempt to retreat in a “life-threatening situation” before you popped off in a McDonald’s parking lot, on the street or at a county fair.
Not anymore!
From Anna Staver of dispatch.com:
"It doesn’t give you a right to shoot and ask questions later," said Eric Delbert, a police officer and co-owner of L.E.P.D. Firearms and Range in Columbus.
Here's what that standard means: A person must have the legal right to be wherever they are. They can't be the one who started the altercation. They have to fear for their life or serious bodily injury, and they had to be able to articulate why.
Ah, can’t wait for somebody who thinks Ohio’s major cities are crime-infested hellholes to shoot somebody over a parking spot in Easton because he “feared for his life” and then spew a bunch of racist talking points when asked to explain himself.
And let’s say Officer Delbert is right that it doesn’t give you the right to ‘shoot and ask questions later.’ Do you think that is going to stop the kind of paranoid maniac who wanted this law on the books in the first place?
Because if I get shot to death in an unjustified shooting, the imprisonment of my murderer is not going to resurrect me from the grave. That void will still be in the hearts of the few family members and friends that I have yet to alienate.
But who am I kidding? We all know what the most likely scenario will be: A white man shooting a black person during an altercation in which they didn’t feel the need to retreat. We all know how the justice system will treat that scenario, but here’s a study from the Urban Institute that confirms what we know:
Are there are racial disparities in justifiable homicide rulings? Out of 53,000 homicides in the database, 23,000 have a white shooter and a white victim. The shooting is ruled to have been justified in a little more than 2 percent of cases. In states with a SYG law (after enactment), the shooting is ruled to be justified in 3.5 percent of cases, compared to less than 2 percent in non-SYG states. In cases where both the victim and shooter are black, the numbers are almost identical, if slightly lower.
When the shooter and victim are of different races, there are substantial differences in the likelihood a shooting is ruled to be justified. When the shooter is black and the victim is white, the shooting is ruled justified in about 1 percent of cases, and is actually slightly lower in non-SYG states. Between 2005 and 2010, there were 1,210 homicides with a black shooter and a white victim—the shooting was ruled to be justified in just 17 of them (about 1 percent).
This is what qualifies as social policy in Ohio. None of the politicians that passed this bill are at risk of being shot dead in a Stand Your Ground situation. None of their friends or family are either.
The inevitable victims that will come from this? Fuck ‘em. They won’t be Republican voters. And in the meantime, they can keep cashing checks from gun groups and continue fucking guns in campaign ads to prove how pro-second amendment they are.
This, sadly, is just another chapter of the Ohio GOP proving how much they loathe our cities and the people that dwell in them. And somewhere out there right now is the first victim of this nonsensical law, happily living their life on borrowed time. May God watch over them, because our Republican overlords sure won’t.
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