From the Left

/

Politics

Revive Sensible Gun Laws

By Clarence Page, Tribune Media Services on

Supporters of the protests that followed the suspicious death of Trayvon Martin are raising a good question: What next?

Many have compared the shooting of the 17-year-old to the brutal 1955 murder of Emmett Till, the black Chicago teen who was murdered in Mississippi for allegedly whistling at a white woman.

The comparison is far from perfect. George Zimmerman, 28, the volunteer neighborhood watchman charged with second-degree murder in the shooting of the unarmed youth, claims self-defense. Till's murderers were enforcing the old South's willfully racist political and social system.

But as markers of their very different eras, the two cases have much in common. Till's death inspired Rosa Parks a few months later to refuse to give up her seat to a white man on a segregated bus. Her move helped to launch the Montgomery bus boycotts, a decade of protests and landmark civil rights legislation.

If the Trayvon Martin protesters are looking for a similar channel for their anger and energies, they have a perfectly appropriate target in "Stand Your Ground" laws.

That's the Florida law that Zimmerman cited, leading to his release by police without charges, a move that sparked protests by Martin's family and their supporters nationwide.

 

Florida's law says that a law-abiding person "who is attacked" has "no duty to retreat" and "has the right to stand his or her ground and meet force with force, including deadly force if he or she reasonably believes it is necessary to do so to prevent death or great bodily harm."

Two problems: The law is unnecessary and downright dangerous. Your basic right to defend yourself has been embedded for centuries in the "castle doctrine" (from the old dictum "An Englishman's home is his castle") in English common law and the statutes of most states.

The Stand Your Ground law, signed by then-Gov. Jeb Bush in 2005, expanded that right to allow anyone, anywhere, to use deadly force against another person if he or she "reasonably believes" it is necessary to protect themselves.

Traditional castle law usually works just fine, as illustrated by the case of Homer Wright, an 80-year-old Chicago bar owner. He recently shot a home invader in the leg -- and ended up being arrested along with the suspect he wounded.

...continued

swipe to next page

(c) 2012 CLARENCE PAGE DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.

 

 

Comics

RJ Matson Mike Luckovich Joel Pett Dave Granlund Bill Bramhall Drew Sheneman