"Stand Your Ground" Laws have basically legalized Murder

Trayvon Martin & George Zimmerman

In the last few months we've heard more and more about people just shooting other human beings in cold blood and then using the "Stand your ground" law as a defense. This is especially true in the state of Florida the most infamous case being the Trayvon Martin killing. If you are reading this entry and you've not been living under a rock over the last year then you know the details of the horrible injustice of this case. This case is relevant to this entry because the man that committed and got away with the murder George Zimmerman used the "Stand your ground" law in Florida as a defense in his trial and he was found not guilty. If I was on that jury no matter what the law is in the state of Florida, I could not bring myself knowing the facts of the case to find Zimmerman not guilty, because no matter the laws all of the proof points to Zimmerman being guilty of at least manslaughter.

The relevant statue is 776.013 (3) which says that "A person who is not engaged in an unlawful activity and who is attacked in any other place where he or she has a right to be 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 to himself or herself or another or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony." (http://www.leg.state.fl.us/statutes//index.cfm?App_mode=Display_Statute&Search_String=&URL=0700-0799/0776/Sections/0776.013.html)
 In my opinion this statue has legalized murder because that statue says that "including deadly force if he or she reasonably believes it is necessary to do so to prevent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony." In other words that means that if I had a gun and I shot someone, all I have to say is that I thought my life was in danger and I can get away with murder. I don't think that's right and in my opinion these stand your ground laws have just legalized murder.

Another example of this is the man by the name of William T. Woodward he's 44 years old and he's from the state of Florida of course he had shot three of his neighbors and killed two of them the details of the case are"Police had responded to the neighborhood multiple times in the past, reportedly because of an ongoing feud between the two parties. Officials say they previously offered to mediate the dispute, but when officers arrived at the scene on Tuesday they found that Gary Lee Hembree, Roger Picior, and Bruce Timothy Blake had all been shot. Hembree and Picior were mortally wounded, but Blake survived despite being shot at least 11 times. Blake later told Wesh.com that he needed to call the police dozens of times on Woodward, who is a combat veteran." (http://rt.com/usa/bush-stand-ground-florida-homicide-433/) In my opinion the Stand your ground laws encourage people to shoot and kill each other because now Woodward is using the stand your ground law and the "Bush Doctrine" for some reason which I don't understand because the "Bush Doctrine" was used in order to provide legal justification for the war in Iraq in order to defend himself from murder and attempted murder charges. The bottom line is that these laws have legalized murder and in my opinion makes people in Florida even more afraid and makes them but more and more guns which makes the gun manufacturers more and more money, maybe that was real intention of these laws...just a thought.