Dear Editor,

Guns have been used since the 1700s by multiple people in the United States ever since The Second Amendment came into effect which gave citizens the right to bear and own firearms. Stand your ground laws make it so you can use deadly force against a person when you think a serious crime is about to take place, and you have no obligation to retreat. These laws can lower crime rates, but innocent lives are taken from the misconceptions with the stand your ground law. The United States of America takes the number one spot for its civilians owning more guns than any of the country’s civilians. Stand your ground laws are dangerous and should be reformed.

     In general, teenagers are getting shot or dying for doing normal teenage things. In Florida, according to “Stand Your Ground Laws: Do They Put Teenagers in Greater Danger”, it is stated that ‟An unarmed 17-year-old Jordan Davis was allegedly shot and killed at around 7:30 PM by 45-year-old Michael Dune after an argument ensued about a loud car stereo at a Jacksonville convenience store.” Standing your ground laws are dangerous in the wrong hands. Every normal teenager will at some point blast their car stereo very loudly, and they shouldn’t be getting shot for doing normal teenage things. According to “Stand Your Ground Laws: Do They Put Teenagers in Greater Danger”, in April of 2014 a homeowner shot a teenager that was running from the police and hiding on the home owners porch in Slinger, Wisconsin. This was the first ever test of this law and a teenager already got shot. The prosecutors decided to not press charges of the homeowner. Stories were also taken from teenagers about underaged drinking and how everyone would split off into peoples yards in order to run from their local police officers which could put teenagers in dangerous situations.

     In addition, people are facing deadly consequences for small things. According to a Dailymail.com report in April of 2014, three teenage boys and a female were original charged with murder, because of a miscommunication about who killed their friend, Summer Moody in Alabama. They were caught by a man who witnessed them breaking into fishing cottages in the Mobile-Tensaw Delta; he allegedly fired a warning shot that struck her head and later killed their teenage friend, Summer Moody. Breaking into the cottage can be a felony if the teenagers had the intent to cause physical harm such as assault and battery to someone, but they only planned to loot which is a misdemeanor (A minor or class 1 crime). The teens made a misdemeanor and their friends’ lives were lost as a result. 

     To continue, defending yourself from intruders who break within your home or genuinely oppose a threat, then using deadly force is allowed. In Florida, relating back to the article “Stand Your Ground Laws: Do They Put Teenagers in Greater Danger” support for standing your ground remains strong. A poll found that 56 percent of people said “The law makes society safer.” In Minnesota, according to the same article for the poll a retired State Department employee Bryon David Smith allegedly wounded and then killed two teenagers, Haile Kifer and Nicholas Brady, who broke into his house on Thanksgiving, apparently on a hunt for prescription drugs. The teens broke into the home of Bryon Smith in which under the new castle law means he was legally allowed to defend himself from the intruders. Although you can defend yourself in legal ways ever since the stand your ground laws were enacted, a Texas A&M University study this summer found that homicide rates had risen by an average of 7 to 9 percent in states that enacted such laws, and lives being cost certainly isn’t worth it.

      To end it all, innocent peoples’ lives are being cost due to the misconceptions with this law, and the law should be reformed. As a country, we should demand ways for the stand your ground law to be reformed so that innocent people’s lives are not being cost due to the misconceptions with the Stand Your Ground law. 

Tristan Smith