The more I read, the more I think Stand Your Ground laws are ridiculous.
Take, for example, the case of Texas' Joe Horn, a 62-year-old white man who shot and killed two men of Afro-Latino descent after he caught the pair breaking into his neighbor's house. The 9-1-1 dispatcher repeatedly told Horn to not go outside, Horn ignored the directive, pursued and shot the two men in the back as they were fleeing the scene. Horn was not indicted for the November 2007 shootings.
Here's an excerpt from an enlightening article on Time:
As these laws spread across the country, the public will want to know what effect they'll have in their communities. Will they make people more secure? Or will they create some kind of dystopic Deadwood, where the law lands on the side of those who shoot first? The laws are written so vaguely that the answer lies largely in the interpretation. It's up to juries to set appropriate boundaries — hopefully ones that favor precedent, instead of completely rewriting the rulebook on lethal confrontations.
Foreshadowing... Keep in mind that this was written four years before the recent Trayvon Martin shooting.
See below to follow Horn's 9-1-1 call. He sounds like a lunatic.
To read more on Oregon's self-defense laws read Stand Down or Stand Your Ground.
