Five years since Florida enacted "stand-your-ground" law, justifiable homicides are up

[MrScorpio]

By Ben Montgomery and Colleen Jenkins, Times Staff Writers
In Print: Sunday, October 17, 2010

TAMPA — Two men meet at a park one Sunday afternoon in September. One is playing basketball with his daughter. The other has a gun tucked in his pants.

The two men argue about a kid who's skateboarding. The man with the gun tries to enforce the rules. The other man lunges.

The unarmed man takes his last breath in front of his 8-year-old daughter. Two days later, authorities charge the gun owner with manslaughter.

Case closed? Maybe not.

If history serves, the gunman stands a very good chance in court. The case may not even make it to trial.

That's because of Florida Statute 776.013(3), which took effect five years ago this month. The old law gave you the right to protect yourself with deadly force inside your home. The 2005 law gives you the right to protect yourself in a park, outside a Chili's, on a highway — just about anywhere.

http://www.tampabay.com/news/publicsafety/crime/article1128317.ece

[Beartracks]

1. Proponents would say that means it's working.

Of course, that would require some assumptions and probably a lack of details about the cases. But still...

========================

[krispos42]

2. Well, that's to be expected.

I'd be surprised if there were less, everything else being equal.


An interesting point here is the homicide rate the last few years.

Year | FL__| US
2000 | 5.6 | 5.5
2001 | 5.3 | 5.6
2002 | 5.5 | 5.6
2003 | 5.4 | 5.7
2004 | 5.4 | 5.5
2005 | 5.0 | 5.6
2006 | 6.2 | 5.7
2007 | 6.6 | 5.6
2008 | 6.3 | 5.4
2009 | 5.5 | 5.0
2010 | 5.2 | 4.8

http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/flcrime.htm
http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/uscrime.htm


There's a bit of a surge in '06 thru '08 in Florida which has since settle down. Might be a fluctuation, although you would think that, if CCW holders were chronically abusing their concealed handguns, this would continue to rise as more people got permits. Especially with the "Obama's gonna take your guns" meme the NRA has been pushing for 4 years.

[provis99]

4. these are rates for murder, not homicide.

[krispos42]

6. Right.

One of the common assumptions about increased concealed-carry is that people will be more likely to be murdered. That emotional situations (domestic dispute, political argument, road rage, etc.) will have more end results with murder simply because of the greater odds of a CCWer being involved.

[DaveJones39]

5. To Be Expected

Those are "murder" rates, not "justifiable homicide" rates.

October, 2010 Tampa newspaper eports of justifiable homicides in Florida:

For the first half of this decade, the state counted an average of 34 justifiable homicides a year, as few as 31 and as many as 43.

That continued in 2006, the law's first full year.

But the next three years brought these numbers:

2007: 102.

2008: 93.

2009: 105.

The first six months of 2010: 44

[krispos42]

7. Right.

Justifiable homicide, by definition, isn't murder.


The concern that with laws that allow more legal concealed-carry on the streets, that murder (non-justifiable homicide) would go up.

[demgrrrll]

3. Did Jeb Bush sign this into law? I know the NRA is behind these laws in other states but I am

not sure exactly how this law made it through the Florida system, I assume that Jeb signed this and must have been in agreement on some level. I am following this story closely. I can't even put my feelings into coherent sentences.

[hack89]

8. Is the number of overall gun deaths up or down?

are there actually more shootings or are shootings simply being labeled differently?