Legal immunity for subjective fear licenses deadly force in public spaces.

Evidence

Under the initiative and pressure of the NRA, the state of Florida passed a law called “Stand Your Ground.” It permits individuals to use deadly force in public places with protection from criminal prosecution if they believe they face harm. Unlike under existing self-defense laws, under the new statute, individuals do not have the duty to retreat first. They can legally resort to deadly force if they believe they are in imminent peril. The NRA’s chief lobbyist lauded the law as a “critical turning point in what has become our proactive approach to gun-rights activism” (Brown, 2012). In a preemptive defense of the law, viewed as advancing “firearm freedom,” she forewarned that the “anti-gun media” will misrepresent the law as a return to the days of the Wild West of “shoot first and ask questions later” (Brown, 2012). — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 1209

Categorization

• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 1209
• XREF: connects to: People physically unable to perform expected deference cues risk lethal police sanction — Michael Lipsky, Street-Level Bureaucracy: Dilemmas of…, 478; Framing police-killing verdicts on jurors’ own fear makes unlawful killing nearly indefinable. — Mark Fisher (edited by Darren Ambrose), K-Punk: The Collected and Unpublished…, 1748