[WS:]
Jordan: > This is unrelated to the "stand your ground" laws. You may
do this today,
> in your home state (although maybe not with a gun; will a knife do? It
> will, if you will.).
[WS:] I Think you are missing my point here. First, i was not talking about guns and, as you may recall, I am not against ownership per se (I am against "gun culture" but this not germane here.) Second, and more importantly, I did not say that the stand your ground law encourages killing bur rather than it makes it easier to get away with it legally. The NYT link that I posted demonstrates this quite clearly, I think.
Jordan: "> unlikely that Trayvon Martin was killed by someone who
understands what the
> Castle Doctrine is. "
[WS:} You are probably right, but it is not germane to this discussion. I said it before that had it not been for the stand your ground law, this killing would be local news at best. It is just an act of a deranged person protected by apparently racist cops. What elevated it to the national news is precisely the monumental idiocy of the "castle doctrine." it is hard to escape the conclusion that this law does provide enormous protection to vigilantes, despite what its Republican sponsors say. Let's just face, this country has a long history of lynching in lieu of "justice" and many legal and quasi-legal protections of this practice. Not only that - those who spoke against it, like Mencken, faced social ostracism http://www.nieman.harvard.edu/reports/article/100441/HL-Mencken-Courage-in-a-Time-of-Lynching.aspx
.
So here I am - on the one hand legal gobbledygook of people with a political agenda trying to defend stand your ground laws in terms of 'law and order" - on the other hand, the long history of legally and semi-legally justified and virtually never prosecuted lynchings http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lynching_in_the_United_States#Laws. I will go with the latter.
wojtek