I have no opinion on whether they are lynchings.
I disagree with your characterization that the Castle Doctrine is a license to kill (lynch if you like). It is specifically to be invoked in cases where the claimant did not instigate the situation in which they then came to kill their opponent. This is *not a change* in the multi-hundred-year-old right to self-defense (cue: Hobbes?). The Stand Your Ground laws are only designed to remove the onus on the attacked to retreat in the face of an attack. If grants no new powers to instigate an attack.
> In the case described in the NYT piece I posted it was just
> a guy playing basketball with his 8 year old daughter.
Yes, I agree: that was an unwarranted killing by someone who belongs in prison. And I bet that if we continue to follow this case -- and we'll have to do it, because the NY Times sure won't -- we'll see that the justice system will work and this idiot will go to prison.
> there is no way I can see how one can reasonably justify
> the extra-judicial killing of a guy playing with his eight
> year old year kid.
Who exactly are you arguing with here? No one disputes this, except the guy who is trying to avoid prison. And it's unlikely to work in his case. But again: his story is told only because of the tie-in to these laws, his case doesn't actually have anything to do with it. And I think that we'll see that the Zimmerman case is the same: my prediction is that he will be charged, and he will be convicted.
If his defense was "I ate a twinkie" we'd be having the same conversation: you'd be saying how the twinkie laws are just a license to kill.
/jordan