Quote:
Originally Posted by CaptainHaplo
Now - the AG and the President are suggesting that we get rid of stand your ground laws - requiring a person to not use legal force when threatened - whether they have a "safe exit or retreat" or not. What say you all - and WHY?
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As a rule, an established government does not really want the people to have rights. That's the blunt truth based on human nature and self-interest. Sometimes, a revolutionary government made based on idealism may promote such ideas for awhile (it also helps get the support), but once it is established, not so much.
Nevertheless, as an idea for discussion by the people, it is not to be automatically dismissed.
First, let's revert to the fundamentals. Humans do not so much have an "inherent right" to self-defense as they have one to reasonable security. The argument of a right to self-defence is but an invocation of the right to security, and may be denied if allowing self-defence is anti-thetical to security.
Before we had governments and laws, everyone had the right to self-defence. Heck, everyone had the unfettered right to using violence to resolve disputes, only limited by the strength of their musculature.
Nevertheless, eventually most peoples decided that this unfettered right to using violence is not the best path to security, so now we have laws. To give the laws some teeth, we have police (or equivalent organ). With that, we have handed almost all our rights of violence to the police.
So why do we need self-defence? Self-defence, more than anything else, is an acknowledgment of the limitations of the police, be it their speed of reaction, or in the worst case the possibility of them abusing their powers.
In the end, it is all in what the people are willing to accept. The wider they make the self-defense law, the more they are willing to tolerate a few abuses (like I think GZ is guilty of). The narrower they make it, the more they are willing to tolerate a few innocents dying because the police cannot make it.
Every once in a while, such attitudes should be resampled and a new decision taken. Thus, Obama's proposal is not really wrong.