Another thought about Stand Your Ground legislation

[xiphias]

Does SYG effectively decriminalize dueling?  With no Duty to Retreat, you've got no duty to avoid deadly conflicts.  Therefore, you can deliberately seek out deadly conflicts, so long as your opponent is reasonably armed.  Therefore, arranged duels.  If the loser presented a reasonable threat, the survivor can claim self-defense, and, as SYG largely removes the police's ability to investigate, who's to say otherwise?

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Comments

[erik-j-meyer.livejournal.com]

I believe that a friend looked into dueling in Massachusetts a few years back. Apparently it is still legal. You just need to be in a designated public space (the Boston Common) and have the Governor present. I could be mis-remembering. Sounds like Stand Your Ground would just eliminate the requirment of having the Governor present. You might also want to make sure that the space you used was safe enough to prevent any accidents with any by-standers or the like.

[bradhicks.livejournal.com]

Statutes are written state-by-state, but in general, SYG doesn't apply to the aggressor, and the person who makes the first threat, throws the first punch, draws a gun first, or whatever is the aggressor.

So SYG only legalizes dueling if there are no witnesses and all duels are to the death, because that way the winner can claim self-defense.

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

So basically, the duel has to be set up to trick the other guy into firing first (and missing)?

...I'd think the premeditation would take it out of SYG-territory, myself. If you intend to have a duel, and ostensibly your intent beforehand is to kill the other person (i.e. presuming you are not suicidal), then any attempt to argue self-defense would be pretty weak.

But at least it'll make some lawyers very rich.

[xiphias.livejournal.com]

What if they were done by Hollywood Old West rules: you only REALLY win if the other guy twitches and his gun clears his holster before you kill him? That's how Marshall Matt Dillon judged things in GUNSMOKE -- if the other guy didn't have his gun out, it was murder, and if he did, it was totally cool.

. . . I honestly think that a lot of the law enforcement officers in SYG states would be fine with taking Matt Dillon as a law enforcement model. I honestly think that, in some cases, that might even be an improvement . . .

[teddywolf.livejournal.com]

Unsure. Others have talked about it dealing with perceived intent. I think it might.

The more interesting application for the SYG laws, I think, is possibly as a go-around that would decriminalize various abortion procedures.

[(Anonymous)]

This might work in a Darwinian sense...cull the herd?