Self-Defense & Violence Prevention Blog

I just read an article by Audra Burch in Miami Herald, entitled After Little Girl’s Death, Parents Strive To Change State Law.

The article recounts a story about the shooting of an innocent little girl. The shooters shot the girl with a stray bullet in the midst of a gun-fight, and they now are going to use the self-defense law, Stand Your Ground, to try to plead non-guilty to the murder of this little girl.

People have different opinions regarding the Stand Your Ground law. On one hand, people need to be able to defend themselves and stand their ground. On the other hand, we need to defend little girls from violent criminals on wild shootouts. What do you think?

I personally think that ‘collateral damage’ has nothing to with self-defense. If a defendant shoots a criminal attacker, then the defendants are fine with me. However, if a defendant shoots an innocent little girl, we need to put that defendant in jail. I have the right to defend myself in the same way I have a right to drive my car or play baseball. If I’m an irresponsible punk and wildly cause trouble and defend myself, drive my car, or play baseball erratically and thus violently kill a little girl, then that’s voluntary manslaughter at best, and murder at worst. What do you think?

Here’s some excerpts from the article:

The parents go out to get more and more signatures on a petition to support changing the law that could be used to defend the two men accused of killing Sherdavia, just 9, shot to death while playing on her porch one Saturday afternoon.

Florida’s Stand Your Ground law stretches — arguably to the extreme — the definition of self-defense. It allows people to defend themselves without penalty if they feel threatened in just about any public or private space.

[…]

The amendment, which Bendross-Mindingall plans to introduce in Tallahassee, would likely change the definition of threat to an overt and physical act and remove criminal and civil immunity to defendants if an innocent bystander is harmed, particularly a child.

Sherdavia died just a week into summer camp and six weeks before starting fourth grade, somehow caught in the wind and space and anger of two dueling street toughs nicknamed Red Rock and Yellow Man, police say. Shot in the neck while playing on the front stoop of her Liberty Square house, she crawled inside and died in her mother’s arms.