Nebraska Governor Open To Stand Your Ground Measure

Nebraska Governor Pete Ricketts

by Tom Knighton: While some are trying to push the country away from Stand Your Ground laws – usually through a mixture of fear-mongering and misrepresentation, much like everything else anti-gunners do – it seems not everyone is on board with their plan. Thank goodness.

For example, Nebraska Governor Pete Ricketts is open to the idea of adopting the measure.Gov. Pete Ricketts said Monday he would be open to the possibility of enacting a so-called “stand your ground” law that would broaden the legal right to self-defense in Nebraska.

…  Varying forms of those laws now are in effect in at least 25 states and have generally expanded upon earlier self-defense guarantees within one’s home.

“I’d be interested in working with a senator who might want to work on that,” Ricketts told a caller from Omaha during his monthly radio call-in show aired on KFOR in Lincoln.Ricketts also said he would err on the side of public safety, which is fine. The average public doesn’t have anything to worry about regarding Stand Your Ground laws.

You see, while there is wide opposition to the law, it’s usually due to gross misunderstandings of what the law means.

For example, it’s often described as justifying lethal force any time you’re afraid. That’s untrue.

All Stand Your Ground laws do is take away any duty to try and retreat from a violent attacker. Without these laws, courts can rule that a person wasn’t justified to use lethal force in self-defense because they didn’t try to get away from their attacker first. A prosecutor can decide that includes climbing out of a second-story or higher window inside your own home with being pursued by a criminal, at least in theory.

Stand Your Ground laws prevent that kind of prosecution for using lethal force, that’s it.

To act in self-defense, you still have to have a reasonable expectation that you or someone else is about to be seriously injured. You can’t just be scared. You have to have a legitimate reason to be scared, what’s sometimes called the “reasonable man standard.” In other words, would a reasonable person believe you or someone else was going to get seriously hurt? If not, then you didn’t act in self-defense.

Ironically, one of the poster children for the supposed evils of Stand Your Ground was Trayvon Martin. However, it should be noted that the trial of George Zimmerman didn’t touch on Stand Your Ground. That’s because there was no way for Zimmerman to escape once his life was in danger, so Martin’s death had nothing to do with the now controversial law.

Nebraska, as a state, would be well-served with a Stand Your Ground law, as would the rest of the nation.

It’s not about killing people, but about allowing innocent people to keep themselves safe without wasting precious time trying to find an escape outlet that may or may not even exist. It also stops those innocent people from being prosecuted because an ADA wanting to make a name for him or herself can see a sliver of a way to escape through the advantage of hindsight.

Nothing more, nothing less.

Good for Governor Ricketts for being open to such a law.
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Tom Knighton is a Navy veteran, a former newspaperman, a novelist, and a blogger at Bearing Arms. He lives with his family in Southwest Georgia.

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