Stand Your Ground Laws and Homicides
نویسندگان
چکیده
Stand Your Ground Laws and Homicides The controversies surrounding Stand Your Ground laws have recently captured the nation’s attention. Since 2005, eighteen states have passed laws extending the right to self-defense with no duty to retreat to any place a person has a legal right to be, and several additional states are debating the adoption of similar legislation. Despite the implications that these laws may have for public safety, there has been little empirical investigation of their impact on crime and victimization. In this paper, we use monthly data from the U.S. Vital Statistics to examine how Stand Your Ground laws affect homicides. We identify the impact of these laws by exploiting variation in the implementation of these laws across states. Our results indicate that Stand Your Ground laws are associated with a significant increase in the number of homicides among whites, especially white males. According to our estimates, between 4.4 and 7.4 additional white males are killed each month as a result of these laws. We find no evidence to suggest that these laws increase homicides among blacks. Our results are robust to a number of specifications and unlikely to be driven entirely by the killings of assailants. Taken together, our findings raise serious doubts against the argument that Stand Your Ground laws make America safer. JEL Classification: I1, K14, K42
منابع مشابه
Evaluating the Impact of Florida's "Stand Your Ground" Self-defense Law on Homicide and Suicide by Firearm: An Interrupted Time Series Study.
Importance In 2005, Florida amended its self-defense laws to provide legal immunity to individuals using lethal force in self-defense. The enactment of "stand your ground" laws in the United States has been controversial and their effect on rates of homicide and homicide by firearm is uncertain. Objective To estimate the impact of Florida's stand your ground law on rates of homicide and homic...
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A paper in this issue analyzing the impact of Stand-Your-Ground laws revealed a disturbing pattern of racial bias. Individuals (i.e., defendants) in Florida were more likely to avoid charges if the victim was Black or Latino but not if the victim was white. Indeed, individuals are nearly two timesmore likely to be convicted in a case that involves White victims compared to those involving Black...
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From 2000 to 2010, more than 20 states passed so-called “castle doctrine” or “stand your ground” laws. These laws expand the legal justification for the use of lethal force in self-defense, thereby lowering the expected cost of using lethal force and increasing the expected cost of committing violent crime. This paper exploits the within-state variation in self-defense law to examine their effe...
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