stand your ground law research paper

• Introduction
• Conclusions
• Article Information

Crosses indicate monthly homicide rates; blue solid lines, smoothed trends for observed rates; orange dotted lines, smoothed seasonality for observed rates; red dotted lines represent the enactment of SYG laws; and blue dotted lines, the smoothed trend for the counterfactual (ie, the expected trend in the absence of an SYG law).

IRR indicates incidence rate ratio, given as rate per 100 000 population.

Note each plot is grouped by US region (Midwest, Northeast, South, West) and ordered by estimated effect size. FE indicates fixed-effects.

eMethods. Stand Your Ground and Self-Defense Laws by State

eAppendix. Evidence of Nonlinear Trends, Nonpenalized Approach, and Restricted Linear Analyses

eFigure 1. Visualization of the Multiple Baselines Using Staggering of the Enactment of SYG Laws and Multiple Locations Using 23 SYG States During the Study Period, 1999 to 2017

eFigure 2. Data Visualization Showing the Suspected Coding Error in the Data for Race in Texas From September 2007 to February 2009

eFigure 3. Plots Showing Imputed Data by Bounded Random Sampling to Correct for the Suspected Coding Error in the Data for Race in Texas From September 2007 to February 2009

eFigure 4. Plots of Partial Autocorrelation Functions for GLMM With Linear Trends and GAMs for Homicide and Firearm Homicide

eFigure 5. Estimated Associations of SYG Laws With Monthly Homicide Rates Across the US

eFigure 6. Estimated Associations of SYG Laws With Monthly Firearm Homicide Rates Across the US

eFigure 7. Estimated Associations of SYG Laws With Monthly Suicide Rates Across the US

eFigure 8. Estimated Associations of SYG Laws With Monthly Firearm Suicide Rates Across the US

eFigure 9. Estimated Associations of SYG Laws With Monthly Homicide and Firearm Homicide Rates in SYG States by Restricted ITS Models With Linear Trends

eFigure 10. Forest Plot of Fixed-Effects Meta-analysis Pooling Restricted ITS Models With Linear Trends for the Association of SYG Laws With Homicide and Firearm Homicide Rates in SYG States

eFigure 11. State-Specific Associations of SYG Laws With Monthly Homicide Rates Estimated by Separate ITS Models With Nonlinear Trends for Each SYG State

eTable 1. Self-defense Laws Across All 50 US States (Excluding District of Columbia)

eTable 2. Intervention SYG States, Comparison Non-SYG States, and Excluded States

eTable 3. Outcomes and Their Corresponding Selected Cause of Death Group and ICD-10 Details

eTable 4. Data Outliers Caused by 1-Off Events

eTable 5. AIC Values for Different Combinations of Polynomials for Modelling State and National Trends in GLMMs for Homicides

eTable 6. Monthly Counts of Homicide, Firearm Homicide, Suicide, and Firearm Suicide in the Absence and Presence of SYG Laws

eTable 7. Estimated Associations of SYG Laws With Homicide and Firearm Homicide Rates Across the US Using Nonpenalized GLMMs With Polynomials

eTable 8. Estimated Association of SYG Laws With Homicide and Firearm Homicide Rates by Race Across the US Using Data With Suspected Errors

eReferences

• Error in Figure 3 JAMA Network Open Correction April 6, 2022
• State-Specific Heterogeneity in the Association of Stand Your Ground Laws With Firearm Violence JAMA Network Open Invited Commentary February 21, 2022 Michael Siegel, MD, MPH

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Degli Esposti M , Wiebe DJ , Gasparrini A , Humphreys DK. Analysis of “Stand Your Ground” Self-defense Laws and Statewide Rates of Homicides and Firearm Homicides. JAMA Netw Open. 2022;5(2):e220077. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2022.0077

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Analysis of “Stand Your Ground” Self-defense Laws and Statewide Rates of Homicides and Firearm Homicides

• 1 Department of Social Policy and Intervention, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom
• 2 Department of Biostatistics and Epidemiology, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia
• 3 Department of Public Health, Environments and Society, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, London, United Kingdom
• 4 Centre for Statistical Methodology, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, London, United Kingdom
• Invited Commentary State-Specific Heterogeneity in the Association of Stand Your Ground Laws With Firearm Violence Michael Siegel, MD, MPH JAMA Network Open
• Correction Error in Figure 3 JAMA Network Open

Question   Are “stand your ground” (SYG) laws associated with increases in violent deaths, and does this vary by US state?

Findings   In this cohort study assessing 41 US states, SYG laws were associated with an 8% to 11% national increase in monthly rates of homicide and firearm homicide. State-level increases in homicide and firearm homicide rates reached 10% or higher for many Southern states, including Alabama, Florida, Georgia, and Louisiana.

Meaning   These findings suggest that SYG laws were associated with increased homicides each year and that the laws should be reconsidered to prevent unnecessary violent deaths.

Importance   Most US states have amended self-defense laws to enhance legal immunities for individuals using deadly force in public. Despite concerns that “stand your ground” (SYG) laws unnecessarily encourage the use of deadly violence, their impact on violent deaths and how this varies across states and demographic groups remains unclear.

Objective   To evaluate the association of SYG laws with homicide and firearm homicide, nationally and by state, while considering variation by the race, age, and sex of individuals who died by homicide.

Design, Setting, and Participants   This cohort study used a controlled, multiple-baseline and -location interrupted time series design, using natural variation in the timings and locations of SYG laws to assess associations. Changes in homicide and firearm homicide were modeled using Poisson regression analyses within a generalized additive model framework. Analyses included all US states that enacted SYG laws between 2000 and 2016 and states that did not have SYG laws enacted during the full study period, 1999 to 2017. Data were analyzed from November 2019 to December 2020.

Exposures   SYG self-defense laws enacted by statute between January 1, 2000, to December 31, 2016.

Main Outcomes and Measures   The main outcomes were statewide monthly rates of homicide and firearm-related homicide (per 100 000 persons) from January 1, 1999, to December 31, 2017, grouped by characteristics (ie, race, age, sex) of individuals who died by homicide.

Results   Forty-one states were analyzed, including 23 states that enacted SYG laws during the study period and 18 states that did not have SYG laws, with 248 358 homicides (43.7% individuals aged 20-34 years; 77.9% men and 22.1% women), including 170 659 firearm homicides. SYG laws were associated with a mean national increase of 7.8% in monthly homicide rates (incidence rate ratio [IRR],1.08; 95% CI, 1.04-1.12; P  < .001) and 8.0% in monthly firearm homicide rates (IRR, 1.08; 95% CI, 1.03-1.13; P  = .002). SYG laws were not associated with changes in the negative controls of suicide (IRR, 0.99; 95% CI, 0.98-1.01) or firearm suicide (IRR, 1.00; 95% CI, 0.98-1.02). Increases in violent deaths varied across states, with the largest increases (16.2% to 33.5%) clustering in the South (eg, Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana). There were no differential associations of SYG laws by demographic group.

Conclusions and Relevance   These findings suggest that adoption of SYG laws across the US was associated with increases in violent deaths, deaths that could potentially have been avoided.

Every year, more than 19 000 people in the United States die from homicide, and most of these violent deaths are attributable to injuries sustained from firearms. Rates of homicide and firearm homicide are markedly higher in the US than any other high-income county. 1 - 3 In 2020, the US saw a further upsurge, with homicide rates increasing by approximately 30%. 4 These deaths are preventable; yet there is limited evidence on how current legislation and policy may not only be failing to prevent harm but may also be contributing to it. 5

“Stand your ground” (SYG) laws, also known as shoot first laws, overwrite the common law principle of a “duty to retreat,” creating the possibility for individuals to use deadly force in self-defense in public as a first, rather than last, resort (eMethods in the Supplement ). 6 Florida was the first state to enact an SYG law by statute in 2005, and then 23 states enacted SYG laws soon after, between 2006 and 2008. Although the uptake was initially concentrated in the South, by 2021, thirty states had enacted SYG laws, and this number continues to increase as a raft of ongoing bills make their way through state legislatures. 7

Advocates claim that SYG laws enhance public safety by deterring predatory crime through an increased threat of retaliatory violence. 8 Critics, on the other hand, argue that the laws are unnecessary, and may threaten public safety by emboldening the use of deadly violence in public encounters in which violence and injury that could have safely been avoided. 9 There are also concerns that the laws exacerbate social inequalities in experiencing violent crime, since implicit and explicit biases of threat perception discriminate against and cause disproportionate harms among minority groups, such as Black people. 10 - 12 Anecdotally, critics’ concerns have been realized in an increasing number of shootings of young Black men (eg, Trayvon Martin, Jordan Davis, and Markeis McGlockton) where self-defense has been claimed. 12 These high-profile incidents underline the controversy surrounding SYG laws and have served to galvanize the Black Lives Matter movement. 13

Although previous studies have associated SYG laws with increases in homicide, 14 - 17 a 2021 systematic review highlighted key weaknesses of the current evidence. 18 First, the national impacts of SYG laws are undetermined because there is a lack of studies with robust study designs. 18 Second, very few studies examine the differential impacts of SYG laws on demographic groups, including racial or ethnic minority groups. Third, there is a marked discrepancy between US-wide analyses and single-state analyses. US-wide analyses report either no associations or small increases in homicide associated with enacting SYG laws 15 , 18 - 20 ; whereas single-state analyses, which almost exclusively evaluated Florida’s SYG law, identify substantial increases in homicide (24% to 27%). 14 , 21 , 22 The generalizability of the evidence beyond Florida remains unclear.

Since the laws continue to be adopted across the US, with 2 states passing SYG bills in early 2021 and 14 states currently having SYG bills under active consideration, 7 it is crucial to advance the evidence on SYG laws across the US and whether the laws show differential associations by state and demographic group. Our study aims to fill this gap. We obtained restricted access mortality data by special request to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) that includes all medical records on causes of death from January 1, 1999, to December 31, 2017. We used an interrupted time-series (ITS) design that exploited temporal and state variation in the enactment of the laws to strengthen the evidence on the outcomes associated with enacting SYG laws across the US.

Ethical approval was waived by Departmental Research Ethics Committee (DREC), University of Oxford, because the study uses fully anonymized administrative data previously collected by government bodies and official sources. The data cannot be traced back to an individual. We followed relevant recommendations set out in the Guidelines for Reporting Evaluations based on Observational Methodology ( GREOM ) and Strengthening the Reporting of Observational Studies in Epidemiology ( STROBE ) reporting guideline. The study protocol and statistical analysis plan ( https://osf.io/s6xp4/ ) and analytical code ( https://osf.io/vmx2y/ ) have been made freely available at the Open Science Framework.

We used a multiple-baseline and -location ITS design to estimate the association of SYG laws with changes in homicide and firearm homicide rates across the US, both at the national and state levels. The staggered adoption of SYG laws across states offers a unique opportunity to reduce confounding in ITS (pre-post) evaluations by including states that did not enact SYG laws in the control group. 23 , 24 Observed and unobserved state- and time-varying confounding is therefore minimized, as the same confounding would have to present at all 23 different timings in each of the 23 states that enacted SYG laws while not occurring in any of the 18 states that did not have SYG laws enacted during the study period.

We defined an SYG law as a legislative statute that extended the legal right to use lethal force in self-defense to anywhere the individual has the right to be (ie, public places) (eMethods in the Supplement ). We systematically investigated self-defense laws in all 50 US states and classified each state by their variant of self-defense law (eMethods, eTable 1, and eFigure 1 in the Supplement ). States were included in the analysis if they were classified as an SYG state, enacting SYG laws between January 1, 2000, and December 31, 2016. A reduced period of 2000 to 2016 was used to ensure that at least 12 months in the preintervention and postintervention period for modeling purposes. States were also included if they could serve as a comparison non-SYG state by not having an SYG law enacted by statute or upholding SYG law principles through case law, throughout the study period. We included 41 states in the analyses: 23 SYG states and 18 non-SYG states (eTable 2 in the Supplement ). We excluded the remaining 9 states from the analyses because 2 states (Utah and Iowa) lacked sufficient data during the study period to model trends and 7 states upheld principles of SYG law by case law even if not encoded in a statute. Including these states in the analysis would dilute the contrast between SYG and non-SYG states and bias estimates owing to intervention contamination effects. 25

We modeled time series data for state-level monthly counts of homicide (primary outcome) and firearm homicide (secondary outcome) between January 1999 to December 2017 (eMethods, eFigure 2, eFigure 3, and eTable 3 in the Supplement ). Outcome data were obtained by special request from the CDC’s Restricted Use Vital Statistics, which provided microdata on Multiple Cause of Death based on coroner determinations of cause of death for more than 99% of all deaths in the US. We further stratified outcomes by race (White vs Black and other races), age group (0-19, 20-34, and ≥35 years), and sex (male and female). Race was determined by medical death certificates in accordance with standards set forth by the Office of Management and Budget. Other races includes all races other than White or Black under the main categories of American Indian, Asian, and Pacific Islander. We stratified outcomes by race to determine whether the SYG laws had differential assoications by population subgroup, including by race. We identified and excluded any outliers from 1-event mass death events (eg, the September 11, 2001, terrorist attack) from the analyses (eMethods and eTable 4 in the Supplement ).

We used negative control outcomes of suicide and firearm suicide to check for time-varying confounding. 26 We selected these outcomes because we hypothesized that they would be similarly affected by changes over time that might confound the association between SYG law enactment and changes in homicide and firearm homicide but would not be affected by the intervention itself. Such time-varying confounders included economic shifts (eg, an economic recession), changes in recording practices, and changes in firearm regulation and availability.

We ran Poisson regression analyses within a generalized additive model (GAM) framework to estimate the association of SYG laws with homicide and firearm homicide. Outcomes were modeled as a quasi-Poisson distribution owing to evidence of overdispersion. State population sizes by state and year, disaggregated by race, age group, and sex as relevant, were used as an offset variable to model rates per 100 000 persons directly. Our main exposure was a dummy variable indicating the presence of SYG law across groups (SYG vs non-SYG states) and over time (before and after SYG laws were enacted in SYG states). The dummy variable thus reflects a group-by-time interaction: 0 for non-SYG states and for the pre-enactment period in SYG laws and 1 for the postenactment period in SYG states. GAMs, as opposed to generalized linear mixed models (GLMMs), were used because there was significant evidence that long-term trends violated assumptions of linearity (eAppendix, eFigure 4, and eTable 5 in the Supplement ). GAMs can more flexibly smooth nonlinear trends while penalizing overfitting through generalized cross-validation. 27 To check the robustness of this penalization approach, we present estimates from nonpenalized GLMMs in the eAppendix in the Supplement .

Informed by a previous systematic review, 18 we hypothesized that the outcomes associated with SYG laws would follow a step-change pattern (ie, abrupt sustained change in level). The adoption of SYG laws was therefore estimated as a fixed effect, comparing differences in rates before and after SYG laws were enacted in the 23 SYG states, as well as with the 18 non-SYG states, while adjusting for seasonality and state-specific long-term trends. Both seasonality and long-term trends were modeled independently for each outcome. Seasonality was modeled using harmonics (Fourier series of pairs of sine and cosine functions) to smooth smaller repeating patterns in a year (ie, seasons). 24 , 28 State-specific trends were independently smoothed by specifying a factor-by-curve interaction to allow for differences in long-term trends between states. 29 The smoothness of trends was constrained to be equal across states to prioritize model parsimony and because there was no theoretical reason to assume that states should be smoothed to a differential degree. The equation for the base model is outlined in the eMethods in the Supplement . Results can be interpreted as the relative risk of monthly homicides or firearm homicides in the presence vs absence of SYG laws (ie, incidence rate ratio [IRR]). Model fit was checked through an analysis of the residuals, including data visualizations and inspection of the distribution of autocorrelations.

Stratified analyses were conducted to investigate whether associations of SYG laws with violent deaths differed by race, age group, and sex. Formal tests assessed whether the estimates varied across demographic groups. Specifically, approximate Wald tests (also known as Z -tests ) were used to compare stratified model estimates and test for differences within each demographic group (eg, White vs Black and other races). 30 These model comparisons were used to assess whether SYG laws were differentially associated with violent deaths by subgroup.

We also investigated state-by-state differences in estimates of the enactment of SYG laws by fitting separate quasi-Poisson regression models as interrupted times series analyses for each SYG state. Here, the main exposure is a dummy variable coding the absence (0) and presence (1) of SYG laws within SYG states alone, and thus implements a segmented regression analysis. 24 , 31 In these ITS models, we smoothed nonlinearity in long-term trends in 2 ways: fitted cubic terms for long-term trends and restricted the period to 3 years (ie, 36 months) before and after SYG laws were enacted, and we assumed fitted linear long-term trends (eAppendix in the Supplement ). State-level ITS models estimates were then pooled in fixed-effects meta-analyses. All analyses were conducted in R statistical software version 3.6.3 (R Project for Statistical Computing); the multiple location and baseline ITS GAMs were fitted using the R package mgcv while the simple ITS models were pooled using metafor . 32 , 33  P values were 2-sided, and statistical significance was set at P  < .05. Data were analyzed from November 2019 to December 2020.

The analysis included 41 states with 248 358 homicides (43.7% individuals aged 20-34 years; 77.9% men and 22.1% women), including 184 495 homicides in 23 SYG states and 63 863 homicides in 18 non-SYG states, and 170 659 firearm homicides, including 129 831 firearm homicides in 23 SYG states and 40 828 firearm homicides in 18 non-SYG states). The Table and eTable 6 in the Supplement present monthly rates and counts during the study period. Between 1999 and 2017, trends in monthly homicide and firearm homicide rates varied between states and did not follow simple linear trends. While there were gradual declines between 1999 and 2014, approximately half of all states experienced an uptick in homicide rates in recent years, irrespective of whether states had or had not enacted SYG laws ( Figure 1 ; eFigure 5 and eFigure 6 in the Supplement ). The negative control outcomes of suicide and firearm suicides rates mostly showed increasing trends from 1999 to 2017 (eFigure 7 and eFigure 8 in the Supplement ). Between 1999 and 2017, homicide and suicide rates were higher in states with SYG laws (mean [SD]: 0.55 [0.25] homicides per 100 000 persons and 1.24 [0.38] suicides per 100 000 persons) compared with non-SYG states (mean [SD]: 0.31 [0.22] homicides per 100 000 persons and 1.03 [0.45] suicides per 100 000 persons) ( Table ). Within SYG states and compared with the period before SYG laws were enacted, after SYG laws were enacted there were higher rates of homicide (mean [SD], 0.54 [0.26] vs 0.55 [0.25] homicides per 100 000 population) and suicide (mean [SD], 1.13 [0.35] vs 1.32 [0.38] suicides per 100 000 population).

The enactment of SYG laws was associated with a mean national increase of 7.8% in monthly homicide rates (IRR, 1.08; 95% CI, 1.04-1.12; P  < .001) and 8.0% in monthly firearm homicide rates (IRR, 1.08; 95% CI, 1.03-1.13; P  = .002) ( Table and Figure 1 ; eFigure 6 in the Supplement ). SYG laws were not associated with changes in the 2 negative control outcomes: suicide (IRR, 0.99; 95% CI, 0.98-1.01; P  = .58) or firearm suicide rates (IRR, 1.00; 95% CI, 0.98-1.02; P  = .94) (eFigure 7 and eFigure 8 in the Supplement ). Separate ITS analyses for SYG states only, pooled via meta-analyses, estimated higher increases of 9.9% for homicide (IRR, 1.10; 95% CI, 1.07-1.13; P  < .001) and 10.8% for firearm homicide (IRR, 1.11; 95% CI, 1.07-1.15; P  < .001). No changes were observed for the negative control suicide outcomes.

The penalization approach was tested by fitting a series of nonpenalized GLMMs using polynomials to model nonlinear trends at the national and state level (eAppendix in the Supplement ). Results from the GLMMs replicated our main findings, with associated increases of 9.5% for homicide (IRR, 1.09; 95% CI, 1.07-1.12; P  < .001) and 9.1% for firearm homicide (IRR = 1.09; 95% CI, 1.06-1.12; P  < .001) (eTable 7 in the Supplement ). Nonlinear models were further supplemented by restricting the study period to a smaller temporal window (ie, 36 months before and after the enactment of SYG laws) and fitting state-specific ITS models with linear trends (eAppendix in the Supplement ). Consistently, these linear models identified an 8.9% increase for homicide (IRR, 1.09; 95% CI, 1.05-1.13; P  < .001) and a 9.2% increase for firearm homicide (IRR, 1.09; 95% CI, 1.04-1.14; P  < .001) following the enactment of SYG laws (eFigure 9 and eFigure 10 in the Supplement ). There continued to be no association between SYG laws and suicide (IRR, 0.99; 95% CI, 0.97-1.02; P  = .46) or firearm suicide (IRR, 0.99; 95% CI, 0.96-1.02; P  = .47).

No statistically significant differences by race, age group, or sex of individuals who died by homicide were identified ( Table ; eTable 8 in the Supplement ). However, stratified models showed more pronounced increases in some demographic groups ( Figure 2 ). The largest increases were seen for White individuals (IRR, 1.10; 95% CI, 1.05-1.15; P  < .001) and for males (IRR, 1.08; 95% CI, 1.04-1.13; P  < .001). There was inconsistent evidence that the enactment of SYG laws was associated with increases for persons aged 0 to 19 years or females. The main models (GAMs) identified no significant associations, whereas supplementary models (GLMMs) estimated significant associations (eTable 7 in the Supplement ). This is likely because the subgroups of individuals aged 0 to 19 years and females had the smallest number of individuals who died by homicide, thus model estimation suffered from low counts and increased uncertainty (eTable 6 in the Supplement ).

Associations of SYG laws with violent deaths differed by state ( Figure 3 ). Large increases for homicide and firearm homicide rates were associated with the enactment of SYG laws in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, and Missouri. These increases ranged from 16.2% to 33.5%, with firearm homicides typically showing larger increases than total homicides. SYG laws were not significantly associated with changes in homicides or firearm homicides rates in a handful of states, including Arizona, Indiana, Michigan, Nevada, Oklahoma, Texas, and West Virginia. We explored between-state heterogeneity by visualizing state-specific associations across the US, which showed that larger associations clustered in Southern states ( Figure 3 ; eFigure 11 in the Supplement ).

This cohort study found that the enactment of SYG laws was associated with an abrupt and sustained 8% to 11% national increase in monthly homicide and firearm homicide rates, contributing an extra 58 to 72 homicides each month. This monthly increase alone exceeds total rates of homicides in most Northern and Western European countries today. 34 Estimates are consistent with previous studies 15 , 17 ; but this study advances the evidence by examining SYG laws over an extended timeframe and using enhanced mortality data to investigate differential associations by state and demographic group.

Although the enactment of SYG laws was not associated with significant change in violent deaths in all states, there was no evidence that SYG laws were associated with decreases in homicide or firearm homicide. Our analyses show that increases in homicide associated with SYG laws were not restricted to Florida. 14 , 21 , 22 Comparable changes were observed in at least 8 other states at different times across the US, although the largest increases clustered in the South and in states that were early adopters of SYG laws (2005-2007). The association between SYG laws and increases in violent deaths cannot be attributed to distortion by a single state outlier (eg, Florida), 18 but may be attributed to time-varying confounders specific to the South and/or the early enactment of SYG laws. The between-state heterogeneity suggests that SYG laws alone may not be sufficient in explaining increases in homicide. Understanding the factors shaping these differential associations between states, such as regions endorsing the use of self-protective violence, 35 existing state firearm legislation, and firearm availability, is key to understanding how and why legally expanding the right to use deadly violence in public is associated with increases in homicides in some states but not others.

Despite concerns that SYG laws exacerbate social inequalities in experiencing violent crime, 13 we did not find differential associations by demographic group. SYG laws were associated with mean increases in homicide and firearm homicide rates irrespective of race, age group, or sex of individuals who died by homicide . 18 At least in terms of homicide, these findings do not lend support for the claim that SYG laws widen racial disparities. However, our analyses are based on causes of death and thus can only examine homicide. We do not examine nonfatal injury, patterns of racial concordance between the deceased and the defendant, or patterns in legal outcomes (eg, conviction or acquittal rates) following enactment of SYG laws. Owing to the ongoing context of racism in the US 10 - 12 and previous studies showing multiple pathways through which SYG laws may exacerbate social injustice (eg, via racialized threat perceptions), 36 , 37 future research should aim to assess the disproportional impacts and implications of SYG laws for disadvantaged groups, such as Black individuals.

This study has some limitations. Our study period was limited to ending in December 2017 because this was the most recent available data at the time of conducting the research. Five additional states have since enacted SYG laws, which we were unable to evaluate as they fell outside our study period. Iowa was also excluded from the analyses because its SYG law was enacted in July 2017, so it had insufficient time points to model the postintervention period. Most SYG states included in this study were early adopters of SYG law, with 74% adopting the law between October 2005 and September 2007. This limited variation in the enactment timing reduces the generalizability of our findings to more recent adoptions of SYG laws. Low homicide counts among demographic groups, especially for persons aged 0 to 19 years and females, restricted modeling power and certainty for estimating associations for these subgroups. Nevertheless, these findings echoed the limited number of analyses that have previously investigated distributional outcomes associated with SYG laws. 18 Although the design and advanced statistical modeling used here minimize confounding, it is still possible that the unobserved heterogeneity across states and changes that occurred around the same time of each SYG enactment mean our estimates reflect the outcomes associated with SYG laws plus a spurious effect from confounding. The most likely source of confounding is that the as-if-random assumption of the timings of SYG law enactment across states was violated owing to another factor (eg, high-profile self-defense cases, changes in societal attitudes, coordinated campaigns by lobbyists), 38 causing both the enactment of SYG law and increases in violent deaths in the state. 39 However, in the absence of a feasible randomized clinical trial, we present strong alternative evidence by controlling for observed and unobserved confounding by design and including a series of robustness checks.

This cohort study found that the staggered adoption of SYG laws in US states was associated with increases in homicide and firearm homicide rates across the US. These increases reach 10% and higher in several Southern states, while no states had significant reductions in violent deaths, as advocates often argue when justifying these laws. The accumulation of evidence established in this and other studies point to harmful outcomes associated with SYG laws. Despite this, SYG laws have now been enacted in most states, and the uptake of new SYG bills continues to be popular, unnecessarily risking lives.

Accepted for Publication: December 11, 2021.

Published: February 21, 2022. doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2022.0077

Correction: This article was corrected on April 6, 2022, to delete an extraneous box in Figure 3 .

Open Access: This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the CC-BY License . © 2022 Degli Esposti M et al. JAMA Network Open .

Corresponding Author: Michelle Degli Esposti, PhD, Department of Social Policy and Intervention, University of Oxford, Barnett House, 32 Wellington Sq, Oxford OX1 2ER, United Kingdom ( [email protected] ).

Author Contributions: Drs Degli Esposti and Humphreys had full access to all of the data in the study and take responsibility for the integrity of the data and the accuracy of the data analysis.

Concept and design: Degli Esposti, Gasparrini, Humphreys.

Acquisition, analysis, or interpretation of data: All authors.

Drafting of the manuscript: Degli Esposti, Humphreys.

Critical revision of the manuscript for important intellectual content: All authors.

Statistical analysis: Degli Esposti, Gasparrini, Humphreys.

Obtained funding: Gasparrini, Humphreys.

Administrative, technical, or material support: Degli Esposti, Gasparrini, Humphreys.

Supervision: Wiebe, Humphreys.

Conflict of Interest Disclosures: None reported.

Funding/Support: This work was funded by grant No. 18-38016 from the Joyce Foundation.

Role of the Funder/Sponsor: The Joyce Foundation had no role in the design and conduct of the study; collection, management, analysis, and interpretation of the data; preparation, review, or approval of the manuscript; and decision to submit the manuscript for publication.

Disclaimer: The views expressed in this publication are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the Joyce Foundation.

Additional Contributions: Jason Gravel, PhD (Temple University), provided technical assistance in data processing, and David Kirk, PhD (University of Oxford), assisted with data troubleshooting and providing insightful comments on the manuscript. Neither Drs Gravel nor Kirk received compensation for their contributions.

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Gender and Stand Your Ground Laws: A Critical Appraisal of Existing Research

Caroline light.

1: HARVARD UNIVERSITY, CAMBRIDGE, MA, USA

Janae Thomas

2: QUINTAIROS, PRIETO, WOOD, AND BOYER, TAMPA, FL, USA

Alexa Yakubovich

3: DALHOUSIE UNIVERSITY, HALIFAX, NS, CANADA

This paper evaluates the existing research on Stand Your Ground (SYG) laws in terms of the extent to which it has accounted for gender. In particular, we address (a) what the available evidence suggests are the gender-based impacts of SYG laws and (b) where, how, and why considerations of gender may be missing in available studies.

While there are numerous studies that address the racial implications of “Stand Your Ground” (SYG) laws, there are comparatively few that consider gender. 1 One result of this disparity is a research terrain that downplays or ignores how the expansion of justifiable homicide — a legal principle that has historically privileged already empowered social actors — reinforces gender injustice. For instance, promoters of SYG laws emphasize the need to protect citizens from threats outside the home, while ignoring the fact that intimate partner violence (IPV) and, more broadly, domestic violence (DV), have been and remain the most common forms of violence against women. 2 This contradiction — between actual versus alleged threats of gender violence — rests at the heart of contemporary ignorance of the impact SYG laws have on women, especially those who experience multiple forms of social subordination, such as racism, heterosexism, ableism, and class inequity.

In this paper, we evaluate the existing research, through 2020, on SYG laws to determine the extent to which gender is considered. We address (a) what the available evidence suggests are the gender-based impacts of SYG laws, (b) where, how, and why considerations of gender may be missing in available studies, and (c) what an intersectional approach to gender contributes to SYG related scholarship. The essay proceeds in four parts. First, we provide a summary of SYG laws. Second, we offer a critical review of existing scholarship on the gender implications of SYG laws, separated into a focus on empirical quantitative and qualitative studies as well as legal, philosophical, sociological, and historical work. Third, we identify gaps around intersectional analysis, which considers the simultaneity of white supremacy, classism, and other power structures that influence the way gender is interpreted and experienced. We conclude that an intersectional approach is essential for understanding and evaluating contemporary laws that expand civilian rights to use deadly force in self-defense. We outline our recommendations for more rigorous, intersectional gender analysis of SYG laws and the impacts of these laws on existing socio-legal inequities.

Stand Your Ground Laws and the Evolution of “Self-Defense”

SYG laws are amendments to existing “Justifiable Use of Force” statutes. First introduced in Florida in 2005, they expand the geospatial and situational terms under which a person may legally use force in self-defense, by abolishing the traditional duty to retreat when a person reasonably believes they face an imminent threat of death or serious bodily harm. SYG laws draw upon the logic of the “Castle Doctrine,” which authorizes the use of force, without a duty to retreat, when one is threatened in one’s home. However, the doctrine often does not apply to co-habitants, who are expected to try to retreat before using force in self-defense. 3 SYG laws expand the boundaries of the “castle” by allowing the use of deadly force in any space where a person is legally entitled to be, even when retreat is safely possible. 4 While all 50 states have implemented some version of the Castle Doctrine, as of fall 2022, thirty states have removed the duty to retreat through written statutes. An additional eight states apply the change in justifiable use of force laws through case law and jury instructions, which effectively function as SYG laws, removing the duty to retreat wherever a person may legally be. 5

In other words, SYG laws provide a more seamless pathway out of legal jeopardy for those who claim to have stood their ground in protection of property as well as human life, and alleged self-defenders may avoid arrest, court, or any legal charges, given that law enforcement can be held liable for arresting those who are found to have reasonably acted in self-defense.

Supporters of SYG laws claim they fortify public safety by enabling “law-abiding citizens” to defend themselves from dangerous criminals. Indeed, Jeannie Suk Gerson suggests that the laws’ main accomplishment is to remove the burden of proof from the claimant/self-defender, who no longer needs to prove that they were “reasonably” fearful of harm or death at the moment when they used deadly force against a perceived perpetrator. 6 Other legal scholars, including Donna Coker and Mary Anne Franks, have argued that the traditional laws governing justifiable homicide already protected those who lawfully used force in self-defense when no retreat or escape was possible. Depending on the state in which the encounter took place, courts would weigh the evidence and determine whether a claimant’s use of lethal force was justifiable. Prior to the establishment of SYG laws, a person attacked outside of their home would not be held liable if they could prove that their use of force was their only means of escape from a deadly threat or serious bodily injury. 7 For this reason, some critics of SYG laws, including Joe Grace, Executive Director of CeaseFirePA and criminologist John Roman, have characterized them as “a solution in search of a problem.” 8

While the original laws governing self-defensive force already provided significant protections for some civilians, SYG laws created additional protections in the form of: (1) immunity from criminal prosecution and civil action for claimants found to have reasonably “stood their ground” after using lethal force and (2) the capacity to use lethal force against someone in the act of committing a “forcible felony,” which includes property theft or destruction. 9 In other words, SYG laws provide a more seamless pathway out of legal jeopardy for those who claim to have stood their ground in protection of property as well as human life, and alleged self-defenders may avoid arrest, court, or any legal charges, given that law enforcement can be held liable for arresting those who are found to have reasonably acted in self-defense. 10

Moreover, some states have modified SYG laws to provide additional legal protections for those who claim to have used force in self-defense. In 2010, Florida instituted a pre-trial evidentiary hearing, which provided claimants with an early opportunity to obtain immunity from further prosecution. 11 By 2017, the state legislature had removed the burden of proof from the defense and placed it on the prosecution. 12 This revision has made it increasingly difficult to convict an individual who claims self-defense, especially if the only other witness to the encounter is deceased.

Although the race- and gender-neutral language of SYG laws suggests that they apply universally, the removal of the duty to retreat has been shown to create distressing consequences for those who experience various forms of structural subordination, particularly racism. Contrary to proponents’ claims that SYG laws prevent crime and empower would-be crime victims, a 2015 American Bar Association task force found that the laws exacerbate violence and existing racial biases in the criminal justice system. 13 According to Jacinta M. Gau, Kareem L. Jordan, and Katheryn Russell-Brown, SYG laws contribute to the characterization of Black and other non-white people, particularly men and boys, as “reasonable threats,” especially when an alleged self-defender is white. 14 Recent criminological and epidemiological research reveals that white people who kill Black people and claim self-defense are significantly more likely to be exonerated or to escape prosecution entirely in states with SYG laws. 15 Based on the convincing empirical evidence that states with SYG laws experience increased homicide rates in addition to amplifying racial biases in the law, the 2015 ABA task force recommended that the laws be repealed or seriously amended. 16

While there is abundant research on the ways SYG laws exacerbate existing racial inequalities, very little scholarship — empirical or otherwise — accounts for gender. Further, the few studies that address the gender implications of SYG laws often fail to account for the simultaneity of race and gender inequities in SYG laws and traditional self-defense laws more generally. One exception is Terressa Benz’s sociological analysis of the 2017 case of Siwatu-Salama Ra, a pregnant Black woman in Michigan who was charged with felonious assault with a firearm after brandishing an unloaded gun at driver who was threatening her family. Beyond Benz’s detailed investigation of the “controlling images” that “cast Black women as domineering, aggressive, irresponsible mothers, who are incapable of the fear necessary to invoke SYG,” most studies lack a robustly intersectional analysis that considers how gender, race, class, and other categories of identity intersect to exclude most women, particularly women of color, from the purported benefits of SYG laws. 17 Given that Black women and other women of color are disproportionately at risk in the U.S. for violence and criminalization, we urge that ongoing studies of SYG laws take pains to place them at the center of their analyses. 18 Otherwise, we risk obfuscating the complex socio-legal, historic, and epistemic effects of SYG laws, particularly their distorting impact on the nation’s criminal legal system. In the following sections, we summarize knowledge gaps across the empirical and legal analyses and recommend areas for methodological improvement in future research.

Empirical Evaluations of Stand Your Ground Laws

In 2021, Yakubovich et al. conducted a systematic review of quantitative research on the impacts of SYG laws on violence, injury, firearm, and criminal justice outcomes. The study examined whether there are different impacts based on sociodemographic characteristics, including by race or gender. 19 The review showed that SYG laws dramatically increased homicide rates in some states and have been associated with racial inequities in criminal justice outcomes. However, the study found little evidence of gender-based analysis in the field and a lack of focus on the impacts of SYG laws on IPV (violence between romantic partners) or DV (violence that takes place within a household or family), the most common forms of violence against women. Most quantitative studies estimating SYG laws’ effects have not addressed differences in the rates or judicial processing of cases involving DV or IPV. The studies also fail to address the unique burdens of violence experienced by Black women at the intersections of racism and sexism, including systemic biases in institutional responses. 20

One notable exception was a study conducted by Justin Murphy, which investigated differences in the outcomes of 237 SYG cases in Florida recorded in the Tampa Bay Times from 2005 to 2013 by the race, sex, and relationship of the victim and claimant (i.e., the person claiming self-defense). 21 Murphy’s was the only available study that conducted interaction analyses and considered all possible pairwise interactions between the race and gender of claimants and victims as well as the correlation between DV and gender. Cases where the victim was white had higher odds of ending in conviction when the claimant was a racial minority or the victim was female. Murphy further found that cases involving DV had higher conviction rates when the claimant was female. Importantly, these analyses were adjusted for other potential variables, such as whether there was a firearm involved or the claimant could safely retreat. These initial results, while limited to a single study in Florida, suggest that there are racial and gendered biases in the application of SYG laws in legal decision-making that warrant further investigation. Murphy’s sample size was too small to explore the differences in odds of conviction by the three-way interaction of race, gender, and relationship type (domestic versus non-domestic).

An additional descriptive study by Denise Crisafi, which did not estimate associations, found that more men than women were convicted in 57 SYG cases that involved IPV across states. 22 This finding stands in contrast to Murphy’s results. Possible reasons for discrepancies may be that the Crisafi study (1) only conducted cross-tabulations (and did not adjust for other variables); (2) focused specifically on IPV rather than DV broadly; and (3) used a different sample of cases beyond Florida. However, Crisafi noted that, among those found guilty, women tended to face longer sentences than men, suggesting another gender-based bias against women in the judicial application of SYG laws. 23 Maeve O’Brien offered a potential explanation for these results, identifying four main challenges that women who killed their abusers faced in convincing judges and juries that they had acted in self-defense. These included: (1) a lack of documentation (e.g. police reports) proving their past experience of abuse; (2) a general perception that abusive men are non-deadly as long as they are unarmed; (3) prosecutors’ tendency to portray female defendants as liars with ulterior motives, rather than as victims of abuse; and (4) courts’ misunderstanding and misinterpretation of expert testimony relating to IPV and the gender dynamics of relationship violence. 24 Notably, there were only ten eligible cases for analysis from the total sample of 234 cases, and O’Brien did not consider other variables, including race, religion, or jury composition. 25

Legal Limitations of an Equitable Right to Self-Defense

While the empirical studies provide a vital lens on the existence of inequities in the adjudication of SYG laws, the patterns of gender bias differ across the available studies. Further, the explanations are limited due to methodological variations and small sample sizes restricted to certain jurisdictions (e.g., Florida) and time periods. Alongside the empirical research, (socio)legal and historical analyses of gender and SYG laws provide additional insights on the ways traditional and contemporary laws place women at a disadvantage when they use self-defensive violence, especially against men they know. In contrast to studies exploring the racial implications of SYG laws, which tend to focus on violence between strangers, most of the gender-related analyses address IPV, DV, or a combination of the two.

A key contribution of the legal scholarship is to highlight the gender exclusions embedded in traditional self-defense laws which have, in turn, influenced contemporary SYG laws. Analyses by Coker, Franks, Gillis, Keegan, Messerschmidt, and Suk expose how gendered tropes of violence and vulnerability underpin traditional self-defense laws, with dismal consequences for women who try to defend themselves from abusers with whom they cohabit. 26 Suk was first to address the gender implications of the “new Castle Doctrine laws,” establishing the vital linkage between gendered ideals of home and the evolution of laws governing civilian use of force in self-defense. 27 She tracked how the idealized figure of the “True Man” has been empowered over time to use lethal force in self-defense wherever he has the right to be. Suk’s analysis of the “True Man,” who is without fault in “resisting force with force,” has since been taken up by other feminist scholars to illuminate the gender double standard by which courts have traditionally adjudicated cases of DV or IPV related homicides, and the subsequent failure of SYG laws to grant abused women a legal means to defend themselves from their abusers.

The legal scholarship critically addresses the use of “Battered Woman Syndrome” (BWS) as an innovation to accommodate the particular circumstances of the victim of DV or IPV who uses force against her abuser, particularly when the abuser is not posing what many would consider an “imminent” threat. For instance, women often kill their abusers when they are sleeping or otherwise unarmed or incapacitated, rather than in the throes of a violent confrontation. In the late 1970s, psychologist Lenore Walker introduced BWS as a psychological theory of abused women’s mindset and behavior in the context of a cycle of violence inflicted by her intimate partner. The theory explains why patterns of cyclical violence may cause victims to adopt behavioral patterns that do not seem “rational” to outside observers, such as “learned helplessness,” where an abused woman feels trapped, without any options or autonomy. 28 Defense attorneys use BWS to help juries understand abuse victims’ behaviors, such as killing an abuser while he is unarmed or sleeping. However, as a defense strategy, BWS not only reinforces gender stereotypes of abused women’s intrinsic irrationality, its success depends upon the defendant’s ability to emulate characteristics associated with feminine vulnerability, such as being “weak, passive, and fearful.” 29 In stark contrast to the virtuous violence of the “True Man,” who heroically stands his ground wherever he may legally be, the morally and legally suspect “Battered Woman” is pathologized as weak and irrational. Furthermore, she depends on expert testimony to prove her psychological condition of learned helplessness. 30

The legal scholarship illuminates the gendered dimensions of the practical differences between SYG and BWS. Franks explains that while SYG is a “justification defense” — a defense based on a person’s having conducted themselves lawfully — BWS is perceived as “an excuse defense, implying that the defendant’s wrongful behavior might be legally excused by her ‘irrational’ state of mind.” 31 While a successful SYG claimant has performed heroically in their deployment of rightful violence, a BWS claimant, according to Franks, “plead[s] for mercy on the basis of what is essentially considered a psychological defect.” 32 Crucially, the narrow requirements of feminine victimhood — helplessness, passivity, and sexual chastity — disproportionately exclude the most vulnerable types of abuse victims, including LGBT+ and low-income women and women of color. 33 However, with the exception of studies by Benz, Franks, Gillis, and Coker, the legal research on SYG laws and gender has not accounted for race, sexuality, ethnicity, or class.

Considering identities beyond gender allows us to see through what might appear on the surface as a “feminist” solution to gender violence. While SYG supporters exhort women to purchase and carry handguns and to “stand their ground” against their attackers, Franks argues that the laws were never intended to provide women a legal means to resist violence from their own intimate partners and ex-partners. 34 Most SYG statutes fail to address situations in which the claimant and her victim/assailant share the same home. Those states with SYG laws that do acknowledge relationship violence typically only remove the duty to retreat if the claimant has an active protection order, which can be difficult to obtain. 35 As Allard, Brown, Crenshaw, Crisafi, Gillis, and Richie have illustrated, there are significant structural barriers to obtaining protective orders, especially for non-white and low-income women. 36

The scholarship under review shows how legal standards of “reasonableness” and “imminence” are gendered in ways that exclude abuse survivors from legal pathways to exoneration after using force against their abusers. Traditional self-defense laws were based upon masculine assumptions of “reasonableness” that assume that the most urgent threats are sudden attacks from strangers or home intruders. Such assumptions, alongside historic beliefs in husbands’ chivalric protection of their wives, obfuscate the reality of longstanding threats from within the household itself. Since most women’s self-defensive behavior is against men they know, not threatening strangers, neither SYG nor traditional self-defense laws have provided them with reliable legal protection. A focus on gender complicates the law’s “imminence” requirement that the person using force in self-defense must not have started the altercation, because it does not take into consideration long-term patterns of abuse. Many women who kill their abusers do so in “nonconfrontational circumstances,” when their abuser is not posing an “imminent” threat. Even if they kill in response to a pattern of past abuse that has led them to perceive their partner as a deadly threat, courts are likely to see such claimants as having initiated the lethal confrontation. 37

The doctrine of equal or commensurate force similarly disadvantages women whose abusers tend to be physically larger and stronger. One result, according to Franks, is that SYG laws offer “reassurance and encouragement to men who would not only initiate violent encounters with strangers in public places, but also those who attack their wives in the privacy of their own homes. It reinforces a quasi-right for men to advance far from their homes to start fights, and a quasi-duty for women to retreat from their own homes instead of fighting back.” 38 Indeed, the legal scholarship shows how SYG law “solidifies gender stereotypes” by reinforcing the “empowerment doctrine of the true man and the helplessness ideology behind BWS.” 39 Benz, Coker, Franks, and Gillis emphasize how these gender stereotypes interact with racism and other structurally embedded systems of injustice, resulting in unequal adjudication of SYG laws. 40

With the exception of Gillis, who discusses Maryland laws and cases from several different states, and Benz, who analyzes the 2017 case of Siwatu-Salama Ra in Michigan, most of the criminological or legal scholarship focuses on Florida. Coker, Franks, and Abuznaid discuss the Florida case of Marissa Alexander to highlight the intersectional implications of SYG laws. 41 Alexander, a licensed gun owner, fired a warning shot to escape her abusive, estranged husband in 2010, only to be prosecuted for aggravated assault with a lethal weapon. In stark contrast to the case of George Zimmerman, who initiated a lethal confrontation with unarmed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, Alexander was depicted as an “angry” perpetrator of violence despite her well-documented history of experiencing abuse at the hands of her spouse. 42

As we interrogate the legal structures and processes as they apply to women who fight back against their abusers, we must also unpack the racial implications of the “True Man” doctrine. While some acknowledge the presumption that the “True Man,” who is “without fault,” is most often a white property-owner, Messerschmidt takes the analysis further. She attends to the ways in which self-defense laws have transformed over the twentieth and twenty-first centuries to elevate property rights over the rights of people to live free from violence and abuse. 43 And while her study does not consider the impact of race or class specifically, her critique of SYG law’s destructive focus on property interests is essential to understanding how lawmakers and promoters of SYG laws — and their recent offspring, “anti-rioting” legislation — enshrine an implicitly gendered and racialized right of the “True Man” to use lethal violence in the protection of property. 44

Much of this lethal violence involves guns, to which Jennifer Carlson and Kristin Goss attend in their analysis of the rapid proliferation of firearms as “everyday objects” affecting the spread and impact of SYG laws. Their study provides a wider historical analysis of the way government regulation of firearms both manages and emulates gendered ideals and behaviors. They also present gender as “a powerful theoretical lens” with which to interrogate the Second Amendment. 45 Of the three chronological governance strategies the authors explore, “fixed governance” coincides with the contemporary spread of SYG laws, in which guns are perceived as essential for self-defense. 46

The studies under review indicate that there are important ways that the justice system disadvantages women — especially women of color and low-income women — who invoke SYG laws, and especially in the context of IPV and DV. They point to an urgent need for further research that examines the outcomes of SYG cases by gender, race, and their intersection across states, with attention to different forms of domestic violence, and that accounts for variations in case characteristics and state laws.

Citing Judith Butler, Carlson and Goss envision “gender [as] the social laid upon the biological,” which allows for an interrogation of the nuances of gendered patterns of governance concerning firearms. 47 Their discussion of self-defense generally, and SYG laws specifically, interrogates the state’s efficacy in protecting women from threats outside the home. In concert with the legal literature, their study addresses how SYG laws emphasize stranger violence to the exclusion of violence between acquaintances. While their study constitutes a comprehensive historical review of regulatory structures and federal lawmaking on guns, the historical patterns of racialized gender that implicate stranger violence and “good citizenship” as a trope of racialized masculinity would be a valuable addition.

The legal and criminological studies provide several proposals for reforming the unequal contemporary self-defense terrain. Given that the Castle Doctrine and most SYG laws do not remove the duty to retreat for cohabitants, Suk, Messerschmidt, and Gillis propose that the Castle Doctrine be applied in jury instructions when a defendant shared her “castle” with the person against whom she used self-defensive force. Per Suk, removing the duty to retreat in the household would provide abused women the opportunity to “stand their ground against their batterers.” 48 Given the gender exclusionary realities of the “reasonability” and “imminence” requirements, Gillis and Keegan recommend the creation of a self-defense presumption unique to women who have experienced DV. Keegan proposes a “new legal framework of individualization,” obligating courts to consider the complex, specific experiences and conditions under which a defendant resorted to violence. 49 Gillis proposes a legal presumption of self-defense that would apply to cases involving a woman killing a male family member or intimate partner, alongside a pre-trial presumptive self-defense hearing, and a presumption of self-defense that the prosecution must disprove beyond a reasonable doubt. 50 While Gillis claims these innovations – given their narrow application in DV or IPV cases – would not increase racially motivated killings, there are other race and class considerations, such as the unique ways in which women of color and low-income women may be subject to additional modes of criminalization that may undermine their access to a pre-trial hearing.

The studies under review indicate that there are important ways that the justice system disadvantages women — especially women of color and low-income women — who invoke SYG laws, and especially in the context of IPV and DV. They point to an urgent need for further research that examines the outcomes of SYG cases by gender, race, and their intersection across states, with attention to different forms of domestic violence, and that accounts for variations in case characteristics and state laws. Further, although some studies acknowledge the role of white supremacy in shaping the legal architectures of self-defense, future research on SYG laws would benefit from a robust integration of feminist intersectional methods to amplify the complex plight of DV and IPV survivors who are excluded from the right to defend themselves.

The Need for Intersectional Analysis

While many of the studies surveyed address DV and/or IPV, we note a widespread inadequacy in accounting for the experiences of minority women in self-defense cases and SYG more specifically. With the exception of Benz, most studies that focus on gender position the experiences of white women as the default although Black women are more likely to be targets of violence from strangers as well as from intimate partners. 51 Black women are 2.5 times more likely than white women to experience physical or sexual violence from a partner or spouse, and they are also more likely to lack access to mental and physical health services. 52 According to the 2011 National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey, approximately 41% of Black women have experienced physical violence by an intimate partner during their lifetime, compared to 31% of white women, 30% of Hispanic women and 15% of Asian or Pacific Islander women. 53 Due to a complex combination of widespread stigma, experiences of racism, and historical oppression, Black women are less likely to seek help from law enforcement and other formal channels, compared to white women and women of other ethnic and racial backgrounds. 54 Further, clinical psychologist Jennifer Gómez has traced the complex pressures on Black women — including an effort to avoid further stigmatizing Black masculinity — not to report assaults by a Black men. 55

Kimberlé Crenshaw’s now-canonical essay “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence Against Women of Color,” reveals how a unitary focus on either racism or sexism “relegate[s] the identity of women of color to a location that resists telling.” 56 Crenshaw’s critique of traditional identity politics draws from decades of Black feminist advocacy and scholarship to produce a theory of “intersectional” praxis, a way of amplifying the unique experiences of Black women and women of color. Sharon Allard takes up the call for a deliberately intersectional approach in her critique of BWS’s reliance on “prevailing gender characterizations of dominant, white society.” 57 In her analysis of (1) the historical-legal treatment of Black versus white women and (2) the spurious tropes of Black femininity in U.S. culture, Allard concludes that “gender-based theories that do not incorporate race and class will be as problematic as battered woman syndrome.” 58 Although Crenshaw’s and Allard’s work appeared before the passage of SYG laws, they offer useful models of Black feminist and intersectional methods of addressing structural injustice. Tracking the “intersecting patterns of racism and sexism” as they affect the lives and choices of non-white women — and women minoritized via other characteristics such as class, (dis)ability, and nationality — is essential to the efficacy of on-going research on self-defense, specifically SYG laws in the context of a burgeoning “gun culture.” 59

Benz illuminates the exclusionary valences of self-defensive firearm use by placing Black femininity at the center of her analysis. Her close socio-legal analysis of Siwatu-Salama Ra’s case provides an example of the way Black feminist critical methodologies can reveal multiple sites of legal jeopardy experienced by Black women for whom the immunities of SYG laws prove elusive. 60 Crisafi’s study includes Black, Latinx, Asian American, and Native American as well as white women, considering race and ethnicity as factors influencing women’s experiences of abuse and in their efforts to claim SYG in the context of DV or IPV. Abuznaid et al. explore how “deep-seated gender bias further complicates the status of women of color in American society who exist at the intersection of at least two marginalized groups with respect to race and gender.” 61 Murphy, citing Crenshaw, recommends further investigation of homicide data to illuminate how “race and gender interact in complicated ways specifically within cases of domestic violence.” 62 He suggests that the gender inequities of SYG are perhaps even “more pronounced” in his dataset than the racial inequities.

This point underscores the need to examine the extent to which Black women’s experiences with SYG in cases of domestic violence diverge from white women’s, a question that requires a larger dataset of cases to analyze. As Yakubovich et al. highlight, Murphy’s study demonstrated a deliberately “intersectional” quantitative approach, while all other extant studies accounted only for the effects of race and gender on SYG adjudications, and Murphy’s was the only quantitative study to consider intersections between gender and domestic violence. However, all available quantitative analyses of SYG laws, including Murphy’s, are limited to Florida. At present, researchers’ ability to examine these more nuanced questions that require larger sample sizes is limited by the lack of a dataset of self-defense cases beyond Florida and across the U.S.

Most studies we reviewed focus on women, which is justified by the dearth of research on how state criminal law purports to “protect” women even while imposing limitations on their capacity to defend themselves from their abusers. However, to be a truly useful “category of analysis,” gender should apply to social and cultural construction and deployment of masculinities as well as femininities. 63 Much of the existing scholarship provides robust analysis of the disproportionate masculinity of homicide and violence more generally, unpacking the significance of the “True Man” doctrine as an underlying framework structuring SYG laws. While Goss and Carlson analyze the masculine framing of governance structures, as well as the way the state helps script gender practices and norms, few of the studies under review address the manifold ways in which non-white masculinities are differently gendered from white ones, and how self-defense laws and epistemes of vulnerability and threat presume a non-white figure of predatory masculine “stranger danger.” Studies of SYG laws must address how perceptions of what constitutes a “reasonable” threat rest on implicitly gendered biases against non-white masculinities, and how historic patterns of criminalization position Black men and boys as legitimate or “reasonable” targets of professed self-defensive violence. 64 Abuznaid et al.’s comparison of the Dunn, Zimmerman, and Alexander cases, which invoked SYG principles with divergent outcomes, reveals the “biases inherent in the criminal justice system that are exacerbated in the uneven application of SYG laws based on the race, age, and gender of the defendant and victim.” 65

Black feminist scholars, including but not limited to Sharon Allard, Terressa Benz, Patricia Hill Collins, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Angela Davis, Sarah Haley, bell hooks, Jennifer Nash, Beth Richie, Patricia A. Williams, Dorothy Roberts, and Shatema Threadcraft have shown how women of color, especially Black women, have experienced gendered oppression, violence, and criminalization in significantly different ways than white or white adjacent women and Black men. 66 As Benz writes, “Black women have long been excluded from dominant perceptions of vulnerability,” with severe consequences when they try to invoke self-defense laws. 67 Historian Sarah Haley revealed how Jim Crow segregation and racial capitalism shaped the unique experiences of incarcerated Black women in the twentieth century South. Her scholarship exposed how “the alleged benefits of the ideology of femininity did not accrue to” Black women charged with crimes in Georgia. 68 These historic harms persist into the present, and studies of SYG that fail to consider gender alongside race (and class) risk obscuring the “sexual abuse to prison pipeline” by which the legal system criminalizes victims of sexual assault and human trafficking, particularly when they are women and girls of color. 69 Black girls constitute 14% of the general population nationally but 33.2% of girls detained and committed into juvenile justice detention centers. 70 Unless our research considers the crosscutting power structures that shape individuals’ experiences of gender and sexual violence, it risks reproducing conceptual and data gaps that in turn reinforce epistemic harms against the most vulnerable populations. Future scholarship on SYG laws must consider the variable ways in which minoritized femininities and masculinities are experienced given our contemporary criminalizing discourses of vulnerability and threat.

Echoes of the Past: American Self-Defense in Historical Context

The dearth of intersectional analysis makes gender appear unitary and autonomous, while downplaying the role of race in state and individual appeals to “protection” as justification for violence. Carlson and Goss discuss the state’s retreat from the home via a turn to individual armed self-defense against threatening strangers. Yet their analysis overlooks the historical recurrence of a “stranger danger” trope as justification for armed, white supremacist violence, as in settler colonial “Indian wars” or “Savage wars” and armed slave patrols, which in turn laid the ideological groundwork for our contemporary “gun culture.” 71 As we track the erosion of the duty to retreat, in favor of a “True Man’s” right to “stand his ground,” we must also attend to the exceptions embedded in this expanding right to kill in self-defense. For the “True Man” doctrine excluded not only women — who were legally subordinate to their husbands — but also Indigenous and enslaved people and their descendants. Exclusion from the “True Man” doctrine has sustained a legal legacy under which non-white men, Black men in particular, are not able to access the protections and immunities of the laws governing self-defense, including SYG laws. 72 While the existing scholarship on SYG laws provides a lens on the law’s complex gender exclusions, future research must consider the indelible marks of white supremacist violence and settler colonialism on traditional self-defense laws and their contemporary offspring.

More research is needed to demonstrate how historic and sociolegal processes produced a contemporary “gun culture” in which appeals to self-defense license a selective right to kill. 73 Research that attempts to explain the gender exclusions embedded in SYG laws must address the intersecting power structures that produce uneven patterns of regulation around gun ownership and use across gender as well as class, race, and region. Black feminist scholars who have studied lynching, from Ida B. Wells to Crystal Feimster, have noted the exceptional role of gender and sexuality in naturalizing extra-legal violence in the form of “lynch law,” not only in the Deep South, but nationwide. 74 Nearly 200 anti-lynching bills were brought before Congress between 1890 and 1952, only to be rejected by white male law-makers who claimed that lynching was necessary to protect white women from Black sexual predators.

Central to this logic was (1) the elevation of white women’s sexual purity as sacrosanct and in need of violent protection, alongside (2) the denial that women were most likely to be harmed by their own husbands and family members. Furthermore, the mythological “Black Beast Rapist” or “criminalblackman” had its counterpart in the trope of the sexually aggressive Black “Jezebel,” which helped justify white men’s quotidian sexual violence against Black women and girls. 75 These gendered and racialized sexual mythologies cloaked white supremacist violence under appeals to white women’s vulnerability —indeed, coding femininity itself as white — and lynching took shape as a manifestation of white masculine chivalry. 76 If the explicitly white supremacist “Rape-Lynch Mythology” has faded from popular view, the traces of these tropes of gendered white precarity remain in the form of less recognizably racist appeals to white vulnerability from criminal strangers, which in turn feeds the proliferation of SYG laws. The facial neutrality of these laws veils their empowerment of some civilians — most often white, propertied, and masculine — to use deadly force against “strangers” they consider threatening. In other words, SYG laws are not simply a natural extension of the Castle Doctrine, as proponents insist, they are part of a package of modern policies that intensify the historic white supremacy, sexism, and settler colonialism embedded in our legal system and broader social structures.

Next Steps in SYG Research

Our review of contemporary research reveals a rich variety of methods and approaches used to assess the relationship between gender and SYG laws. However, the efficacy, breadth, and inclusiveness of the available research can be improved. A robustly intersectional approach considers how gender, race, ethnicity, and class simultaneously influence the experience of self-defense generally as well as the specific adjudication of SYG laws. Future research must look beyond a traditional focus on white women to consider how existing legal structures disadvantage non-white, low-income, disabled, and queer women when it comes to (1) defending themselves from violence, especially from their own intimate partners, and (2) seeking redress through courts. 77 Empirical studies should examine the impacts of SYG laws on the most common forms of violence against women, including domestic and sexual violence, by attending to the relationship between defendant/claimant and victim/alleged assailant. Moreover, we recommend rigorous studies using data from all states where SYG laws have been implemented to interrogate the differences in outcomes of cases by race, gender, relationship, and sexuality, especially within the context of DV and/or IPV.

Future research must also investigate how SYG laws evolved separately from legal strategies designed to protect women, such as BWS. Contrary to the rhetoric of conservative policymakers and “gun rights” advocates, SYG laws and self-defense laws more generally were never designed to protect women or to give them legal recourse when they resist violence from their abusers. Studies that interrogate the complex impact of SYG laws must adopt a more inclusive approach, in an effort to expose how biased assumptions are baked into our legal codes and practices, naturalizing legal double standards that incentivize violence for the privileged few while intensifying the precarity of the most vulnerable.

Acknowledgement

The authors wish to thank the editors of this special issue of JLME and the following for their generous feedback: Victor Bongard, Lindsay Livingston, Marya Mtshali, and Rachel Novick.

Biographies

Caroline Light, Ph.D. , is a Senior Lecturer and Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Program in Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality at Harvard University.

Janae Thomas, Esq., Ph.D. , is an attorney at Quintairos, Prieto, Wood, and Boyer.

Alexa Yakubovich, Ph.D. , is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Community Health and Epidemiology at Dalhousie University.

The authors have no conflicts to disclose.

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Gender and Stand Your Ground Laws: A Critical Appraisal of Existing Research

Journal of Law, Medicine &amp; Ethics

This paper evaluates the existing research on Stand Your Ground (SYG) laws in terms of the extent to which it has accounted for gender. In particular, we address (a) what the available evidence suggests are the gender-based impacts of SYG laws and (b) where, how, and why considerations of gender may be missing in available studies.

Related Papers

Anna N I K K I Douglas, PhD.

This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies Collection at ScholarWorks. It has been accepted for inclusion in Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks. For more information, pleasen 2005, Florida enacted the Justifiable Use of Deadly Force legislation, known as Stand Your Ground (SYG) laws, in response to the Workman case. The aftermath of that case led to the expansion of the laws that removed the duty to retreat principle and allowed citizens to employ deadly force when imbued with fear. The SYG laws as written appeared to imply state-sanctioned violence, with an increase in homicides, coupled with racial disparities. This study employed a quantitative inquiry with a causal-comparative design to explore whether a relationship existed between racial socialization and fear of crime in SYG states compared to non-SYG states, using the lens of critical race theory, contact theory and policy learning theory. The study included 112 participants recruited through social media, they were ages 18 years and older, from Florida, Maryland, North Carolina, and Virginia who had no connections to an SYG case. The data were analyzed using analysis of covariance and indicated statistical significance between the state of residency and an individual’s decision to fight back when presented with a scenario similar to the Trayvon Martin case. The results also yielded a statistical significance between gender, ethnicity, and an individual’s decision to fight back in the SYG scenario. The findings of this study confirm that the state of residency may impact the decision to employ deadly force or fight back. However, other results are not consistent with previous research. This study provides legislatures with a means for reforming the SYG rhetoric, as well as decrease the public’s misconceptions about the SYG laws

Justin Murphy

In the United States, “stand your ground” (SYG) laws have been adopted by most states with the supposed intention of empowering self-defense, yet critics argue these laws reinforce white supremacy in the public sphere and male supremacy in the home. This research note presents the first statistical tests for racial and gender bias in the enforcement of SYG laws to control for a wide variety of other factors frequently cited to justify observed outcomes. Considering a sample of SYG cases in Florida from 2006-2013, I find the probability of conviction for a white defendant against a white victim in a typical case is fairly high at around 90% but with a large margin of error, whereas the probability of conviction for a black defendant against a white victim approaches 100%, even after controlling for more than 10 different objective factors related to the circumstances of the incident. The probability of conviction for a male defendant in a typical domestic case is found to be about 40%, but for a female defendant in an otherwise objectively equivalent case the probability of conviction increases dramatically to 80%. I estimate that the probability George Zimmerman was going to be found guilty of murdering unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin in 2012 was marginally greater than 50% but would have been about 98% if Trayvon Martin had been white. On the other hand, black female Marissa Alexander who fired a physically innocuous warning shot to deter her husband in 2010 faced a probability of conviction marginally greater than 50%, but the probability of conviction for a male defendant in an otherwise objectively equivalent situation would have been around only 12%. Finally, I show that these results are not due to outliers or non-random assignment. This research has important implications for scholars, lawmakers, judges, and activists because it provides new and improved evidence that SYG laws contribute to the legal institutionalization of racism and sexism.

University of Miami law review

Donna Coker

This introduction to a special volume on Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law highlights the importance of race, class, and gender to understanding the political support for SYG and the law’s impact.

The Social Science Journal

Mary Anne Franks

Supporters of Stand Your Ground laws claim that these laws are necessary to protect public safety, but all available credible evidence indicates that these laws seriously undermine public safety. As the brainchild of the National Rifle Association (NRA), Stand Your Ground laws serve to merge self-defense and gun use in the American public imagination. The lethality and volatility of firearms make them poor instruments of self-defense, particularly in the hands of untrained individuals. The effects of Stand Your Ground laws on public safety are grim: more gun use, more aggression, and more deaths, none of which has had the slightest deterrent effect on crime rates. The laws have moreover widened the gap between the powerful and the marginalized, endangering vulnerable communities while reinforcing the privileges of those least at risk. Stand Your Ground proponents have cynically exploited Americans’ irrational fear of crime, carefully avoiding any acknowledgment of the racism, sexism, and classism that structures criminal victimization and violence. Encouraging people to resolve conflicts with firearms has unequal effects on the populations most vulnerable to violence, in particular women and minorities.

Andrea M Headley

Ralph Bunche Journal of Public Affairs

In addressing the historical importance—or lack thereof—of the Stand Your Ground law, this article discusses the evolution of self-defense laws. Specific landmark cases are discussed as they relate to establishing the foundation of self-defense. The article also examines various issues that have been inherent within the Stand Your Ground debate. Statistical analysis of Stand Your Ground data from the State of Florida is conducted using binary logistic regression model to test the relationship between case outcomes and a number of other variables involving demographics, and the nature of the confrontation that led to the crime

Jeremy Hagler

Guns and Contemporary Society

In 2005 Florida passed the nation’s first so-called stand-your-ground law. By 2014 stand-your-ground laws had been passed in thirty-three states, transforming the legal landscape of self-defense. These laws significantly alter the historical understanding of justifiable force, ostensibly in order to clarify and strengthen the concept of justifiable self-defense and enhance public safety. The real accomplishment of these laws, however, has been to encourage the use of deadly force as a first, instead of a last, resort. Not only have these laws failed to deter crime, they have encouraged the escalation to deadly force in situations that do not call for it. Homicide rates increased in states with stand-your-ground laws after passing the legislation, and these states have higher homicide rates than states without stand-your-ground laws. The laws have encouraged the unnecessary use of deadly force on the part of those who have least reason to use it, and inhibited the use of deadly force by those most vulnerable to attack. These laws have undermined the limited protections victims of domestic violence have achieved after decades of reform efforts and worsened existing racial disparities in the criminal justice system. Stand-your-ground laws do violence to the very concept of self-defense by conflating self-defense with gun use, encouraging vigilantism and violent escalation, and exploiting delusions of heroic prowess. True reform of the legal and social concept of self-defense should focus on clarifying when deadly force is truly necessary and reasonable. Such a reform effort should expand protections for women defending themselves against abusers, critically evaluate the disproportionate use of deadly force against unarmed minorities, and encourage training in and access to non-fatal methods of self-defense.

Journal of The American College of Surgeons

Wilmer alexander Chirinos alvarez

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This chapter presents history, economic statistics, and federal government directories of Kemerovo Oblast. Kemerovo Oblast, known as the Kuzbass, is situated in southern central Russia. Krasnoyarsk Krai and Khakasiya lie to the east, Tomsk Oblast to the north, Novosibirsk Oblast to the west, and Altai Krai and the Republic of Altai to the south-west. Kemerovo was founded in 1918 and became the administrative centre of the Oblast upon its formation on 26 January 1943. The city is at the centre of Russia's principal coal mining area. In 2015 Kemerovo Oblast's gross regional product (GRP) amounted to 842,619m. roubles, equivalent to 309,637 roubles per head. The Oblast's main industrial centres are at Kemerovo, Novokuznetsk, Prokopyevsk, Kiselyovsk and Leninsk-Kuznetskii. Kemerovo Oblast's agriculture consists mainly of potato and grain production, animal husbandry and beekeeping. The sector employed 3.6% of the workforce and contributed 4.0% of GRP in 2015.

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'Stand Your Ground' Laws: International Human Rights Law Implications

University of Miami Law Review, Vol. 68, 1129 (2014)

University of Miami Legal Studies Research Paper No. 15-3

44 Pages Posted: 19 Nov 2014

Ahmad Abuznaid

Dream Defenders

Caroline Bettinger-Lopez

University of Miami - School of Law

Charlotte Cassel

Meena jagannath.

Community Justice Project, Inc.

Date Written: September 17, 2014

Since the February 2012 killing of Trayvon Martin and other recent high-profile criminal cases, “Stand Your Ground” (“SYG”) laws in the United States have come under intense scrutiny. Florida is ground zero for the controversy. SYG laws expand the “Castle Doctrine” — a common law doctrine by which deadly force may be used in self-defense or to prevent a forcible felony when one is in the safety of one’s home — to include public places outside the home. Thus, SYG laws remove the classic common law duty to retreat in public spaces, while extending immunity from prosecution or civil suit for the use of deadly force in self-defense beyond the home. Florida’s SYG law is especially broad in this respect.

Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation

Dream Defenders ( email )

FL United States

Caroline Bettinger-Lopez (Contact Author)

University of miami - school of law ( email ).

P.O. Box 248087 Coral Gables, FL 33146 United States 305-284-5923 (Phone)

HOME PAGE: http://https://www.law.miami.edu/faculty/caroline-bettinger-lópez

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3000 Biscayne Blvd. Ste 106 Miami, FL FL 33137 United States 3059077697 (Phone) 33137 (Fax)

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• DOI: 10.24891/re.20.12.2241
• Corpus ID: 254909742

Assessing the standard of well-being using personal income and consumption measures: The Kemerovo Oblast – Kuzbass case study

• O. Kozlova , Anna E. Sakhabutdinova
• Published in Regional Economics: Theory… 15 December 2022
• Regional Economics: Theory and Practice

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A cognitive analysis and scenario modeling of retail trade turnover in the kemerovo oblast – kuzbass, one reference, economic and statistical analysis of food staples consumption under foreign trade restrictions, related papers.

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