Gun violence is becoming rampant in the United States, which is giving an alarming signal to every country in the world, while some of the experts even are asking – if foreign nations should warn their citizens about visiting the US. Horrific incidents are generating headlines almost on a regular basis, according to media reports, such incidents have skyrocketed since 2018, after which each year has seen more than once such event per day.
The US public sphere is currently abuzz with discussion of the so-called ‘stand your ground laws’ that have been passed in more than half of the 50 states since 2005 since two individuals were shot within four days of each other – one fatally simply for accidently approaching the wrong house.
According to analysts, superseding the common law ‘castle doctrine’ that provides wide latitude for the use of deadly force against an intruder inside one’s home, stand your ground laws expand this laxity to public spaces, where, the American legal norm otherwise holds that individuals have a ‘duty to retreat’ from violent confrontation if possible.
Florida was the first state to pass a ‘stand your ground law’. Later on, all of the southern states also have it. But the issue failed to generate substantial media buzz until 2012 when George Zimmerman, a light-skinned Latino watch captain, fatally shot Trayvon Martin, an Afro-American teenager who was just trying to walk back to his father’s home in a gated community in Sanford. During trial, George Zimmerman was found not guilty as the incident was considered as an act of self-defense while many critics saw this as an egregious miscarriage of justice. Some people even saw the justice system as being racism-biased.
Another incident which took place on April 13, 2023, where a Black high school student named Ralph Yarl misunderstood about the directions of where from to pick up his brothers. He ended up going to the wrong house in Kansas City, Missouri, where immediate after ringing the doorbell, homeowner Andrew Lester – an 84-year-old white man opened the main door and immediately shot Yarl in the head through the glass exterior door. He then shot Yarl a second time, in the arm. According to a media report, after firing two shots at Ralph Yarl, the white man said, “Don’t come around here”.
As Ralph Yarl is a black while his attacker Andrew Lester is a white, it is anticipated that Lester will be acquitted of the felony charges of assault in the first degree and armed criminal action that he faces. During the trial however, Andrew Lester will convincingly demonstrate that he has a reasonable fear that Yarl would cause harm to him. Unfortunate fact here is – American juries generally do not take much convincing when a white defendant stands accused of violence against an African American citizen.
On April 17,2023 a 20-year-old white woman, Kaylin Gillis, turned into the wrong driveway in upstate New York. Kevin Monahan, the 65-year-old white homeowner who killed her, now faces second-degree murder charges. New York does not have a stand your ground law, so Kevin Monahan’s defense presumably faces a higher bar.
Both of the incidents evidently prove – similar incidents could take place to anyone where American white supremacy makes it more likely for African Americans in these situations to become a victim. Meanwhile such a commonplace mistake could cost lives.
It may be mentioned here that, mass shooting, road rage shootings have surged in recent years while according to a report by Everytown for Gun Safety, a gun violence prevention organization, incidents have steeply risen year after year since 2018. The report states that one American was “shot and either injured or killed in a road rage incident in 2022 every 16 hours, on average”.
Another study found similar stark regional differences in all gun homicides as opposed to just road rage incidents.
With the stated scenarios, for any individual living outside the United States, it would be simply risking life once they visit the country. Millions of guns are in American households, while no one knows – when and where these guns would be used or abused targeting victims, whereas, racism would play an important role towards a deadly violence within the society.
