#34: Do Stand Your Ground Laws Really Make Us Safer?
More than ten years ago, states began passing Stand Your Ground Laws: the laws said people defending themselves could use force, even deadly force, in any public place where they had a right to be. Proponents said we’d be safer from crime and especially violence and murder.
More than a decade later, we ask Dr. John Roman, a senior researcher at NORC-University of Chicago to tell us what we the facts actually show. Do these laws really make us safer? Dr. Roman has spent years engaged in research on all aspects of the justice system, and has studied the racial impacts of Stand Your Ground laws. He was also a member of the American Bar Association’s National Task Force on Stand Your Ground Laws.