11-8-25 The Weekend Hour 2: Stand Your Ground Laws Attacked by Wall Street Journal

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Fo night, Michael Brown joins me here, the former FEMA
director of talk show host Michael Brown. Brownie, no, Brownie,
You're doing a heck of a job.

Speaker 2 (00:07):
The Weekend with Michael Brown broadcasting life from Denver, Colorado.
It's the Weekend of Michael Brown. Glad to have you
joined the program today. Text line, as usual is always open.
It's three three one zero three, keyword Mike or Michael.
Go follow me on X at Michael Brown USA. And
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(00:28):
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(00:51):
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(01:34):
What Blowtorch, and I hope you'll continue to follow us
over there too. There's a debate going on and it's
being shaped, unfortunately by some stupid reporting in the Wall
Street Journal over the stand your ground laws, and I
think it's the debate itself is being shaped by very
selective stats and an incomplete context. So a rigorous kind

(01:59):
of data conscious analysis shows that stand your ground laws
do not create a license to kill, as many anti
gunners would like to claim, nor do stand your ground
laws explain broader homicide trends. And the practical purpose from

(02:21):
a stand your ground law is simply to remove any
ambiguous retreat duties that could endanger lawful self defense on Saturday.
On Saturdays, on Friday afternoons, I'm sorry Friday mornings, but
you'll still be Friday mornings on Fridays. In the last segment,

(02:42):
out the last hour of our program, we do a
segment called Taxpayer Relief Shots, and in those we play
a couple of sound bites as introductions from Sheriff Grady
down in Florida and then a constable up in Canada,
who have completely opposite views of stand your ground. And
of course, Sheriff Grady believes that if somebody's breaking into

(03:04):
your home, shoot them so they look like grated cheese
is one of the statements that he makes, whereas in Canada,
the local cop up there, the constable or whatever he's called,
basically says, you know, you really should if somebody's breaking
into your house, you really should try to hide, you know,
because it's more likely than not, which it's not very

(03:25):
comforting stats to me, but more likely than not you
might be able to escape. Yeah, he suggests you go
hide in the closet. Really, so the burglar has a
gun in his hand can find you in the closet,
and now you're trapped and you can just shoot you
in the closet. I mean, it's just ludicrous, but I
want you to understand. I want to try to convey

(03:46):
the legal architectures of self defense, no duty to you retreat,
and how stand your ground modifies the prosecutorial and the
evidentiary dynamics in a self defense case. I want to
think about. I wants to think about the Wall Street
Journal's claims about justifiable homicides and distinguish the rate and

(04:08):
scale context from the trend narratives that they try to claim.
I want to assess competing interpretations of deterrence versus escalation,
and obviously I identify confounders during the same timeframe that
the Wall Street Journal uses, like police pullbacks, violent crime spikes,

(04:32):
reporting system changes, all of which go into the mix
of giving you the stats which anybody can manipulate to
mislead you about crime or stand your ground statistics. And
then let's go and apply some historical and doctrinal context,
including some testimony from the Second Amendment expert Professor John Lott,

(04:55):
and some high high profile cases. So let's get started
on this. So stand your ground standard ground removes any
duty to retreat for a person lawfully present who reasonably
believes deadly forces necessary to prevent death or great bodily harm.
Now they are a various state by state variations on

(05:17):
that there are different kinds of presumptions and immunities. But
the Wall Street Journal's framing that I'll give you some
details to a minute implies that asserting self defense now
broadly enables killers to evade prosecution, while the underlying scale

(05:39):
of justifiable homicides remains very small relative to total homicides.
So the journal reported, The Wall Street Journal reported a
fifty nine percent rise in justifiable homicides by civilians like
you and me between twenty nineteen and twenty twenty four.
It was a large sample of st clities and counties

(06:01):
in stand your ground states. And then they contrasted that
fifty nine percent rise in justifiable homicides with a sixteen
percent rise in total homicides in the same localities. They
drew upon the FBI submissions, and they focused on agencies
with Supposedly, I couldn't really get into the detail. I

(06:24):
couldn't find the details of it, but supposed with some
consistency of reporting across that same period, the narrative headline
in The Wall Street Journal emphasizes that to put it
in the vernacular how I would speak. The Wall Street
Journal tries to claim that it's easier than ever to
kill somebody in America and get away with it. And

(06:47):
the implication is that stand your ground laws have expanded
legal protections in public places and have complicated homicide charging
by prosecutors for cases that get framed as self defense. Well,
are they right? Are they wrong? Well, let's think about

(07:08):
a scale versus a trend, and what do we have.
We have a problem with the denominator because critics point
out that while percentages increased, the absolute numbers remain small,
peaking around two hundred justifiable homicides by private citizens like
you and me in twenty twenty three, which amounted to

(07:30):
about one percent of total homicides that year twenty twenty three. Well,
that undercuts the perception of some sort of large, policy
driven wave of excuse killings. This small scale raises questions
about the substance of policy effect and whether headline percentages

(07:51):
mask the limited absolute scope of these incidents across all jurisdictions,
not just stands your ground state. The data integrity is questionable,
very questionable, but we'll get into that data. Well, let
me give you just a hint. Coverage expansion and consistency.

(08:14):
For example, the National crime reporting stats that coverage increase
substantially between twenty nineteen and twenty twenty four. Well, that
is what prompted the Wall Street Journal to restrict their
analysis to agencies that consistently reported. Even then, year over year,

(08:35):
comparability still remained sensitive to reporting participation and classification practices.
In other words, you may say that, okay, I look
at I'm going to restrict my analysis to agencies that
consistently report. But even then, that consistent reporting can be

(08:56):
varied based on how often did you report, what did
you report, and how did you classify things? When you
look at the macro violence trends, Well, I'll do those
after the break, because I really want you to understand
the macro violence trends and what it really shows is
the Weekend with Michael Brown text line three to three

(09:16):
one zero three, keyword micro Michael, go follow me on
X that Michael Brown, USA, what are the trends that's next? Hey,
welcome back to the Weekend with Michael Brown. Really glad
to have you joining me today. Be sure you go
follow me on xat Michael Brown USA. You can follow
me on Facebook and Instagram. Also, we're talking about stand

(09:40):
your ground laws, and the Wall Street Journals claim that
the more that we get stand your ground laws, that's
a causal link between stand your ground laws and an
increase in homicides, murder rates, and an increase in violence.
I think the Wall Street Journal is completely misleading you.
Let's look about let's think about the macro violence trends.
Now homicides surge nationally in twenty nine. Let's be carefully

(10:04):
about the definition of a homicide. The homicide is any
killing of another human being. Some are justified, some are unjustified.
Some are, you know, murder where you actually outright murder somebody.
Some might be manslaughter where you know you drunk drive
and you don't deliberately kill somebody, but you know, because
you're an idiot driving drunk, you kill somebody. So just

(10:27):
homicides surge nationally in twenty twenty, and they remain relatively
high through twenty twenty three. So that complicates any casual
claim that stand your ground law would drive changes in
justified homicides independent of broader crime shifts. The Wall Street

(10:48):
Street Journal never shows many other broader crime shifts, and
then you have the whole context about policing reductions in
proactive policing, and this entire defund the cops climate after
twenty twenty. Plausibly, I just use the word plausibly, specifically

(11:08):
plausibly increased reliance on private self defense, and that could
elevate justifiable homicide counts irrespective of stand your ground status.
So stand your ground addresses the ambiguity and the delay
introduced by the other standard, which is a duty to retreat,

(11:33):
especially the retroactive parsing of whether an appropriate retreat was
even possible, and that can kill a timely defensive action,
and that could also likewise empower an overly zealous charging decision.
So the doctrine of stand your ground does not legalize aggression.

(11:56):
It applies where the defender is lawfully present and reasonably
perceives imminent, deadly and a deadly threat within the traditional
bounds of the words necessity and proportionality. So you know,
the George Immermann case and in Florida is frequently invoked.

(12:19):
But even a stand your ground critic would have to
acknowledge that his defense did not rest on stand your ground.
Well why Because on the facts presented in that case,
retreat was not an available option. If you're restrained on
the ground by the guy who's beating the crap out
of you, you can't retreat surrendering stand your ground analysis

(12:44):
based on the facts of that case. Stand your ground
analysis becomes irrelevant to the posture that the verdict or
the what the verdict might claim policymakers in media I
think they purposely conflate castle doctrine, public carey, and immunity provisions.

(13:07):
But the core stand your Ground change is the removal
of a retreat requirement in public spaces without negating the
baseline tests of immediacy, reasonableness, and unlawfulness of the aggressor's threat.
So let's think about escalation, because there are different competing

(13:29):
policy narratives. One is escalation concern. Now, the Wall Street
Journal type critique suggests that stand your ground increases legally
sanctioned killings. Those are the words they use, not mine.
They claim that stand your ground increases legally sanctioned killings,

(13:50):
and they claim may incentivize a quick tempered confrontation ending
in death, and that there is minimal accountabilit and then
they cite a few individual cases where only survivor's accounts remains. Well,
that's not really a good basis to make a claim.
Then you have an issue of another policy narrative, and

(14:12):
that's deterrence and equity claims. Now, the proponents like myself
would argue that standard ground best protects those at the
highest risk, often high crime neighborhoods. Why because it reduces
legal ambiguity. It ensures lawful defenders are not penalized for
simply failing to execute uncertain threats. You know, with some

(14:34):
research noting that there's very success rates among across demographic
particular demographic pairings, and there are obviously legal controversies around
racial disparities. Well, that just simply requires careful jurisdiction specific analysis,
which the Wall Street Journal does not do. Let's think

(14:56):
about the evidence. Let's appraise the evidence that the Wall
Street Journal provides available. Counts a civilian ruled justifiable homicides
remain low nationally compared to total homicides, even during the
peak in twenty twenty, we're at near two hundred. So
that limits the aggregate safety risk signal that you might

(15:20):
get when you look at stand your ground alone. The
fifty nine percent increase in stand your Ground locales between
twenty nineteen twenty twenty four is a notable direction of transtat,
but its causal linkage to stand your Ground is weakened.
It's weakened by contemporaneous national shifts in homicide, gun ownership,

(15:44):
enforcement patterns, reporting practices, as well as the presence of
similar increases outside stand your Ground states over longer horizons
longer periods of study. So the journal's methodology underscores, I think,
a very basic challenge of data set maturation, meaning even

(16:07):
careful filtering trying to get to consistent agencies cannot fully
neutralize the selection and the classification effects across a very
volatile crime period that they've chosen to look at. There
are very specific practical implications that prosecutors and defenders of

(16:32):
stand your Ground have got to take into consideration, because
stand your Ground does not prevent charges where evidence contradicts
a self defense claim. Rather, it simply removes a retreat
requirement or a retreat prerequisite, and even in some states,

(16:53):
supplies pre trial immunity or if burden shifts that narrow
prosecutorial discretion only where the reasonable the reasonableness standard happens
to get met, So prosecutors still have to evaluate the
eminence of the threat, the proportionality of the response, the
unlawful aggression, and the defender's lawful presence. So unfounded invocations

(17:19):
of I feared for my life get scrutinized against what's
what does the physical evidence show? What are the witnesses
to say, What does the forensics indicate? And of course
we now have video everywhere, hence the low national scale
of justified rulings relative to overall homicides. Then you've got

(17:41):
the cabal. How does the media frame and time these stories?
And I think this one is a telltale sign. It's
The Weekend with Michael Brown. Text line three to three
one zero three, keyword Mike or Michael go follow me
on ex that Michael Brown USA Stand your Ground continues.

Speaker 1 (17:58):
Next tonight, Michael Brown joins me here the former FEMA
director of talk show host Michael Brown. Brownie, No, Brownie,
You're doing a heck of a job The.

Speaker 2 (18:14):
Weekend with Michael Brown. Welcome back to the Weekend with
Michael Brown. Glad to have you with me. I appreciate
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(18:38):
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Podcast that remains the same podcast will still got fed

(19:00):
to you by well six days a week. It's like
it does now. Look we're talking about stand your Ground
loss and what set me off was an article from
the Wall Street Journal, And I would criticize the journal's
focus because what they do is they conflate a modest
absolute increase with systemic impunity, and they overlook crime spikes

(19:24):
and these enforcement shifts, like you know, defund the cops
that had persisted since twenty twenty. So that presents an implicit,
implicitly kind of causal stand your ground narrative, but it's
based on insufficiently controlled observational data. I would frame the

(19:45):
timing of the article as being very politically suggestive because
they do so in a climate of polarized debate over
self defense, polarized debate about policing and policing practices, and
what is unfortunately becoming an even more volatile discussion about

(20:06):
Second Amendment rights. So I would caution anyone who has
seen this article or hear stories about the article, against
these panic narratives that are completely untethered from absolute baselines
or doctrinal limits. So here's in key takeaways. Stand your

(20:27):
ground removes the duty to retreat, but it maintains a
core self defense gatekeeper imminence, necessity, proportionality, reasonable belief constrained
a lawful presence percentage increases in justifiable homicides since twenty nineteen. Yes,
there have been increases in justifiable homicides since twenty nineteen,

(20:51):
but that masks very small absolute numbers compared with total homicides.
So that weakens the claims of a widespread license to
kill effect, which is what the Wall Street Journal wants
you to believe. You know, I would just add this
as a footnote to my notes here. I hadn't thought
about this, so I just, you know, I say it

(21:11):
out loud and I think of things. This idea that
gun owners are looking for opportunities to use their guns
is utter bull crap. Those of us who conceal carry,
those of us who carry in our cars, on our backpacks,
or on our ankles or waists, wherever you might conceal carry,

(21:36):
we're not looking for an encounter. We're not looking for
an opportunity. We try to avoid those situations. But the
anti gun people will never comprehend that. They just they
think we're all a bunch of cowboys just out there
looking for an opportunity to shoot somebody. So that's why

(21:58):
these notations that the Wall Street Journal makes about an
increase in justifiable homicides since twenty nineteen is not a
way to say that stand your ground laws have led
to a license to kill effect. Now here's what's interesting.
When you look at the timeframe. Whenever you look at stats,

(22:21):
don't you ever think to yourself, why do they pick
twenty nineteen to twenty twenty four? Have you thought about that?
Because the twenty nineteen to twenty twenty four window coincides
with major crying, policing, and reporting changes, So that makes
causal attributions to stand your ground alone methodologically fragile. Unless

(22:44):
you can show me stronger controls and broader comparative baselines,
that window is suspicious to me at face value. Now,
policy evaluation really ought to focus on net safety effects,
equal protection concerns, and of course clarity for citizens and prosecutors,

(23:04):
rather than the stupid headline driven inference from limited scales
and confounded trends, which is what the Wall Street Journal
is doing. You know, I've said I'm an avid reader
of the Wall Street Journal, but I know what I'm reading.
I love the editorial page, I take the reporting page
with a grain of salt. How should, for example, once

(23:30):
you think about a few things, how should agencies handle
stand your ground cases when only the survivor account exists?
And what evidentiary thresholds should trigger charges despite a self
defense claim. That's why I often argue to people who
have a concealed carry or live in a stand your

(23:50):
ground jurisdiction, you need to carry insurance because all of
those things evidentiary thresholds may or may not trigger charges
against you. You need to consider that in advance of
ever using your gun. So that's why you should go
to one of the many organizations that provide self defense insurance,

(24:12):
legal insurance. You should see if you can attach it
to your homeowners. You should see how you can find
it independently. But you should get it because a standard
ground case where only your account exists, your story is
the only one that exists because there's no video. The
perpetrator is dead, he's bleeding out in your living room. Yes,

(24:34):
your story will be the main story, but that doesn't
guarantee that a prosecutor, a zealous prosecutor, isn't going to
find something, or most importantly, you're going to say something.
And I know it's hard. Why do I know this
because I've defended some standard ground cases. It's very, very hard.

(24:58):
After all, the adrenaline and is flowing through your body
because someone's just broken into your house, whether they were
carrying a gun or not. You had to make a
split second decision because your kids and your family were
upstairs asleep. You heard the door crash, you heard people
stumbling over furniture as they're coming into your home. You
make a split second decision, and you legitimately, lawfully legally

(25:23):
exercise your stand your ground rights. You lawfully legally exercise
your natural, God given right of self defense. So you
have morally and legally complied with everything, and then you
open your mouth because the cops asking you what happened,

(25:43):
or prosecutor or a detective shows up and asks what happened,
and the natural tendency is to say, well, you know,
I was upstairs asleep and this guy broke in and
I will you know? Then that leads to other questions,
how do you know it was this guy?

Speaker 1 (25:59):
You know?

Speaker 2 (25:59):
What did you hear? You never know what you say
that may cause a little bit of doubt that gets
put into a police report. And I'm not saying that
the cops are not on your side. They probably are
on your side, but anything you say can and may
be used against you. So keep your mouth shut. And

(26:21):
it's hard to do, and it's really hard to do
when you don't know. Oh my gosh, who am I
gonna call? I need a lawyer here, I just because
remember this thing about what happened. In the most naked terms,
you just killed another human being. Now I know there's
all the other factors. You killed a human being that
was breaking into your home. Well, what evidence is there

(26:45):
of that? Oh, you just killed another human being that
was threatening you, and you had a reasonable fear for
your life. Okay, you know that. What evidence is there
of that? You know that you just killed somebody in
your home because you felt an imminent fear for your
family and your children upstairs? Really they were upstairs, what
danger was there to them? And by the way, you

(27:07):
killed him in the in the foyer of your home.
He didn't make it into the living room. All of
those are factors that a prosecutor and a LEO is
going to take into a into account when they're putting
together their report, even if they believe everything you say.
But then a prosecutor looks at it and says, hmm,

(27:29):
I don't think that was necessary. You could have, I mean,
come up with any number of excuses, but a prosecutor could.
I'm not saying all prosecutors this way. I'm just simply
saying an overzealous prosecutor may find something you said, They
may find a little bit of evidence somewhere, and suddenly
you're facing second or third degree murder charges or manslaughter charges,

(27:56):
all because you open your stupid mouth. So I know it.
You know again, I understand the adrenalines flowing. You've got
a body on your front porch or in your house.
Your kids and your spouse are all hovering upstairs, huddling
together because they're scared. They've been brought down because obviously
they might be witnesses. The cops want to know from
them what happened. Blah blah blah blah. My advice is,

(28:19):
get a lawyer there asap now. Decent cops who understand
in a self defense situation, you're right, as they should
in any case, but particularly in those situations that you
want someone present. You want someone present to guide the questions,

(28:41):
someone who can filter the questions, someone can who can
tell you don't answer that, or it's okay to answer that,
or let's go talk and you tell me what happened first,
and then based on what you tell me, I'll tell
you whether or not you can say the same thing
to the cops. Decent cops will understand that. Now you
may them off because they're in a hurry. It's late

(29:02):
at night, they were just at their shift change. They
got now they got a dead body on their hand.
They got to fill out all the reports. But YadA, YadA, YadA,
all of that goes on. But again, you have to
protect yourself. The cops in general are not your friends
in those situations. They're trying to figure out what happened.

(29:24):
Now they may already have in their mind, Hey, you
know what, this should not This should not be a charge.
There shouldn't be no. In fact, some of the taxpayer
relief shots that we play, you'll hear the the public
information officers saying and no charges are going to be
filed now. Sometimes I wonder on what basis they make
that statement, because a prosecutor may have not yet looked
at it, or maybe a prosecutor has said no, no, no,

(29:46):
we're not gonna We're not gonna file charges here, get
a lawyer, get insurance. And if you don't believe me,
I would encourage you to go google Wall Street Journal
about stand your Ground and see what kind of evidence
they're showing, because the evidence they tried to show indicates

(30:08):
that stands your Ground to them, or at least to
those reporters, is a license to kill and you and
I know that it's not. I'll be right back. Welcome
back to the Weekend of Michael Brownlet have you tune in,
appreciate your listening. One thing that I found interesting that

(30:31):
was not in the Wall Street Journal was the old
trope that stand your ground laws are racist. You know,
they tried to pull every other rap it out of
the hat, but they didn't pull that one out. Back
in twenty thirteen, the president of the Crime Prevention Research
Senator Senate Center, John Lott, testified before the Senate Judiciary

(30:59):
Committee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Human Rights where
he addressed this flaw in the logic that goes kind
of like, you know, even in blue states. Blue states
recognize that poor minorities who live in dangerous neighborhoods stand
to gain the most by these laws. That's based on

(31:21):
the quote from Barack Obama around two thousand and four
when he was then a state senator. Well, John Lott
testified as follows. Apparently forgotten are the reasons that stand
your ground laws exist. They originated to solve the real
problems with the requirement to retreat. The required delay to

(31:43):
retreat sometimes prevented people from defending themselves. Requiring an appropriate
retreat adds additional confusion to those defending themselves, and the
concept is left to prosecutors to define. For the prosecutor
to define what it means to retreat and how far
and how quickly he said or he testified. Sometimes Overzealo's

(32:07):
prosecutors claimed that people who defended themselves could have retreated
even further. And he says, despite the ruckus over the
law that George Zimmerman, after the George Zimmerman acquittal, his
defense team never raised the stand your ground law as
a defense, and that should be not that should not
be a surprise. After all, if Zimmerman was on his

(32:28):
back and Trayvon Martin held him down, as the forensic
and eyewitness evidence indicated, Zimmerman had no option to retreat,
so the law was completely irrelevant. And then he went
on to say that the real measure of stand your
ground laws should be the number of lives that have

(32:49):
been preserved, not lost, but preserved. And he told the
Senate this, with so many states having these laws for
so many years without controversy, possibly the most surprising fact
is that no state that has adopted such a law
has ever rescinded it. The only way that we can

(33:12):
evaluate stand your ground laws is by looking at their
net effect on lives saved. As one commentator said, you
have to wonder why the Wall Street Journal is even
bringing this up. What does it have to gain by
fomenting fear about Americans who have Second Amendment rights defending

(33:32):
themselves with deadly force in a climate where left wing
violence is metastasizing. One can only speculate about the Wall
Street Journal's motivations. But the timing sure does seem suspicious.
I would quibal that as follows. The timing's not suspicious

(33:55):
to me at all. It was probably just on their
rotation of, well, we haven't covered the story in a while,
we need to cover And if we go back and
we cherry picked the data, we can show there's been
a spike in crime, and we can show there's been
a spike in homicides that if we just focus on
the homicides and then try to correlate that without any
sort of causation to stand your ground laws, then we

(34:16):
can do an article that basically says stand your ground
laws has resulted in more people dying, But don't issue
the race thing right now, because we don't really have
anything about race. It's how the cabal operates. It's a
great way of how even as storied a publication as
the Wall Street Journal has an agenda, and that agenda

(34:41):
is to cause people to have who have preconceived notions
for their confirmation bias to set in, and for people
to think to themselves, Oh, you know, I read this
story in the Wall Street Journal the other day and
talked about how crime is up and the number homicides
are up, and then the number of states that are
adopting stand your ground laws is beginning to increase. Nobody's
rescinding it, and so crime's going up, and so therefore

(35:04):
it must be that stand your ground laws or letting
all these you know, wild ass cowboys just go out
and just shoot them up the Okay corral out there.
If you I'm not saying, well, I am saying that
that's exactly kind of how some people with confirmation bias think.

(35:26):
But if you're watching the news and you watch what's
happening with the attacks on ice agents, if you watch
the news and you see what crowds are doing in
terms of surrounding cars turning over cars, whether they be
cop cars or privately owned vehicles, doesn't make any difference
to me. You watch that, and if you're not thinking

(35:48):
to yourself, how do I get out of that situation?
And if I can't get out of that situation, what
do I do to defend myself? And if you're not
thinking about any of those things, shame on you. But
if you're not thinking about any of those things because
you're not willing to defend yourself, then you'll end up

(36:11):
being a victim. You'll absolutely end up being a victim. Now,
they're alternatives. You don't have to you don't have to
own the clock, you don't have to own a forty
four mag you don't have to own, you know, a
ten gage, shotgun, keeping your car, you don't have to
do any of that. They are all sorts of non
lethal options available. To the point of the entire segment is, oh,

(36:33):
we're now going to start trying to draw some sort
of causal effect between stand your ground laws and the
number of homicides, which I think is fatally flawed. But
we're going to raise the issue of violence, violence which
is really out of control in this country. And my
question simply is are you prepared? So weeken with Michael Brown.

(36:56):
Text lines always open three three, one zero three keyword Michael, Michael,
be right back.