By a slim five-vote margin, New Hampshire’s House of Representatives yesterday passed a bill to repeal the state’s Stand Your Ground law, the controversial self-defense statute that essentially allows anyone who feels threatened by someone else to shoot first rather than retreat.
No one in New Hampshire has claimed Stand Your Ground as a legal defense since the law was enacted in 2011. The proposed repeal will likely face an even tougher fight in the state’s Republican-controlled senate.
Florida became the first state to adopt Stand Your Ground in 2005. By 2011, with a boost from the National Rifle Association and the American Legislative Exchange Council, 24 more states, including New Hampshire, had passed similar laws.
Meanwhile, study after study shows SYG laws don’t deter crime and are associated with more murder and manslaughter. Between 2005 and 2010, justifiable homicides by civilians using firearms doubled in Stand Your Ground states, while falling or remaining the same in others. And they’re not applied equally to white and black shooters, as MoJo‘s Hannah Levintova pointed out: “homicides involving white shooters and black victims are 11 times more likely to be deemed ‘justifiable” than those where the scenario is reversed.”
The interactive map below shows how Florida kicked off a campaign to spread Stand Your Ground nationwide.
