Please Stop Helping Us: How Liberals Make It Harder for Blacks to Succeed

by Jason L. Riley

According to John Lott, a former chief economist at the United States Sentencing Commission, states with stand-your-ground laws (also known as castle doctrine laws) in place between 1977 and 2005 saw murder rates fall by 9 percent and overall violent crime fall by 11 percent.23 “The debate has everything backwards over who benefits from the law,” Lott told me in an e-mail exchange shortly after the Zimmerman verdict. “Poor blacks who live in high crime urban areas are not only the most likely victims of crime, they are also the ones who benefit the most from Stand Your Ground laws. It makes it easier for them to protect themselves when the police can’t be there fast enough. Rules that make self-defense more difficult would impact blacks the most.” Lott noted that “blacks make up just 16.6 percent of Florida’s population, but they account for over 31 percent of the state’s defendants invoking Stand Your Ground defense. Black defendants who invoke this statute to justify their actions are acquitted 8 percent more frequently than whites who use the same defense.” None of this is to suggest that there is a causal link between stand-your-ground laws and gun violence, though liberals like Obama seem certain that one exists. If they’re right, it’s an argument for more such laws, not fewer.