Stevie Wonder Boycotts Stand-Your-Ground States - Really?

So let me get this straight, Mr. Wonder. You consider states in which you are required by law to attempt to run away, thereby turning your back on a potentially dangerous assailant or in which you must actually wait until you are fired upon, struck or, preferably, shot first by an assailant before you are allowed to defend yourself somehow safer than states where, if you are attacked you don't have to run away or wait till you are shot when you are assaulted?  Who is safer under such a system, Stevie?  Certainly not the folk on the receiving end of assaults, robberies and what Rachel Jeantel (the girl on the phone with Trayvon Martin" calls "an ass whooping".

"Do not harm your attacker" seems to be the message the anti stand-your-ground folk like Stevie are trying to deliver to innocent folk everywhere. So are we not, therefore, teaching our children that it is better to be the attacker than to be the innocent victim - at least so far as your potential survival is concerned?  Are we not virtually guaranteeing the shaping of a society in which the aggressor is the protected person and in which the victim must submit to what Rachel Jeantel colorfully described as a deserved "ass whooping" or face jail time. Rachel Jeantel further claimed in a CNN interview that Mr. Zimmerman didn't understand that Travon "went back" only in order to administer a beating, not to murder George Zimmerman.  Travon's assault was, she explained to an aghast Piers Morgan, not as an attempt to kill Zimmerman, but, according to Jeantel, because Travon thought Zimmerman was gay and needed to be taught a lesson so that Zimmerman wouldn't attempt to molest Travon's family members.  If, as Jeantel maintains, George had simply taken his beating none of this would have happened.

Someone needs to keep that girl off television if they're going to ever maintain the "poor little innocent boy" image of Martin the politicos are using to stir things up. I am just as sorry this happened as anyone, but is this the case the left wants to hang its humanity on?  With the incredible rate of slaughter going on lately in Chicago, which has strict gun control and no stand-you-ground laws, one has to wonder as to the efficacy of this strategy. Recently a kid Travon's age was found behind a Chicago dumpster four days after gang members beat him to death for refusing to join a gang. Is this what happens to the innocent in a society that tells you that you may not arm yourself for self-defense and that you must run or submit to being shot or struck if you don't?

Who exactly are we defending by insisting on a mass repeal of stand-you-ground laws. I know in my home state, the rates of assaults, home invasions and burglaries dropped significantly when my state adopted the castle doctrine.  In my heavily armed neck of the woods it certainly did.  If someone levels a gun at you or raises a fist or club to strike you, your odds of survival go way down if you do not act fast and first. I fail to see how a person being attacked would find it better to be shot or struck in the back than to stop the attacker by any means at hand.

Or perhaps we should simply make a law that all would-be attackers must wear a t-shirt that says, "I'm not going to kill you, just administer an ass whooping" just to make sure we submit to our well-deserved beatings and don't try to shoot assailants or cause them unnecessary trauma.

Well, there are some 30 states in the US with "stand-your-ground" or "castle" laws.  That leaves Stevie just 20 states he can sing in. This is a free country.  Stevie can do that.  And even though Stevie has a nice voice and does some really good songs, I can boycott HIS music.

It's a free country.  I can do that.

For now.

Just sayin'

© 2013 by Tom King