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Health & Fitness

Georgia Women: The Unintended Winners of Stand Your Ground Law?

For women in Georgia, Stand Your Ground has meant a confrontation with a drunken husband or boyfriend that would result in a black eye, fat lip, or visit to the emergency room or cemetery. What followed were indifferent police, prosecutors, judges, and juries. Even the laws were stacked in favor of the guy who used his wife or girlfriend repeatedly for a punching bag.

Georgia’s good old boy state legislature was not thinking of Georgia women when they passed a Stand Your Ground Law. They were thinking of their supporters who were Dirty Harry wannabe’s. The kind of folks who liked talking big “Make my day” or “f…ing a..holes.” They felt like a real man when they had a concealed gun, a few drinks, and someone at home who they could smack around.

Our legislators could imagine a black man or boy in a casket resulting from a Stand Your Ground encounter but not one of their lodge buddies. When that former lodge member’s wife defends herself in court using the Stand Your Ground defense, Georgia and the rest of America will pay attention.

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In the past, when a woman successfully stood her ground and defended herself, there was a good chance that she would be spending a lot of time in jail. A history of documented abuse did not often work as an effective defense.

The NRA drew up this legislation and gave it to Republican dominated legislatures who gladly passed this feel good legislation.  How many dead good old boys will it take before our state legislature re-thinks its position on Stand Your Ground? How many states revoking the Stand Your Ground laws will it take to make the NRA change its mind?

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Improving the lives of women in Georgia should not be the unintended consequence of a bad piece of legislation meant to add some macho to the macho deficient citizens of Georgia. Our state legislature has shown that it has as much interest in improving the lives of women as the Taliban. Georgia women with smoking guns, dead husbands, and stupid laws that protect them after the fact aren’t the best solutions. But at the moment, it is the only solution for Georgia women.  

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