As a person of color, there are only two words I think of when I hear the phrase “Stand Your Ground.”

Trayvon Martin.

As a person of color, I see legislation that allows gun owners to discharge their weapon into the body of someone viewed as a threat, as a direct attack on anyone that provokes fear. African Americans have a long history of provoking irrational fear among white people. Thanks to media-reinforced stereotypes, we are viewed as violent thugs capable of instantaneous nonsensical violence.
George Zimmerman was exonerated from all culpability when he shot Trayvon Martin because of Florida’s Stand Your Ground law. Even though he was directed by 911 to cease following Trayvon, he continued to pursue him, ultimately shooting him at close range. Because of this law, the court was forced to declare Zimmerman “not guilty” because there was no evidence that contradicted his version of events leading up to the shooting.

I am the mother of five children, and I can’t help but think about the danger this law poses to my children. If found at the wrong place at the wrong time, they could easily be perceived as a threat by someone unfamiliar with who they are or what their motivations are for being there. What’s worse, according to the 2012 National Bureau of Economic Research, Florida-type Stand Your Ground laws were associated with a 6.8 percent increase in homicide. Those accused of murder tend to make Stand Your Ground their first line of defense. Nearly 60 percent of people using the Stand Your Ground defense have prior arrests or convictions for violent crimes. One-third of them carried their guns illegally or had threatened others with them.

If we truly care about the defenseless, consider the opinion of minorities in this matter. It has been our minority population that has been historically victimized for the imagined crime of “not fitting in.”

In this regard, Stand Your Ground is nothing more than a fear-based license to kill.

— Jacqueline Watkins

Jacqueline Watkins is a student majoring in psychology at the University of Iowa.