Free Republic

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-olt) filing a bill to legislate mandatory cowardness by cutting federal funding to any state supporting a “Stand Your Ground” law and to increase or maintain funding to states that implement a “runaway and show weakness” law—or as Sheila Jackson Lee calls it—”Duty to Retreat” law.(VIDEO-AT-LINK)Lee also wants to regulate any individuals who dare to take on the individual responsibility of participating in a neighborhood watch program. Guess the Black Panthers would become the guards in Sheila Jackson Lee’s vision of America. Here’s an inconvenient truth for Liberals like Sheila Jackson Lee—blacks benefit the most (more...

In our discussions of the Stand Your Ground principle, bogeymen and shadows predominate. We hear much of the National Rifle Association, of the conservative nonprofit “ALEC,” of “the South,” and, particularly ludicrously, of “white supremacy.” Disinformation and hyperbole, too, are rife. To take the more extravagant of the rule’s critics at face value would be to conclude that permissive self-defense regimes are recent inventions — a hijacking of the justice system by would-be vigilantes and their enablers. But all of this is rather silly. In truth, the Stand Your Ground principle, which holds only that one may fight back...

Clergy members oppose legislation; gun rights groups endorse it HARRISBURG - Some of Pennsylvania's clergy say a state house bill being considered will increase gun violence and deaths, while supporters contend the bill simply expands your right to self-defense.Dozens of clergy members crowded the steps in the Capitol rotunda Thursday morning to rally against House Bill 40. The group had gathered at the Capitol to watch a House Judicial Committee Public Hearing on the bill.The piece of legislation eliminates the "duty to retreat" if you are confronted by an attacker. It also expands the so-called "castle doctrine." That's a piece...