Another week, another series of mass shootings in America leaving two dozen dead in three states. Having spent my career on the frontlines as a trauma surgeon and gun violence prevention researcher, I want to highlight a recent report by the RAND Corporation. In it they that stand-your-ground laws -- which declare that people may use deadly force when they reasonably necessary to defend against certain violent crimes -- increase firearm-related homicides. What does a little-known report from a non-partisan think tank have to do with mass shootings? You may be surprised to learn that each year, stand-your-ground laws more firearm-related deaths than all mass shootings combined. These laws promote vigilante justice, needless escalation of interpersonal conflicts, and are an increasing threat to public health and safety. Stand-your-ground laws must be repealed.
The foundation of stand-your-ground laws is a legal concept called the Castle Doctrine, which empowers individuals to use lethal force when in their home. In other words, if there is a threat to life or property while in your home, your castle, you may shoot to kill -- even if you can retreat to safety. What stand-your-ground laws do is extend the geography of one's castle to any public space. In short, you have no duty to retreat from a threat in public spaces, even when you can safely do so.
Since there is no federal law requiring you to retreat from a public threat, many states have filled that void. have passed laws allowing individuals to use lethal force in public if they feel their life is in danger. Most do not mandate a duty to retreat even when the person being threatened can safely do so. The result has been an increase in firearm-related homicides, injuries, and incarceration with no evidence of a decrease in crime. Ostensibly, these laws were meant to deter violent crime. They do not.
Instead, stand-your-ground laws increase firearm-related injuries and death. In fact, in comparison to mass shootings -- which comprise less than 1% of the firearm-related deaths -- a published in JAMA showed that stand-your-ground laws lead to an increase in 700 deaths per year; that is several years of all mass shootings combined (in the context of the average number of mass shooting casualties ). Clearly, stand-your-ground laws are a significant public health issue resulting in hundreds of preventable deaths annually, even eclipsing the human toll of mass shootings. While both types of shootings are essential to address, the issue of stand-your-ground laws receive relatively little attention.
My research interest intersects with issues of health equity, and I am not surprised that stand-your-ground laws in gun violence. The race of the shooter and the victim influence the outcome of cases where stand-your-ground is a defense. An analysis of Department of Justice statistics by the Urban Institute found that if the shooter is white and the victim is Black, that shooting is deemed justified than if the situation is reversed. Stand-your-ground laws place Black Americans at increased risk of violence, death, and criminality due to firearms.
To be sure, there are reports where use of firearms in public spaces saved lives by ending an active shooter event. For example, last summer an armed bystander did just that when he shot and killed a mass shooter in an Indiana mall. However, these outcomes are the exception, not the rule. Most uses of stand-your-ground laws are actually an escalation of interpersonal differences, and one study of cases in Florida for which stand-your-ground was used as a defense found that the could have retreated to safety.
We must not dismiss the human toll and collective psychological trauma of mass shootings. Still, stand-your-ground laws are a threat to public health and safety, and should be repealed. The laws promote vigilantism, increase firearm-related deaths, and worsen racial disparities in criminal justice. When lethal force is unrestrained in the face of an avoidable threat, none of us are safe until all of us are safe.
is a professor of trauma and acute care surgery at the University of Chicago Medicine, former congressional health policy advisor, and author of the forthcoming book,