Florida may be at the forefront of recent stand your ground cases, but 25 states have adopted the law including North Carolina.

The stand your ground law gives every bigot or person with a grudge and a gun legal rights to commit murder.  This “right” needs to be restructured so that it relies less on perceived danger and more on the facts of an incident. Currently, the stand your ground law as is incredibly biased and structured against minorities especially African Americans.

    On Nov. 23, 2012 17-year-old Jordan Davis was shot and killed by 47-year old Michael Dunn at a gas station in Jacksonville Florida. That night, Davis and three of his friends stopped at the gas station. Dunn, who was sitting in his car while his girlfriend was at the store, heard loud rap music coming from Davis’ car and went to ask the boys to turn the music down.  Dunn fired ten gunshots at the teen’s SUV after he did not get the response he desired. The police apprehended Dunn the next morning

Dunn was convicted of three counts of second-degree murder on Feb. 15, 2014.  Dunn received sixty years in prison, but that is not enough. Not enough for the public and most importantly not enough for Davis’s family who have still not seen justice for the loss of their son.

Dunn leaned heavily on the stand your ground law during his trial.  It states that a person does not have to first try and get away before using deadly force. If a person feels threatened, they have the right to stay where they are and use force to prevent harm to themselves even if that threat is only perceived. Dunn claimed that the boys had what looked like the barrel of a gun or a large stick that could be used against him that night.

At face value the law is understandable. However, it opens the door to racially sparked murders.  In analysis done by Metro Trends, out of 4,650 FBI records of homicide in which a person killed a stranger with a handgun, they found that most of the cases involving a white person shooting a black person was ruled justifiable under the stand your ground law.

Every judge is different, every case is different but the outcome always seems the same. Marissa Alexander was sentenced to do a mandatory 20 years in prison for firing warning shots at her abusive husband, however, the stand your ground law was not used in her defense. There was no room under the stand your ground law for her because she is African American.

The law is detrimental to African Americans. Although we have made major strides since the Civil Rights movement, there are still a lot of people in the world who are afraid of African Americans especially young African American men. Because of the stand your ground law, it gives those that are still afraid of us permission to shoot first and ask questions later.

How many are going to fall victim to the stand your ground law? Killers now know they can walk because of their own perceptions of danger.  Michael Dunn was not “afraid for his life” because he figured with the gun in his glove box he had the upper hand. Michael Dunn is guilty and is hiding behind a technicality of perceived fear. At the end of the day, innocent lives are being taken on a daily basis and this law is doing nothing to protect those who truly need it.

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• Brianna Mcfadgen, Contributor