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“[…] Despite Trinbagonians having one of the highest tertiary and post-graduate levels of education and international travel, our leaders believe the electorate to be entirely ignorant of US law or lack the ability to research it for themselves.
“Stand Your Ground (SYG) is not a federal US law. It is a state law. Many states do not have it. Many citizens of the USA do not support it.
“Should they give up their citizenship? […]”
The following Letter to the Editor, which suggests in-built racist and gender biases in US gun legislation and rebuts former Attorney General Anand Ramlogan’s suggestion that persons who oppose new UNC-proposed gun laws should give up their US visas, was submitted to Wired868 by Jessica Joseph, a concerned Trinbagonian citizen:
I continue to be appalled and saddened by the level of contempt our politicians have for the public in their response to extremely valid concerns (even if they theoretically support responsible, well-regulated gun ownership by mentally sane, law-abiding citizens) about Stand Your Ground Laws being enacted in Trinidad and Tobago.
Former Attorney General Anand Ramlogan’s comments being the epitome of that contempt and condescension.
It has been apparent for a long time, through different party regimes, that despite Trinbagonians having one of the highest tertiary and post-graduate levels of education and international travel, our leaders believe the electorate to be entirely ignorant of US law or lack the ability to research it for themselves.
(Courtesy Baltimore Post Examiner.)
Stand Your Ground (SYG) is not a federal US law. It is a state law. Many states do not have it. Many citizens of the USA do not support it.
Should they give up their citizenship? Why don’t all states have it and why don’t all US citizens support it? There are good reasons why.
First, the origin of SYG Laws are rooted in White Supremacism.
The logic behind SYG draws from antebellum-era “Castle Doctrine” and slave codes, which enshrined the right of white men to defend with lethal force. The modern wave of SYG laws was spearheaded by the NRA and the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) in the early 2000s.
ALEC is a White Supremacist Conservative organisation with a documented history of promoting policies that disproportionately harm communities of colour.
For this reason, the racial disparities in the application of SYG laws are not just bugs—they are features of a system designed to uphold white fear of non-whites as legally legitimate, while Black and brown fear is criminalised.
There is no better example of this than what happens when law-abiding non-white people strap up to protect their property and communities from white supremacist terrorism. The NRA and ALEC do not fight for them the way they fight for white militia groups.
Martin was killed by George Michael Zimmerman on 26 February while Zimmerman was on neighborhood watch patrol in the gated community of The Retreat at Twin Lakes, Florida.
Photo: Joe Raedle/ Getty Images.
So are the concerns of educated, informed citizens irrational? No! They are not.
Second, the states that do have it, still have high homicide rates, especially gun crimes.
In fact, SYG Laws have been shown to increase homicide rates and gun crimes. A comprehensive 2017 study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) found that Stand Your Ground laws were associated with a national 8–11% increase in firearm homicides and no evidence of deterrence against violent crime.
(via UNC.)
The RAND Corporation’s 2020 analysis of gun policy found “moderate evidence” that Stand Your Ground laws increase homicide rates and no evidence that they reduce violent crime. A 2012 study in Social Science & Medicine showed a 24% increase in homicide rates in states that enacted SYG laws.
So are the concerns of educated, informed citizens irrational? No! They are not.
Third, numerous studies show enforcement of SYG Laws have racial and gender biases.
A 2013 report from the Urban Institute analysed FBI homicide data and found that when the shooter claiming self-defence is white and the victim is black, the homicide is ruled justified over 17% of the time.
When the shooter claiming self-defence is black and the victim is white, it is ruled justified only about 1% of the time.
In states with SYG Laws, these disparities are even more pronounced. Women, especially survivors of domestic violence and especially if they are not white, privileged and pristine, are often denied SYG protections.
One such case is Marissa Alexander, a Black woman in Florida, who was sentenced to 20 years in prison in 2012 for firing a warning shot into a wall to deter her abusive husband.
She invoked Stand Your Ground and was denied. Public outcry and appeals eventually led to her release.
A 2021 paper in Northwestern Law Review explains how SYG laws are framed around “male-coded” understandings of imminent threat, failing to consider the contextual and ongoing nature of threats that women, especially victims of domestic violence, face.
We have that same bias here in T&T. Our culture is one that blames women for men’s physical and sexually abusive behaviour.
Everyone saw the misogynistic backtracking in comment sections when Trinbagonian women spoke of strapping up. All of a sudden: “Women are too irrational, emotional, to own guns!” As if it’s women who commit the majority of violent crimes in this country.
So are the concerns of educated, informed citizens irrational? No! They are not.
You can bet that the day a working-class, black Trinidadian woman who legally owns a firearm, shoots and kills a young man from a privileged background, who was approaching her in a threatening way, we will string her up.
How dare she consider her life more valuable than this less melanated, looser curl structured, prestige school, well-known family named, wealthier person?!
We will see our biases on full display about who is deserving of self-defence and who is not. The day a woman kills in self-defence, with a legally owned firearm, her well-loved and well-respected husband who was abusing her, we will see the real prejudices our country has.
I have not even gotten to the poor mental state, emotional dysregulation, impulse control and machismo of our population that makes trivial disputes over a parking space or shopping cart or mash foot in a fete, or romantic rejection escalate into threats and fights.
Our leaders want to pour gasoline on that fire and then gaslight educated Trinbagonians when they raise valid concerns.
We have not even had any proper discourse on the realities that Stand Your Ground Laws in a mentally-ill, hair-triggered, rum-abusing, traumatised society built on racism, classism and misogyny will always be unequally enforced.
That is precisely the case in the USA and so too will it be in Trinidad and Tobago, where certain people of a particular shade, income bracket and zip codes already never face jailtime no matter what they do.
These concerns need to be addressed with honest discourse, stakeholder consultation, and community discussion. And the laws need to be shaped so that the now well-documented negative consequences of such laws do not further dismantle our security.
Any leader trying to thwart, suppress and bully those that want to have that kind of deep discourse, does not have the best interests of the public in mind.
The march was put on by FC Santa Rosa.
Photo: Annalicia Caruth/ Wired868.
“ALEC’s Influence Over Criminal Justice Policy” – The Brennan Center for Justice;
Humphreys, Gasparrini, and Wiebe (JAMA, 2017);
Source: RAND Gun Policy in America, 2020;
Source: Roman, Urban Institute (2013);
Source: Caroline Light, “Stand Your Ground: A Feminist Critique,” Northwestern Law Review, 2021.
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Jessica Joseph is currently the Creative Director of Accela Marketing St Lucia/Canada. She is a multiple ADDY Award Winning Trinidadian national, Pop Cultural Anthropologist and Humans Rights Activist.
She blogs on Huffington Post and alieninthecaribbean.blogspot.com.
We’ve seen various incarnations of the UNC saddle this country with their ill-conceived ideas and actions (universal secondary education, closing down of youth camps, tinkering with the foreign exchange allocation system, bad decision in the energy industry and that doesn’t include those of recent vintage) that has lead to numerous societal problems over the years. This stand your ground legislation and the haste/sloppy nature with which it is being handled may be the path to lasting infamy for Ms Persad Bissesar and her party.
Stand your ground needs much more than a cursory look at legislation but emphasis must be focused on understanding the likely impact/outcome more guns placed in a country that is already overwhelmed by guns and gun related violence would have. That requires a lot more than townhall meetings that host the converted/believers.