This State Seeks To Strengthen Its ‘Stand Your Ground’ Law

By Tom Knighton

Stand Your Ground laws are vital for self-defense purposes. They eliminate the requirement for people to seek to escape an attacker rather than respond with lethal force. Duty to retreat places another factor armed citizens need to consider prior to acting, making decisions slower and possibly resulting in the deaths or serious injuries of countless people.

So, it’s a very good thing when a state tries to beef up their Stand Your Ground law.

A bill to amend Utah’s stand-your-ground self-defense law says a person under threat of deadly force has no duty to retreat even if safety could be achieved by fleeing.

Rep. Cory Maloy, R-Lehi, said not requiring a flight to safety as a prime option under the law is necessary to provide explicit legal protection for those who justifiably use deadly force in self-defense.

House Bill 129 also specifies that judges and juries would be barred from considering a failure to retreat as being relevant in determining whether a person who stood his or her ground acted reasonably.

The House passed a previous version of the bill in 2017, but it was shelved by a Senate committee. The 2018 bill introduced by Maloy this week is …Read the Rest

Source:: Bearing Arms