YES, LOAD UP THE ‘MATIC!

THERE are 38 American states with Stand Your Ground laws.

The legislation has been used in several trials, including the Florida murder case a decade ago of George Zimmerman in the killing of teenager Trayvon Martin, in which the accused was freed.

There are such laws in Canada and several European countries (France, England, Germany, and others), although they stipulate that defensive action must match the looming threat.

In certain other countries – like Japan and Argentina – there is no duty to retreat or to match firepower appropriately.

In other words, you could load up the ‘matic.

Stand Your Ground laws have become common around the world as a result of the prevalence of crimes with high-powered weapons, brazen invasions of properties, and widespread incidence of brutal assaults, including rape.

In some places, the relevant legislation is referred to as the “castle doctrine,” because your home is your castle and you have the right to defend and safeguard it.

The overwhelming majority of such laws mandate the use of “reasonable force,” including deadly action, to protect home and property from a murderous intruder.

Since lawyers often quibble about everything, several countries stipulate the areas in which homeowners could use self-defensive deadly action, and they include an attached porch, deck and patio.

In Trinidad and Tobago, Stand Your Ground has belatedly entered our discourse because of our obvious reality of being on a dark, short road to a collapse of law and order.

In some crime categories, T&T is in a worse state than Port-au-Prince, Haiti (source: mylifeelsewhere.com).

“The Rowley administration,” the Express editorialised, “has not delivered a single impactful response to rising crime.”

Opposition Leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar, feeding on widespread fears, is not only peddling such a law but wants no restraint in confronting armed criminals.

As a former and aspiring prime minister and as a senior counsel, Ms. Persad-Bissessar should have carefully detailed the trappings of the law.

She should not stand accused of glorifying gangster behaviour.

But that is small potatoes in a land in which law-abiding citizens are falling like flies, the government is negligent, and the police chief is a seat-warmer.

Ms. Persad-Bissessar has elbow room to propose dramatic measures because Dr. Rowley has failed spectacularly in the country’s number one nightmare.

The responses have been predictable.

The Prime Minister – under whose watch thousands have been killed, maimed, assaulted, and robbed – has turned to his default posture of ethnic victimhood.

His political chorus line has duly adopted his mantra.

When an aspiring PNM politico wrote that Ms. Persad-Bissessar is preaching race, there was an immediate rejoinder that read: “Here we go again blowing the dog whistle to race-bait.

“I look like the people you are trying to insinuate (Ms. Persad-Bissessar) is alluding to and I have also been the victim of multiple home invasions…

“When the gun of the bandit was on my forehead and they took everything my father owned … and I was traumatised … race and ethnicity had no bearing…

“The criminals didn’t refuse to rob us because we looked like them.

“They do not discriminate.”

There is a hysterical storm-in-a-teacup from usual sources – armchair critics, urban snobs, and Kamla dissidents.

But passage of a Stand Your Ground law would be subject to dispassionate bipartisan consultation and debate and the valued input of the legal profession.

The final package would be stripped of the current high-decibel emotion and cheap political posturing, and would be a crucial measure in the sea of crime in which T&T is now submerged.

It would be too late to save the lives of Mark Joseph of Chaguanas, Asha George and Devon Drayton of Claxton Bay, Penal man Gabre Mahabir, or granny Lutchmin Bickram of Freeport.

But hopefully, Stand Your Ground would help rescue T&T from its wild lawlessness.