Original subtitles

Welcome to the show. Still taking place in this blank void, which I've now been

in so long, I'm about to have to get it waxed and bleached again.

It's been a busy week, from a cyber attack forcing the shutdown of a top U

.S. pipeline, to vaccinations continuing to roll out, with cities and states

incentivizing people to get them.

Ohio, for instance, is offering a prize of up to a million dollars for getting

the vaccine, while New York City is offering free Shake Shack, which our

Mayor Bill de Blasio tried to sell us on in the least appetizing way imaginable.

Just think of this when you think of vaccination.

Mm. Vaccination.

Mm.

I'm getting a very good feeling... about vaccination right this moment.

Nope. That's a no, Bill. No to everything there. No to the

uncomfortably loud chewing, and definitely no to the, mm.

You sound like a sexually frustrated cow trying and failing to climax. And

look... I would love to talk for the rest of this show about how terrible it

is to watch Bill de Blasio eat a burger, but the thing is, I can't. Instead, if I

may quote the riskiest thing you could possibly say on a first date, let's talk

about Israel.

Because the biggest news of the week has obviously been this.

This morning, the worst violence in years between Israelis and Palestinians

is intensifying. Israel's military attacked new targets in Gaza, the

Palestinian territory where militants are firing hundreds of rockets into

Israel. And in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, Palestinian protesters fought with

police. Since Monday, over 80 Palestinians have been killed and seven

Israelis in this tit-for-tat war.

Okay, there is a lot to unpack there, from the horror of the situation, which

has escalated significantly since then, to the use of the phrase tit-for-tat war

in a conflict where you just pointed out one side has suffered over ten times the

casualties. Something which speaks to both the severe power imbalance at play

here, and how that often gets obscured by how we choose to talk about it.

And look, if you are not fluent in Middle East history, I know this can

seem overwhelming.

The latest chapter in a long story you haven't read. So, I'm not gonna try and

recap the history here, or indeed, propose a solution. Although,

interestingly, I do have one, because someone with this accent always thinks

they can fix things in the Middle East. I redrew the map a bit, and I have a lot

of misplaced confidence that it would work very well.

But this week's actually been a pretty good reminder that while some things are

incredibly complex and require a great deal of context, others are just wrong.

Take, for instance, one of the incidents that's been a flashpoint. The planned

expulsion of Palestinians who've lived in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood for

generations. It's currently tied up in the Israeli court system with the

foreign ministry calling it a real estate dispute.

But it's worth knowing that the UN's Commissioner for Human Rights has said

that these expulsions would violate Israel's obligations under international

law. So it is not hard to see why sanitized terms like evictions or

property disputes rankle those who live there.

You grew up in the neighborhood. Your family home is slated for eviction. What

is the scene right now?

Well, I... Thank you so much for having me. To start, it's not really an

eviction. It's forced ethnic displacement, to be accurate. Eviction

does not imply the hundreds and hundreds of heavily armed police and army and

settlers colluding, blowing up your doors, throwing your children from your

windows, and using brute force to throw you out in the street and assaulting and

arrest you should you resist.

It doesn't imply the grenades. It doesn't imply the rubber-coated bullets.

Right. The threat of eviction.

is accurate only in a very superficial level in that one day you live

somewhere, the next day you don't, and that change wasn't your choice. But it

doesn't tell the whole story.

It's like running a headline that says, Matt Gaetz reaches out to Florida youth.

Sure, not inaccurate, but it's missing some pretty crucial details about the

exact nature of that interaction.

And look, it is true that militants from Palestinian groups like Hamas fired over

a thousand rockets towards Israel this week, and that is reprehensible.

But... And I realize this is the most load-bearing conjunction in history, but

the majority of those rockets thankfully didn't reach their target for a very

clear reason.

The casualties and the damage would have been greater, but for Israeli

interceptor rockets, the so-called Iron Dome, which blew most of the incoming

missiles to pieces.

Yeah. Israel has a so-called Iron Dome. And I know.

What if we blew up the rockets with more rockets?

Sounds like something someone drunkenly wrote down on a napkin once, but it is a

real military defense system that really works.

And I also know not all the rockets were shot down. Israeli civilians were killed

this week, which is terrible. But the point is...

This isn't tit for tat.

There is a massive imbalance when it comes to the two sides' weaponry and

capabilities. While most of the rockets aimed toward Israeli citizens this week

were intercepted, Israel's airstrikes were not.

They hit their targets, including a house in a refugee camp, a building

housing the Associated Press and Al Jazeera, and this 13-story office and

apartment building.

And while Israel insisted that there were military targets in that building

and that they destroyed it...

as humanely as possible, even warning people to evacuate beforehand. For the

record, destroying a civilian residence sure seems like a war crime, regardless

of whether you send a courtesy heads-up text.

And when dozens of people have seen their homes or livelihoods destroyed, it

doesn't really help that the Israeli Ministry posted this triumphant meme

showing the explosion and the rubble labeled, before and after. Look what we

did. People lived there before, and now they can't. You get it, right?

And obviously, in general, you should probably never meme a war crime. But if

you absolutely have to, at least go with something less boring than the before

-after template.

Maybe use the Drake meme or the Disaster Girl. There's a building coming down, so

check mark already there. And it's a little girl with eyes that scream, I

don't know what the Geneva Conventions are, and frankly, I don't care. The more

I think about it, it works perfectly.

The fact is, the citizens of Gaza don't have an iron dome to protect them the

way that the citizens of Israel do. It's one of the many ways they're at a

significant disadvantage.

Although, an Israeli military spokesperson tried to push back on the

idea that there's really much of a discrepancy there.

Somebody on Twitter said that the Palestinians don't have an iron dome. I

say, yes, they have an iron dome. It's called, don't fire rockets at Israeli

civilians, and we won't fire anything at Gaza.

Yeah. But there are a couple of differences.

Iron Dome, for one, sounds much cooler. And also, it has the significant

advantage of being an actual defense system that exists, unlike Gaza's, which

is mostly, try not to be where the bombs are landing.

And it's important to note here, the vast majority of the Palestinians in

Gaza... are not part of Hamas. They don't get together and all decide to

launch rockets. It's not a fucking co-op board.

But when Israel fires rockets at Gaza, it endangers all Palestinians there.

Maybe somebody on Twitter could point that out to that guy.

To people in Gaza, it can seem like the only time anyone pays attention to

what's happening there is when Hamas is firing rockets, which is understandably

very frustrating.

because they've been living under a suffocating blockade for 14 years.

And in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, Palestinians

are essentially being governed by a form of apartheid. An assessment echoed by

both international and Israeli human rights groups.

Life in Gaza is hard even when they are not being bombed, and the U.S.

government has implicitly co-signed on the brutally hard line Israel's been

taking. This guy basically gave Israel a green light to do anything it wanted for

the last four years, and while Biden has had the opportunity to reset that

relationship, his administration's response this week has been deeply

underwhelming, giving a generic statement that Israel has a right to

defend itself.

It's the exact same line that Obama said, and...

that Bush said before him.

Israel has a right to defend itself is just something all presidents end up

saying out loud at some point in office, like, my fellow Americans, or, what do

you mean there are no aliens? This is some bullshit.

And look, it's not that Israel doesn't have the right to defend itself, it's

just that line cannot be used to excuse absolutely everything.

Multiple children have been killed this week. Eight in a single strike just

yesterday. And the U.S. is heavily implicated here. Not just by serving as

Israel's diplomatic shield at the U.N., but by constantly refusing to criticize

the indefensible.

Watch as just this week, a State Department spokesman desperately tried

to equivocate when asked a pretty simple question.

including maybe five or six children. Do you condemn that? Do you condemn the

killing of children?

MR PRICE I'm asking, do you condemn the killing of Palestinian children?

MR PRICE Obviously, and these reports are just emerging, and I understand – I

was just speaking to the team. I understand we don't have independent

confirmation of facts on the ground yet, so I'm very hesitant to get into reports

that are just emerging.

Obviously, the deaths of civilians, be they Israeli or Palestinians, are

something we would take very seriously.

Holy shit, he just asked you, is child murder bad?

This really isn't hard. Just say yes.

The only scenario in which the answer to is killing children wrong gets tricky is

if you're a time traveler in 1890s Austria trying to explain why you just

killed the Hitler family's bouncing new baby boy. I know how this looks, but

trust me, it is complicated.

Look, there is a real tendency... particularly in America, to both sides

this situation.

And I'm not saying that there aren't some areas where that's warranted, but

it's important to recognize there are also areas where it's simply not.

Both sides are firing rockets, but one side has one of the most advanced

militaries in the world.

Both sides are suffering heartbreaking casualties, but one side is suffering

them exponentially.

And it's not like the U.S. is operating from the moral high ground here. It's

obviously no stranger to drones striking weddings and saying, we were just trying

to target enemy combatants. This country has blood on its hands, too. And look,

if you believe Israel's actions are warranted and proportionate this week,

you're welcome to try and make that argument.

But we have got to start having this conversation honestly and falling back

on convenient, sanitized terms like real estate disputes and airstrikes on

militants feels a little disingenuous when what you're describing is forcing

people from the homes they've lived in for decades and killing civilians and

children. And again...

None of this frees Hamas from responsibility, but Hamas doesn't

represent all Palestinians, just as what Israel is doing right now doesn't

represent all Israelis, or indeed Jewish people.

Lots is complicated here, but some things are pretty simple.

One side is suffering much more.

And if America really wants to help...

it might want to seriously consider changing its long-held position here,

because for decades, the backbone of America's policy in the Middle East has

been that America is an unwavering friend to Israel, which is a great thing

to try and be, but at the end of the day, I would hope that a real friend

would tell me when I'm being an asshole, and definitely when I'm committing a

fucking war crime.

And now, this.

And now, Ari Melber, rap genius, will just not fucking stop.

Good evening.

Welcome to Miami, as Will Smith would say.

To paraphrase A$AP Ferg, chasing, chasing, chasing, all this ballot

chasing. To paraphrase Lauryn Hill, Pruitt may think he's more powerful than

two Cleopatras, but he's still ready to flip it in the swamp on a dirty

mattress. There is a lyric for that, Margaret.

Yes. Which is Jay-Z said, Mama always told me don't argue with fools because

people from a distance can't see who is who. I hate the new Kanye, the bad mood

Kanye, the always rude Kanye, spaz in the news Kanye.

I miss the old Kanye.

Jay Electronica, when I look in the mirror, all I see is flaws.

Wasn't it Pusha T who said, I believe there's a God above me.

I'm just the God of everything else. Mm-hmm.

That's pretty powerful.

Wasn't it Drake who said... the game is sold separately?

Another way to put it is, started from the Biden, now we're here.

You could put it that way, Ari. Yeah, you could.

Moving on. Our main story tonight concerns guns.

You know, big pew-pew sticks that go boom-boom.

Guns are everywhere in America, and I do mean everywhere.

How many guns you think I can hide underneath a Hawaiian shirt? Of course,

we got the gray man. Got my Beretta Model 85. Feels like a car arm CT45.

Charter arms.

Undercover. 38 Special.

Grandpa Dave's old Derringer. This is a Sky CPX2. Smith & Wesson 442.

Oh, wait.

One more.

North American Arms Sidewinder 22 Magnum. Just in case you need something

small. Wow.

That is the second most horrifying thing you can find coming at you in a Hawaiian

shirt right after John Lasseter on National Hug Your Boss Day.

Although I will say, the reveal of the Thumbelina-sized gun in his Tommy Bahama

pocket was an M. Night Shyamalan-worthy twist.

Well done, tiny gun.

You are both superfluous and surprising.

But this story isn't so much about guns themselves as it is about one particular

law that significantly expanded how they're used. I'm talking about stand

-your-ground laws.

30 states currently have them. And while they were initially pitched as a law and

order measure to protect people forced to make difficult decisions in

impossible life or death situations, in practice, they can be evoked in

incidents that really seem like they didn't need to turn deadly.

The man who shot and killed a father of four at a fluorescent bar is free

tonight. So far, the gunman's not facing charges for the shooting at Show Me's

Bar and Grill on Wednesday afternoon.

The St. Louis County prosecutor says he needs more time to decide whether he'll

prosecute the gunman. That's because Missouri's stand your ground law is

complicated. Scott Berry was killed when an argument over how heavy a dog could

weigh became physical.

Holy shit.

Not only is that a massive overreaction, it's a pointless argument.

Everyone knows dogs come in a wide array of sizes from pocket-sized sweeties, to

slender kings, to dense boys, to droopy boys, to big honking boys, to standard.

That's just veterinary science.

Standing ground laws gained notoriety nearly a decade ago when police claimed

that Florida's law kept them from initially arresting George Zimmerman

after he shot and killed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin.

More recently, they've been floated as a potential defense for the killers of

Ahmaud Arbery. And those are just two devastating examples of many. And don't

worry, We're not going to show you the far too plentiful footage of people

getting shot in public places tonight. Frankly, we're just one senseless murder

away from HBO Max putting the show in the endless parade of human misery

category alongside Chernobyl and Entourage.

But given the prevalence of Stand Your Ground laws and the racial disparities

in who they do and crucially don't protect, we thought tonight it'd be

worth taking a look at them. And let's start with why exactly Stand Your Ground

laws were created.

Because before they came along, most states already had self-defense laws on

the books that traditionally included an element known as a duty to retreat,

meaning you couldn't resort to using deadly force in a confrontation if...

you could safely avoid or de-escalate it. Now, in many states, an exception to

this rule was the so-called castle doctrine, a legal theory arguing that

your home is your castle, and there, you can use deadly force much more broadly

to protect yourself against intruders. The key thing Stand Your Ground laws did

was remove that duty to retreat...

from public places. Basically, extending the castle doctrine to anywhere you have

a legal right to be. If you have a reasonable fear someone might hurt you,

you have just as much right to shoot them in the street as you would if they

were coming through the window of your house. And this change was largely

thanks to the advocacy of one woman with a pretty compelling story.

Marion Hammer says she was walking to her car after a long day at the office

when she was accosted by a car full of men.

But... she had a surprise for them.

I drew the gun up through the headlights of the car, and I aimed at the driver.

And somebody in the car screamed, the bitch got a gun.

The bitch got a gun.

I honestly did not expect to hear that come out of that woman's mouth.

Help yourself to some hard candies in the ceramic pig? Absolutely.

Take off your boots so you don't track anything on the wall to wall carpeting?

Of course. But a curse word? In the daylight?

Not in 10,000 contractions of the universe.

But the important part of her story concerns what she claims a police chief

said to her after she told her story publicly.

The police chief told me...

Well, in that situation, if you'd called the police, we'd have arrested you

because you were the only one who employed the use of deadly force.

And that made me angry.

And that argument is the absolute core of the case for Stand Your Ground laws,

that Marion Hammer could have been arrested for simply defending herself.

Now, she wasn't, of course. That didn't happen. But someone said that she might

have been, and that made her angry. But a few things there, because...

While everything about Marion Hammer seems like a sweet, everyday

grandmother, right down to this feline glamour shot of her posted on a cat

breeder's website, you should know she's also one of the country's most powerful

gun lobbyists and a former president of the NRA.

She has personally helped push through dozens of gun laws in Florida alone,

including a 1987 bill allowing conceal and carry permits, a law then duplicated

in some form in almost every state, leading to more than 16 million

Americans currently... for having licenses to carry concealed handguns.

So, that Margaritaville arsenal that you saw earlier, you have this Dana Carvey

character to thank for that situation.

And while it's not entirely relevant, you should know Hammer's advocacy wasn't

limited just to guns.

She also successfully killed a petition from 10,000 school children to change

the Florida state bird to the scrub jay. A bird so friendly, it apparently eats

peanuts out of your hand. Now, she objected because, in her words...

Begging for food isn't sweet, it's lazy, and it's a welfare mentality, and they

eat the eggs of other birds, that's robbery and murder. I don't think scrub

jays can even sing. And okay, slow down there, Marion.

Set aside lazy, welfare mentality, and robbery and murder, which is a lot to

put on a bird.

Scrub jays can't sing?

You might want to tell that to the scrub jay, Marion.

See? That's fine.

Is it great? No, it's not great. It's fine. It's perfectly fine. Sure, the

bird is no Mariah, but it's also no Roseanne. If that bird is anyone, it's

Fergie. You heard me. The scrub jay is Fergie. Tweet it, talk it, put it in

your pocket.

I've made a flimsy take and I'm proud of it. The point is, Marion Hammer played a

big part in passing one of the country's first standing ground laws in Florida.

And the passage of that bill was immensely useful to the NRA because it

became a model.

for laws that they could then push around the country.

Wayne Lapierre openly said at the time that Florida was the first step of a

multi-state strategy, and they were gonna use the tailwind to move from

state legislature to state legislature.

And they did.

Just six years later, standing ground laws had passed in 22 states.

And while, following the killing of Trayvon Martin, they became increasingly

controversial, states did not stop passing the laws. They just slightly

slowed down. And Dennis Baxley... one of the state representatives who helped

draft Florida's bill was adamant that it should not be rolled back.

We should stand beside law-abiding citizens.

They should not be treated as a criminal. They're doing something

positive, which is stopping a violent act from occurring.

There are gonna be times with close calls near the foul line, is it in or is

it out? Who's the assailant and who's the victim?

Yeah. There are gonna be some close calls. Is it in or is it out? Is it

right or is it wrong? Is it self-defense or is it a murder provoked by debate

about how much a dog can weigh that turned physical? Who can say?

Not that guy.

And that is a little bit of the point here.

The way most state stand-your-ground laws are constructed, they can make

determining questions of guilt incredibly difficult, because it all

comes down to perceived fear.

Whether you legitimately saw someone as a threat, and that is definitionally

subjective. What I am afraid of, snakes, clowns, and Tilda Swinton, Jesus Christ,

might not be what you are.

And it's made even harder by the fact that often the only other person who

knows what happened in the incident is now dead.

And citing Stand Your Ground as a legal defense has been extremely successful.

In Florida alone, as of 2012, nearly 70% of people who claimed it as a defense

had gone free. And advocates...

for these laws will tell you that that's a good thing, that before their

introduction, good people were getting sent to jail all of the time simply for

defending themselves.

But they never had much in the way of actual evidence for that beyond

hypotheticals like Marian Hammer's story about how someone said she could have

gone to jail, but crucially, she didn't.

So, standing ground laws weren't really fixing a problem.

that needed solving, and the dangers they posed were pretty obvious to some

from the start. When Georgia was debating a standing ground law in 2006,

a local station asked people in the streets what they thought, and watch as

their third interviewee realizes something that the first two don't. I

think it's a lower crime myself, because a person's gonna think twice about

running up on a citizen.

If he thinks that shit is in his arms. If you feel your life's in danger, I

think it's a good law.

I think it's going to get a lot of people hurt.

Why is that?

Well, because when you walked up to me in the parking lot, I didn't know who

you were. And by this law, if I felt that you threatened me, I could have

just shot you right now.

You know, that's not right.

Yeah! That last guy is completely right. And in hindsight, maybe we shouldn't

have listened to the man in the Pride of the South hat that, by the way, features

a portrait of Robert E. Lee over a Confederate flag.

That hat alone should have immediately disqualified anything he said. It's like

if Anthony Fauci wore this bucket hat that says Daddy in the Shrek font.

If he did, you'd be duty-bound to ignore anything that he said.

Because the fact is, we now know overall... Not only do stand-your-ground

laws not deter crime, they may actually increase violence.

In stand-your-ground states, homicides overall have increased nearly 11% since

the law's enactment, whereas in states without those laws, the homicide rate

went down by just over 2%. In fact, another study found such laws translate

into an additional 600 homicides per year.

And if you're thinking, well, come on, you can't draw a straight line between

these specific laws and people's actions.

In some cases, you very much can, including one of the very first standing

-ground cases in Texas, that of Joe Horn, who called 911 to report a

burglary happening during the day at his next-door neighbor's house.

I've got a shotgun.

Uh, do you want me to stop him? Nope. Don't do that.

Uh... Ain't no property worth shooting somebody over, okay?

Joe Horn sounds clearly upset.

Am I going to let him get away with it? I can't take a chance on getting killed

over this, okay? No. I'm going to shoot.

I'm going to shoot.

But the 911 dispatcher warns Horn to stay inside at least a dozen separate

times. I've got officers coming out there.

I don't want you to go outside that house.

Then Horn, sounding angrier by the moment, cites the new Texas law.

I have a right to protect myself too, sir, and you understand that. And laws

have been changed in this country since September the 1st, and you know it and I

know it. Yeah.

Joe Horn knew what the law said, and despite the dispatcher warning him not

to go outside 14 times, he did just that and killed two people, with autopsy

reports later showing that both men appeared to have been shot in the back.

He was explicitly told that property is not worth shooting people over, which is

obviously true, and certainly not your neighbor's property.

If I found out my neighbor shot and killed two people to save my PS5, I

would move tomorrow.

I know they're hard to get your hands on, but Jesus Christ, calm down.

I don't want your blood, console.

And thanks to Texas' new standing ground laws, Joe Horn was never arrested, and

ultimately, a grand jury declined to ever charge him with a crime. And not

only was Horn spared any consequences, he was later celebrated as a hero.

You had 911 on, and you said, I'm gonna go stop them. You gotta get here. I'm

gonna stop them. They said, no, no, no, don't go out.

You stopped them. They came towards you. You shot them. Yes, sir. That's correct.

Okay, set aside that Joe Horn looks like what would happen if Bobby Hill grew up

and sucked.

The only time it's appropriate to cheer after someone says, you shot them, is if

you're talking about the individual responsible for shooting this video of a

family of bears in a swimming pool.

you saw the bears, you had your phone ready, and you shot them, right?

Yes, sir, that's correct.

Cue the fucking applause.

No other circumstances.

None. And if these laws on their own weren't bad enough, there is now also a

small cottage industry that's cropped up around them selling specialized self

-defense legal assistance.

Most of these companies offer membership packages including everything from

educational training videos to money for future legal defense and bond.

The U.S. Concealed Carry Association insists it's primarily concerned with

teaching conflict avoidance, but it also gives you a wallet-sized card with tips

on how to handle the call you make to police after you've shot someone.

a handy feature that their founder proudly touts to its members.

This is my very own USCCA card. You can see my name on it, Tim Schmidt.

On the back of the card actually lists the exact instructions on what to say to

a responding officer. Explain, I was attacked, feared for my life, and I had

to defend myself.

Okay. Setting aside the fact that looks like the most boring episode of

SportsCenter imaginable, it does feel important to point out that they've

essentially created a get-out-of-jail-free card.

And that, mixed with that man's get-out-of-jail-free complexion, is a

pretty awful combination.

And at least one of USCCA's clients apparently took the advice on that card

and ran with it. Carlos Garcia's ex-wife, Jailene Ayala, paints him as a

loving father who would do anything for his children.

She believes he was intoxicated when he showed up to pick up his kids and got

into an argument with the next-door neighbor, Nick Julian IV, over him

playing loud music in the car.

Julian armed himself with a handgun and shot Garcia, he claims, in self-defense.

Neighbors came out as Julian IV was on with 911.

911, what is your emergency?

Yes, ma'am. I just had a man attack me in my front yard. He attacked me, and I

had to use force.

I was afraid for my life. Yeah.

It seems all you have to do is memorize a few key phrases and you too could be

free to shoot with impunity.

It's basically Rosetta Stone for justified homicides.

Because during his 911 call, Nick Julian made sure to say he feared for his life

three separate times and can also be heard referring to his wallet and saying

to someone, you just need to call them, give them the account number and my

attorney. And by the time the police arrived, he was already on the phone

with the U.S. Concealed Carry Association setting up his legal

defense. before his victim had even been declared dead.

And I know it might seem like these laws are just a free-for-all to shoot someone

who scares you, but the truth is, there are some limits.

And you probably know where this is going.

Because while most civilian shootings involve people of the same race, when

cases involve shootings across racial lines, there are significant disparities

in whose fear gets believed.

Because the odds a white-on-black homicide... was deemed justified by the

police were 281% greater than the odds a white-on-white homicide was. And the

expansion of stand-your-ground laws have appeared to worsen that disparity.

A fact I'm pretty sure would surprise exactly two of these three men.

Not only that, but there are multiple examples where you would think if ever a

stand-your-ground law would apply, this would be the case, and yet it didn't.

Take Sawatu Salamara, who waved an unloaded registered gun... at a woman

she believed was trying to hit her and her young daughter with her car.

But, even though her state of Michigan has a stand-your-ground law, and even

though that incident clearly falls under a reasonable definition of self-defense

without it, and even though she didn't even shoot the gun, because again, it

was unloaded, she was sentenced to two years on the charge of using a gun to

commit a felony.

And while, after outcry, she was eventually able to plead to a lesser

charge, that wasn't before she'd spent a year in prison and she was pregnant at

the time and was forced to give birth in shackles.

So, despite being introduced to increased safety, Stand Your Ground laws

actually increase violence and...

Given around four centuries of history, basing a law around who's afraid of who

was always going to be dangerous.

It's the reason Ohio State legislator Stephanie House stood up to oppose her

state passing its standing ground law back in 2018.

When your presence, when your being, your blackness causes fear.

Do you hear what I'm saying? I've been in these-these floors where I hear

people tell me, you know people scared of you.

It's people I have never interacted with. What do you do in places and

spaces when your presence, literally your face, your face

causes someone to be fearful of you? This is a bad idea for people that look

like me.

Exactly. That is just.

One of the things that makes these laws so dangerous, they can exalt a white

person's fear over a black person's life. And are applied so unevenly, the

sawatu salamara gave birth in shackles while this guy gets a fucking parade.

Standing ground laws have contributed to a society where vigilantes with guns

feel they have the right to decide what is safety, who is a threat, and what the

punishment should be. They have turbocharged everything from road rage

incidents to pointless disputes over dog weights.

So... What can we do? Well, the answer is actually pretty simple.

Don't pass any more Stand Your Ground laws and repeal the ones that exist.

They're redundant solutions to a made-up problem, and they are actively doing

harm. In the past year, at least 14 bills have been introduced in five

states to roll their Stand Your Ground laws back. And if you live in a Stand

Your Ground state, especially one where those bills have been introduced, you

should absolutely...

write to your representatives to urge them to repeal them as soon as possible.

And while you're at it, if you do live in Florida, or you know what, fuck it,

any state, in the interest of annoying Marion Hammer, why not also demand that

they make your state bird the Florida scrub, Jay, so that it can maybe one day

deliver its Fergalicious victory song?

That's a B-plus bird.

That bird is fine.

That's our show. Thanks so much for watching. We'll see you next week. Good

night.