McArdle & Instapundit On Self Defense Laws & The Racial Grievance Industry

It is not exactly a secret, at least among those outside the racial grievance industry, that Florida's Stand Your Ground law played no role in the Zimmerman trial. It is perhaps less well known, but equally true, that blacks are disproportionately the beneficiaries of self defense and stand your ground laws since, unfortunately, they are most often the targets for violent crime. Regardless, the uniform complaint from the grievance industry is that the jury verdict was wrong and unfair, racist laws must somehow be changed. Megan McArdle, in her most recent effort, has done a superb job of explaining self defense laws, how they impact on the burden of proof at trial and laying out the case for why they should remain unchanged. In her estimation, such laws strike the most fair and just balance that we, in our imperfect world, can make between punishing the guilty and allowing the innocent to go free. My own take on all of this was that the calls of the racial grievance industry are merely an effort to incite blacks into believing that they are under attack from an America that is 1965 Mississippi writ large. I did not take their calls for changes to the law seriously. But Instapundit goes the extra analytical step. He sees the calls to redo the law as both real and insidious. Says he:

But, to be fair, many of these people would be happy with special rules for black youths, or battered women, or whatever, so that they get the result they want. And if the categories don’t fit, well — you can always re-arrange them ad hoc, as the media did when they turned part-black, part-hispanic George Zimmerman into the reincarnation of Bull Connor.

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