Stand Your Ground

January 1, 2017
A legalistic polemic arguing that the "natural right" of self-defense has been perverted by American gun culture.Light (Women, Gender, and Sexuality/Harvard Univ.; That Pride of Race and Character: The Roots of Jewish Benevolence in the Jim Crow South, 2014) sees behind American exceptionalism an ugly tradition of violence, initially reserved for white male property owners. Today, she witnesses a troubling movement toward "individual DIY security as the solution to our nation's most urgent anxieties, [which] criminalizes many who do not fit the terms of idealized citizenship." She attributes this to "the spread of perceived insecurity, as well as a lack of faith in the protective powers of the government and local police." This contradicts the common-law roots of self-defense principles, which historically held a duty to retreat. Light examines the case of Thomas Selfridge in 1806, which "provided legal foundation for the gradual decay of the duty to retreat." Particularly after the bitter collapse of Reconstruction, marked by violence against black self-determination, "nineteenth century debates over self-defense implicitly centered on the urgent need to protect white masculine honor." These privileges were not extended to women and black people who killed in self-defense, leading civil rights pioneers like Ida B. Wells to paradoxically embrace armed self-defense as "human nature." This counternarrative manifested in the fascinating tale of African-American defense leagues in the rural South during the civil rights era, which "characterized 'armed self-reliance' as a necessity" in the face of threats against community leaders. Today, Light sees gun culture as selectively reminiscent of these historical complexities and devoted to a covert white male supremacy at the expense of others' safety. The author is a keen legal analyst, deftly examining obscure cases that underlie this historical narrative, but her narrow fixation on identity politics leads her to disparage the broad consensus that "the good citizen is one who takes her own safety seriously." A weighty consideration of the cultural politics behind disturbing flash points like the death of Trayvon Martin.

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December 1, 2016
Light, an academic at Harvard who grew up in a gun-owning household, covers a lot of surprising information in this historical look at the development of America's Stand Your Ground laws and accompanying DIY security culture. From the shocking details of the 1859 Sickles/Key shooting, (where a man killed his wife's lover in the street and was acquitted based on the idea that the sanctity of the household had been attacked by the victim) up to the tragedy of Trayvon Martin's killing in Florida, Light dives deeply into case law, detailing how the legal system has determinedly protected the rights of male, generally Caucasian, property owners above others. She also offers sobering revelations about the uneven application of laws involving female shooters, especially victims of domestic violence, and thought-provoking analysis of how the highly influential NRA, with its heavily Caucasian membership, has transformed the image of the gun owner as the definitive American patriot. Light's readable account deserves strong notice by those seeking understanding of the roots of today's polarizing debate over gun laws.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)