Abstract

Since the early 1990s, 27 states passed statutes known as "stand your ground laws" to give legal protection to citizens who use lethal force in self-defense, and 8 states have acted as de facto stand your ground states due to court rulings. Proponents of these laws believe they act as a criminal deterrent while opponents say they legitimize vigilantism. The aim of this paper is to determine whether there is a relationship between stand your ground laws and crime. Data from fixed effects and negative binomial regression models from 1980-2018 find no strong relationship between stand your ground laws and crime in either direction. Policy implications are discussed, namely, the primary costs and benefits of these laws are not likely to stem from increases or decreases in crime but rather the legal and ethical consequences of increasing protections for civilians who act in self-defense.