There al­ready ex­ists a com­mon law on self-de­fence, which pro­vides com­pre­hen­sive prin­ci­ples of stand-your-ground (SYG) laws. Cit­i­zens are prob­a­bly un­aware that the com­mon law gives them the right to use even dead­ly force in de­fence of them­selves, their fam­i­lies and prop­er­ty.

The ex­ist­ing com­mon law jus­ti­fies the use of force by peo­ple hav­ing a rea­son­able fear of death or se­ri­ous bod­i­ly harm. They have no du­ty to re­treat; they have the right to stand their ground and meet force with force if they be­lieve it nec­es­sary to do so to pre­vent a forcible crime. It gives cit­i­zens the right to do what is rea­son­ably nec­es­sary in pro­por­tion to a dan­ger­ous threat.

Cit­i­zens should be able to pro­tect them­selves and their fam­i­lies from home in­va­sions, es­pe­cial­ly in ar­eas where crime is ram­pant and the au­thor­i­ties have failed to con­trol it, leav­ing them feel­ing some­what un­safe in their homes and com­mu­ni­ties.

The com­mon law recog­nis­es that a per­son may not be able to de­ter­mine rea­son­able­ness in a mo­ment of cri­sis and is like­ly to act in­stinc­tive­ly. The courts will con­sid­er that in the heat of the mo­ment, a per­son may not be able to ad­judge ac­cu­rate­ly how much force is rea­son­able to re­pel an at­tack. How­ev­er, even if there is a mis­tak­en but hon­est­ly held be­lief that the use of force is nec­es­sary, a per­son can plead self-de­fence, but he or she can­not cre­ate a dan­ger­ous sit­u­a­tion and kill or harm a per­son and then re­ly on self-de­fence.

What about own­ing firearms? The ex­ist­ing law is com­pre­hen­sive. Ap­pli­cants for firearm li­cences must be 25 years old and have no con­vic­tion un­der the act or a con­vic­tion for do­mes­tic vi­o­lence. They must pro­vide good char­ac­ter cer­tifi­cates, among oth­er re­quire­ments. The law pro­hibits firearm li­cences for peo­ple un­der the in­flu­ence of liquor or il­lic­it sub­stances, those of un­sound mind, those known for in­tem­per­ate be­hav­iours, and any­one un­fit to bear a firearm.

I be­lieve the law should pro­hib­it peo­ple from get­ting a gun li­cence if the po­lice had re­ceived le­git­i­mate re­ports of do­mes­tic abuse or any oth­er kind of phys­i­cal abuse or threats of harm to an­oth­er per­son.

The Firearms Act re­quires an ap­pli­cant to have a good rea­son for im­port­ing, pur­chas­ing, ap­ply­ing for, ac­quir­ing or hav­ing in his or her pos­ses­sion a firearm or am­mu­ni­tion. It takes in­to con­sid­er­a­tion penal­ties for ig­nor­ing pub­lic safe­ty and shoot­ing in and around pub­lic places.

It is ex­plic­it about armed peo­ple in­tend­ing to en­dan­ger life, mak­ing them li­able on con­vic­tion on in­dict­ment to im­pris­on­ment for up to life. Tres­pass­ing on some­one’s prop­er­ty with a firearm with­out a rea­son­able ex­cuse at­tracts five years of jail time.

Good, rel­e­vant laws ex­ist, which brings to mind the art of po­lit­i­cal brand­ing. In the heat of cam­paign­ing, po­lit­i­cal brand­ing strate­gi­cal­ly dif­fer­en­ti­ates be­tween po­lit­i­cal par­ties, en­abling vot­ers to make de­ci­sions about their con­tenders. It ad­dress­es vot­ers’ sig­nif­i­cant is­sues—fear of crime, fi­nan­cial in­se­cu­ri­ties, and jobs, to name some. Fear of los­ing every­thing you’ve gained in life through ram­pant crime is no small mat­ter. The promise of a SYG law went to the core of peo­ple’s safe­ty needs.

How­ev­er, many have voiced con­cerns about pos­si­ble in­creas­es in vi­o­lence, gun pro­lif­er­a­tion and the un­fet­tered pow­er of their use. Will crim­i­nals in­vade homes to steal firearms? A spe­cif­ic SYG law, like the ex­ist­ing self-de­fence com­mon law, is un­like­ly to re­duce crime, in­clud­ing home in­va­sions. Hav­ing a gun may save the life of a per­son who’s un­der at­tack, and some may even ar­gue that mere­ly feel­ing threat­ened is enough to jus­ti­fy lethal ac­tions un­der SYG laws.

The re­al­i­ty is that self-de­fence com­mon law jus­ti­fy­ing the use of force al­ready ex­ists, and any qual­i­fy­ing per­son can ap­ply for a gun un­der the ex­ist­ing firearms law.

There­fore, one may wish to eval­u­ate the ar­gu­ments against in­tro­duc­ing a spe­cif­ic SYG law, ie, in­creased homi­cides, racial pro­fil­ing, abuse, and oth­er cons. SYG law is root­ed in the com­mon law in Com­mon­wealth coun­tries. Would there be sub­stan­tial dif­fer­ences be­tween the ex­ist­ing self-de­fence com­mon law and a new self-de­fence law la­belled stand-your-ground? What are the gains? In any event, there’s an elec­tion promise to be kept.

The firearms law should in­clude strin­gent stan­dards for grant­i­ng deal­er li­cences. They or their com­pa­nies should not have any crim­i­nal con­vic­tions. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, reg­u­la­tions should be es­tab­lished to gov­ern the ran­dom bal­lis­tic test­ing of pri­vate­ly owned firearms. The po­lice com­mis­sion­er should be in­ter­est­ed in know­ing whether some­body used pri­vate­ly li­cenced firearms in killings.

On a sep­a­rate note, there is a need for cam­paign fi­nanc­ing leg­is­la­tion to en­sure trans­paren­cy in elec­tion cam­paign fi­nanc­ing, in­clud­ing by any firearm deal­er.