ARE YOU SAFER IN A STAND-YOUR-GROUND STATE OR A GUN-CONTROL STATE?

I'm tired of hearing that minds are made up not by facts but by feelings, that millions of people are locked into echo chambers that tell them over and over again just what they want to believe, and that we live in a world made of competing narratives and memes rather than a palpable reality. I still believe in facts, and trust that you do too.

With that in mind, here are some facts about guns and homicide:

In 2005, Florida became the first state to pass new "stand-your-ground" legislation that pushed beyond the traditional right to defend oneself, if need be with lethal force, against a serious threat in one's own home. State Bill  436, signed into law by then governor Jeb Bush, granted people in Florida the right "not to retreat" from a perceived threatening situation in private or public spaces. Before then, based on common law, someone feeling threatened outside the home had the responsibility to use every reasonable means to avoid the danger, including to retreat, before being justified in using lethal force.

Here is the relevant section of the Florida law with the "stand-your-ground" clause underlined:

A person is justified in using or threatening to use deadly force if he or she reasonably believes that using or threatening to use such force is necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another or to prevent the imminent commission of a forcible felony. A person who uses or threatens to use deadly force in accordance with this subsection does not have a duty to retreat and has the right to stand his or her ground if the person using or threatening to use the deadly force is not engaged in a criminal activity and is in a place where he or she has a right to be.

Credit: Daniel Oines, Creative Commons

Whatever your feelings about guns, the Second Amendment, gun control, or about just where self defense legitimately starts and ends, you can view the passage of this law as an experiment, with a clear dividing line between before (1999-2004) and after (2005-2014).

The results of that experiment, detailed today in JAMA Internal Medicine, are clear: the homicide rate in Florida went up by just under a quarter--24 percent--and the rate of homicide using guns went up by just under a third--31 percent.

The researchers noted that Florida's homicide rate rose while rates were generally declining throughout the US, and remained roughly unchanged in four comparable eastern states.

Co-author Douglas Wiebe. at the University of Pennsylvania, concludes, "The findings are strong evidence that by extending the 'no duty to retreat clause', this change to the law in Florida led to deaths that otherwise would not have occurred. We need to think about the implications of these findings and Florida should consider reversing this decision that appears to have increased the use of lethal force."

His suggestion that we need to think about the implications of these findings seems particularly cogent given that 30 states followed Florida's lead and currently have similar stand-your-ground laws.

And as long as we're talking about guns and homicide rates, another new study, also in today's issue of JAMA Internal Medicine, finds, not all that surprisingly, that stronger gun-control laws cut the homicide rate.

A team of researchers at Boston Children's Hospital reviewed all available peer-reviewed studies of the relationship between firearm laws and firearm deaths. From among more than 500 studies they selected 34 that met strict criteria for the quality of the data used, the time span of the study, and the quality of analysis.

They found a clear relationship between gun-control laws and lower homicide rates. In particular, laws requiring background checks before a gun purchase, and laws requiring a permit to own a gun had the greatest impact.

"Gun legislation is a very important and controversial issue right now, but our findings show that some laws, specifically those to strengthen background checks and require a permit to purchase a firearm, will not deny people the right to bear arms, but will help protect the public," says emergency medicine specialist Dr. Lois Lee, the paper's lead author.

And in case you would like children to be safe at school, a just-published study finds that states with mandatory background checks for the purchase of guns and ammunition have fewer school shootings. Florida, the first stand-your-ground state, earned the dubious honor of a tie for second place for the number of school shootings in the three years studied, 2013-2015--14 in all. They were beaten by Georgia, another stand-your-ground state, with 15.

From a public health viewpoint, the case against stand-your-ground and the case for well-chosen gun-control laws is clear.

To quote tough-guy Joe Friday, "just the facts, ma'am."