Washington State has no "Duty to Retreat," doesn't resemble wild west

More misplaced hysteria over Florida’s ‘No Duty to Retreat’ law Dave Workman, editor of Gun Week, points out that Washington state has no "Duty to Retreat" in law. Claiming that the elimination of the "Duty to Retreat" in the new Florida Castle Doctrine legislation will lead to wild west shootouts is absurd. If this will lead to disaster in Florida, why is the Evergreen State not awash in shootouts?

The Sunshine State’s so-called “stand-your-ground” law is not a novel concept, although it is hardly universal in the “land of the free and home of the brave.” In my home state of Washington – where our state constitution explicitly guarantees, “The right of the individual citizen to bear arms in defense of himself, or the state, shall not be impaired” – the state Supreme Court has twice affirmed in recent years that there is “no duty to retreat.”

The principle in both cases, known as State v. Studd (1999) and State v. Reynaldo Redmond (2003), is unambiguous. “The law is well settled,” said the court in the Redmond ruling, “that there is no duty to retreat when a person is assaulted in a place where he or she has a right to be.”

But this is one of those inconvenient facts that the gun grabbers like to ignore so much. The Florida law only seeks to restore what the courts have taken away - the right to defend yourself when attacked.

This article also points out that history is not what Hollywood portrays.

In a February 2004 essay, Colorado policy analyst Ryan McMaken, an internet columnist on lewrockwell.com, noted that “All the big cattle towns of Kansas combined saw a total of 45 murders during the period of 1870-1885. Dodge City alone saw 15 people die violently from 1876-1885, an average of 1.5 per year.” Compared to the landscape between Tallahassee and Miami, the real West was comatose. People actually left their doors unlocked.

The wild west existed only on Hollywood studios of the 1940s and 50s, and in certain Italian films of the 60s. But knowing this would require that people actually study history - not the civics nonsense they teach today.

The other big thing the Florida law did was make it impossible for criminals or their families to sue law-abiding citizens who exercise their legal right of self-defense. If you attack me, and I shoot you in self-defense, you can't collect a big damage award. (It was your own damn fault for attacking me in the first place.)