The violent trend began on April 13 when 16-year-old Ralph Yarl was shot in the head and arm by an angry homeowner after knocking on the wrong front door to pick up his younger twin brothers.

On April 18, Kansas City homeowner Andrew Lester was charged with first-degree armed assault after opening fire through his locked glass front door and severely injuring Yarl. According to Lester, he believed the teenager was attempting to illegally break into his home and trespass on his property, thus prompting his sudden violent response. Just a day after being taken into custody, the 84-year-old was released on a $200,000 bond, with his bond conditions including the inability to possess weapons, forced surrender of his passport, obligation to remain in Missouri and prohibition of contact with Yarl or any members of his family. 

Yarl is a hard-working, studious young adult who plays the clarinet and takes several advanced college-level courses. The only mistake he made on that solemn night was approaching a home in the 1100 block of Northeast 115th Street, instead of Northeast 115th Terrace, to pick up his younger twin brothers and in return, was met with a pair of bullets. Fortunately, he managed to make a miraculous recovery from his injuries just a few days after the incident. However, the underlying gun control debate that has resurfaced as a result of his story is one that cannot be ignored.

According to the Wall Street Journal, 28 states around the country, including Missouri, have enacted Stand Your Ground laws, which legally allow civilians to utilize deadly force in response to any danger that can be reasonably perceived as life-threatening. Personally, I have found myself torn between conflicting reactions to the enactment of this legislation. On the one hand, if a law-abiding citizen who has passed required background checks genuinely finds themselves in a life-or-death situation with a firearm, they deserve the right to protect their life. However, on the other hand, a more concrete line must be drawn between legitimate grounds for self-defense and blatant abuse of the right to bear arms granted by the Second Amendment.

Inciting a heated national debate over the morality of Stand Your Ground laws, many have begun to raise the question of what legislative measures can be implemented to prevent the occurrence of such tragedies. It certainly cannot be denied that national crime rates have surged substantially in recent years. According to a 2021 FBI report, the number of national homicide rates in the United States increased by 4.3% in 2021. Likewise, a CNN report found that the nation experienced a staggering 190 mass shootings through the first four months of 2023 alone.

Executive director of the New Jersey Gun Violence Research Center Michael Anestis claims these increased crime rates have begun to perpetuate a widespread fear leading to increased gun sales as a self-defense mechanism. 

“You’ve come to see the world full of threats,” Anestis said. “And you’ve come to see it as your responsibility to extinguish those threats, by whatever means necessary.”

To make matters worse, the brutal violence experienced by Yarl was only one incident in a string of attacks targeting innocent civilians. Just a mere three days after the shooting, a Texas man shot two cheerleaders outside of a supermarket after one of them accidentally entered his car, thinking it was her own. Later that same day, a North Carolina man shot a 6-year-old girl and her parents after they attempted to retrieve a basketball that had rolled into his backyard. On April 20, a group of teenagers looking for a friend’s house in upstate New York mistakenly stepped into the wrong driveway, resulting in the fatal shooting of one.

From a holistic perspective, these incidents have amounted to the shooting of seven people within the span of just six days, each one for allegedly “being in the wrong place at the wrong time.” One alarming trend seen throughout this string of shootings is the increasing comfortability some Americans have shown overstepping the boundaries of self-defense with a firearm. A 2022 study conducted by the medical journal JAMA Network Open revealed a direct correlation between the strengthening of Stand Your Ground laws and an 8% to 11% increase in nationwide firearm homicide rates.

Even Kansas City criminal defense attorney Kevin Jamison, a member of the National Rifle Association and self-proclaimed gun rights advocate, strongly disagrees with the injustice Ralph Yarl was forced to endure at the hands of a firearm. 

“Stand Your Ground doesn’t come into play unless the person is attacking you,” Jamison said. “There’s been nothing that indicates the young man [Ralph Yarl] was threatening the older gentleman [Andrew Lester].”

It ought to be more widely noted that not one of the victims targeted by these attacks instigated violence toward their attackers. Each of them committed a minuscule, forgivable mistake that was not even remotely executed with the intent of causing physical harm. Therefore, it is a clear sign that the nation’s priorities are gravely misaligned when disregard for innocent human life becomes a normalized mentality. It truly sickens me to think that some use instances such as a knock on their front door, or a neighbor’s basketball rolling into their yard, to justify the shooting of another human being. It must always be acknowledged that there is another life behind every trigger when making the decision to use a firearm in self-defense. Firearm owners should practice greater responsibility and judgment when protecting themselves, only taking action when a genuine threat of violence presents itself.

To clarify, I do not find the implementation of Stand Your Ground laws to be unconstitutional whatsoever. Anyone whose life is in danger is wholly and unequivocally entitled to the right of self-defense. Despite its flaws, this law saves countless lives that law enforcement would not otherwise be able to rescue when the respective danger is immediate and directly life-threatening. However, if sufficient boundaries are more clearly established through government legislation to dictate when firearm self-defense should be appropriately implemented, wholesale civilian protection would be more strongly ensured.