Leftist Media Trips Over Stand Your Ground Laws

Recently, The New York Times ran an article decrying a new Tennessee law that allows residents of that state to use deadly force against people who attempt to steal from them – provided they believe the would-be thief is dangerous. This is, essentially, an expansion of Tennessee’s stand your ground law. The folks at the Gray Lady are no fans of Americans being able to defend themselves or their belongings. If you identify as transgender, however, that appears to be a different matter.

Just three days after the stand your ground piece ran, The Times dropped another article that uses Wyoming’s stand your ground law to defend the reckless actions of a transgender person, a biological male identifying as a woman with the name Rihanna Kelver.

Wrong Again, Leftist Media

The Times – and Huffpost, along with several other leftist news outlets – seem to have decided transgender people should be able to violate gun laws with impunity, which seems rather odd, given their staunchly anti-gun rights positions. But that’s not all they get wrong. These alleged journalists also display stunning ignorance of what stand your ground means.

Kelver alleges that a group of men yelled “anti-LGBTQ+ and anti-transgender slurs” at him from across the street in Laramie, Wyoming, in September of last year. Kelver, by his own admission, crossed the road to confront one of the men, Scott Durham, asking him, “What did you just say?”

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Durham pushed Kelver backwards; Kelver stumbled and fell. He then drew a subcompact pistol and pointed it at the group of men. No shots were fired. Kelver is now facing charges of possession of a deadly weapon with unlawful intent and aggravated assault. If convicted, he could serve up to 15 years in prison.

The leftist outlets rushing to Kelver’s defense and claiming – or at least strongly implying – that he is being prosecuted only because he identifies as transgender also say the state’s stand your ground law should have protected Kelver from legal jeopardy.

These outlets are either misunderstanding or misrepresenting how such laws work.

Stand your ground is a take on the long-standing “castle doctrine” principle of self-defense. The less gun-friendly states impose a “duty to retreat” system. This means that, should one find oneself facing imminent danger of loss of life or serious injury, one must attempt escape. Only if retreat proves impossible is deadly force permissible. The more pro-gun states – Florida being the first – began passing stand your ground laws that, as the term implies, state one does not have a duty to retreat in such a situation.

Stand Your Ground, Not a Free Pass

Still, stand your ground is not a free pass to wave a gun around threateningly. If someone insults you or says something mean to you, it’s a stretch – and that’s putting it mildly – for you to claim you were in fear for your life. More than that, these laws do not apply to a person who initiates a physical altercation, as Kelver clearly did. He could have ignored the men who allegedly shouted at him. He could even have cussed them out or flipped them the bird. No doubt Mr. Durham deserved at least that if he did yell a “homophobic” slur.

For that matter, Kelver could have punched Durham in the mouth. He may even have escaped an assault charge if he could prove the man was lobbing slurs at him – which Durham denies.

Anyone carrying a gun, however, should probably think very carefully before escalating a verbal confrontation to a physical one. That is – or at least should be – basic common sense. But it’s more than that, as well. Not even a stand your ground law protects the aggressor. A judge might well even take the view that initiating a physical confrontation while carrying a concealed weapon is intentionally creating a situation requiring its use. Hence, the possession “with unlawful intent” charge Kelver faces.

Having made the choice to approach and challenge the men, Kelver was pushed to the ground. Can he claim he believed his life was in danger? Durham and his friends did not persist with violence after the shove. Pulling a gun, then, was a wildly disproportional response.

Another Fake Hate Crime in the Making?

It is also worth noting that Kelver admits to having downed two shots at the bar in the pizzeria where he worked right before stepping outside to smoke a cigarette and encountering Durham and friends. In Wyoming, it is illegal to carry a concealed weapon under the influence of alcohol.

Kelver is not just a man who identifies as transgender – he is also an activist. Is it so unreasonable, given the specifics of this situation, then, to speculate he was trying to create an altercation he could later use as an example of “the dangers and threats trans people hear every day,” as he himself put it in his defense?

Given the number of fake hate crimes manufactured over the past couple of decades, it’s entirely within the realm of possibility that Kelver was taking a page out of the Jussie Smollett playbook.

The media outlets standing up for Kelver took none of these details into consideration. Kelver is a “trans woman,” therefore he must have been the victim, and it was perfectly ok that he pointed a gun at someone for shoving him. Who cares what the law says? Had Kelver not been transgender, he would indeed be facing the same charges. If that were the case, neither The New York Times nor Huffpost, nor any other leftist news outlet, would be reporting this incident as anything other than an example of how dangerous and irresponsible armed civilians can be.