Those who stood, those who fell: fatal cases

By way of TaNahesi Coates:

Tampa Bay Times has assembled a collection of SYG cases in which there were fatalities.

I haven’t gone through them all, but: the examples that make me uncomfortable currently have the edge. Not just because of outcomes when set to trial, but the manner in SYG “logic” is deployed to justify lethal force:

Two brothers came home to find intruders in their house. They approached them with guns and when they saw one of the men aiming his own gun, they opened fire. One robber wound up dead and another was wounded. “I could have called 911 and in two days they let him go and they do it again,” Anthony Julien was quoted as saying in the Orlando Sentinel after the break-in. “We shot first and then called 911.”

It’s too late in the evening for me to get profound about the social contract, but this just doesn’t feel right. We’ve gone from self defense to letting people get away with killing as retribution or solution to grievance.