Last week, a 5-year-old watched his father die in a gas station parking lot. The shooter, Michael Drejka, will likely face no charges because of Florida’s incredibly lax stand your ground law. The victim, Markeis McGlockton pushed Drejka to the floor after he came back from the inside of the gas station to find Drejka arguing with his girlfriend. Little did McGlockton know that making the mistake of pushing too hard as defense of his family would lead to his death. Drejka shot from the floor at McGlockton who as evidenced in a security video was not lunging at him after the first push.
My first thought is how different this situation would have transpired in the absence of a gun. Perhaps further physical altercation would have occurred, ending with someone breaking it up or the police being called. McGlockton’s death is a complete tragedy. But what is most alarming is that Drejka probably won’t suffer consequences.
Florida’s stand your ground law has created the perfect environment for trigger-happy racists to attack if they are provoked in any minor way. A fellow customer reported he had been threatened by Drejka, telling him he would shoot him and using racial slurs. This shooting mirrors that of Trayvon Martin, who was killed in a nonsense self-defense scenario.
Florida recently made it even easier to get away with shooting someone in vague self-defense, now requiring the state to disprove the defendant’s entitlement to immunity rather than requiring the defendant to prove that they were in danger.
The difference between regular self-defense and standing your ground is self-defense requires you to retreat or look to retreat from the situation. Standing your ground means you don’t have to retreat and you can go right to killing your attacker. The flaw with this logic is that if someone feels empowered enough to kill someone else, they aren’t truly in a victim position. I don’t feel that Drejka, or anyone who gets off on the stand your ground defense was deliberately using their right. I think they just act impulsively and are lucky to live in a state that has structured the system in their favor.
Why are we encouraging people to shoot first and consider the threat level later? This law has blurred the line for what is a justified self-defense attack. Now anything that someone does that you don’t like can be argued in court as a justifiable reason for killing someone.
Until Drejka is arrested, charged and convicted of murder, there is no justice. As long as we have a stand your ground law, senseless killings will continue to happen. For McGlockton’s young son, nothing will bring his father back.
Layla Soboh is a UF advertising junior. Her column comes out Tuesday and Thursday.
