Stand Your Ground

This chapter argues that the proportionality principle is indefensible, and that aggregative ethical theories that entail that principle are thus similarly indefensible. Inasmuch as the duty to retreat is a corollary of the proportionality principle, it too must be rejected. An alternative deontological view, under which one may use whatever force is necessary to defend one’s rights (including the right to liberty that would be lost if forced to make a retreat), escapes the counterintuitive results of theories that are conceptually wedded to the proportionality principle. The chapter suggests that at least the most obvious challenges to such a view are easily defeasible. As such, we should think that our best moral theory gives ample support for laws that entitle people to stand their ground, rather than requiring them to run from trouble.