Proposed ‘castle law’ is a dangerously bad idea

If it wins the next federal election, the Conservative Party of Canada will enact a “castle law” that will amend the Criminal Code to make it easier for Canadians to protect themselves against intruders without fear of prosecution.

The proposed law, which was overwhelmingly endorsed by delegates at the party’s national convention last weekend, would shield Canadians from criminal prosecution if they act “decisively” against a person who enters their home uninvited.

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre says he wants a law that “allows you to take whatever action necessary to protect your family against home invasion,” but similar laws in the U.S. have led to killings of many individuals who were guilty of no crime.

In February 2012, Trayvon Martin was fatally shot in Sanford, Fla., while walking to the home of his father’s fiancée. The shooter, George Zimmerman, claimed he was acting in self-defence and, based upon Florida’s “stand your ground” law, was not charged at the time. He was later acquitted of charges of second-degree murder and manslaughter.

In April of that same year, Cordell Jude shot and killed Daniel Adkins Jr., a mentally disabled pedestrian who walked in front of Jude’s car while Jude was approaching the drive-through window of a Taco Bell in Arizona. Jude claimed Adkins had waved his arms in the air, wielding what mistakenly thought was a metal pipe, but it was actually a dog leash.

Arizona had passed a “stand your ground” law two years earlier and, relying on that law, Jude claimed he had acted in self-defence.

In April 2023, 16-year-old Ralph Yarl, a Black youth, was shot in the head and arm by an 84-year-old homeowner, Andrew Lester, in Kansas City, Mo., after Yarl went to the wrong address to pick up his siblings. Lester claimed he too had acted in self-defence.

In those cases and many others, innocent Americans have been killed because people with weapons thought they were in danger and, emboldened by a misguided sense of self-defence, used lethal force in circumstances when it was not justified.

In many of those instances, the killings occurred in states that had enacted “stand your ground” laws that permit individuals to use reasonable force, even deadly force, in self-defence provided they are in a place they have a lawful right to be. Under those laws, the individual has no duty to retreat from a dangerous situation. Rather, they are expressly permitted to “stand their ground.”

That may sound heroic, but a 2022 study by the Journal of the American Medical Association found that the adoption of “’stand your ground’ laws across the U.S. was associated with increases in violent deaths, deaths that could potentially have been avoided,” and that such laws were associated with an eight to 11 per cent national increase in rates of homicide and firearm homicide.

That same year, a Duke University study found there is also evidence that “stand your ground” laws exacerbate racial inequities for both victims of and defendants. It pointed to a study by the Urban Institute, which found that “When the shooter is white and the victim is Black, the rate of justifiable homicide is 34 per cent. When the races are reversed, and the shooter is Black and the victim is white, the rate of justifiable homicide fell to only three per cent.”

Riding Mountain Conservative MP Dan Mazier supports the idea of a “castle law.” He told the Sun earlier this week that “People want to be able to defend themselves and finally someone’s going to stand up for the victims in this.”

It is fair to ask, however, how many innocent Canadians would be mistakenly killed — and their killers not prosecuted — because of such a law, and how many of those victims would be non-white?

Mazier says the law would give Canadians the tools they need to stand up for themselves, but when does it ever make sense to pull the trigger (or use some other weapon) instead of simply retreating from the danger and/or calling the police?

The Conservatives’ “castle law” plan plays on Canadians’ fears and frustrations over crime, but it is a dangerously bad idea.

It will not reduce crime. It will only result in more deaths and, in many cases, the deaths of people who have done nothing wrong.