Book Excerpt: Why Do We Give White Guys a License to Kill Black People?

In his new book, “Bad Law: Ten Popular Laws That Are Ruining America,” Elie Mystal explains how the distortion of the Castle Doctrine led to Florida's deadly "stand your ground" law.

Copyright © 2025 by Elie Mystal. This excerpt originally appeared in “Bad Law: Ten Popular Laws That Are Ruining America,” published by The New Press. Reprinted here with permission.

Did you know that Geraldo Rivera has a brother, named Craig Rivera, who is also a broadcaster? I know this because back in the day, very early in my journalism career, I got a call from Geraldo’s producers asking me to do a television segment with Craig.

It wasn’t a normal “talking heads in boxes” TV appearance. Craig had a running segment on Geraldo’s Fox News show, Geraldo Rivera Reports, called “Craig Investigates,” where Craig would go out into the country, among “regular Americans,” and ask them questions about whatever hyped-up culture war issue Fox was pimping that week.

My call came in the aftermath of George Zimmerman’s murder of Trayvon Martin. I had been writing a lot about lax gun laws and racism and how the two intersect and inevitably lead to the deaths of innocent young Black people. Craig wanted to challenge my takes by sending me to a gun store in New Jersey.

That could seem like a non sequitur, unless you understand the ammosexual brain. You see, their standard view is that liberals are both afraid of guns (because we don’t know how to be “real men” who handle their problems with violence) and ignorant of how guns work and of guns’ allegedly life-saving properties. Taking a bog-standard liberal like me to a gun store works as a response to the slaying of Martin because once there, I’d surely expose myself as a wuss who simply doesn’t understand how to defend himself.

It was a dumb idea for a segment, but I was down to clown. I was young, eager to do more television, and totally comfortable being uncomfortable around guns. I am, in fact, squeamish about pumping hot lead into another human being until they suffer enough internal trauma that they no longer live. I imagine I could do it in a kill-or-be-killed type of situation, but I don’t live in a goddamn thunderdome and thus have never had to put that theory to the test. If Katniss Everdeen found a way to win the Hunger Games without straight murdering every single person she encountered, I’d like to think there’s a good chance I can get through my entire life without committing a homicide.

I was totally willing to forcefully defend my effete, northeastern, liberal stance to Fox viewers who are used to liberals who try, unsuccessfully, to hide their effete, northeastern, liberal sensibilities. I wasn’t going to pretend to know more about guns than I do or to be more comfortable with killing than I am. I was going to affably explain that the gun store owner, Craig, and everybody in the store were fucking lunatics whose pathetic need to feel strong with a gun made them the actual wussies. I may be afraid of guns, but these assholes are the ones who still need a night-light.

My principal objection to the segment was that they wanted me to go to Jersey, but once Fox said they’d provide a car, I was in. A few days later, I stuffed my fat, bespectacled ass into a suit (looking every bit like the bookish, soft liberal I was to play) and was driven to some faraway place across the Hudson River. I do not recall the name of the gun store, or the names of men I spoke to, or the make and model of the guns they brandished. I spent most of my time questioning why anybody would need any of these weapons. I do know that I pissed off the gun store owner, because he was showing me some kind of handgun, and I said something to the effect of, “You’re saying this is what you use if you are clumsy and lack the skill or hand-eye coordination to operate a bow and arrow?”

The store owner, agitated and still holding the weapon, asked me, “What would you do if somebody broke into your house and threatened you and your family with one of these?” This, of course, is the baseline fear that I believe prompts most ammosexuals to purchase a compensation device: the fear of home invasion. It’s so pervasive among that set that every gun reform advocate has been asked that question hundreds of times. We all have our standard answers to the question. I gave the owner mine.

“If possible, I’d run,” I said.

“WHAT?!” responded the store owner.

“If an armed man broke into my house, I’d run away at the first opportunity,” I repeated.

“You’d run away from your own house,” a suddenly interested Craig Rivera chimed in.

“Yes,” I repeated for the second time.

“What about your wife?” asked Craig.

“She’s faster than me,” I accurately told him.

I don’t know if the segment ever aired. I didn’t watch Geraldo, obviously, and certainly wasn’t going to start just because I may have been on. I do know I was never invited back on the show . . . even though I gave them exactly what they thought they wanted.

My response, while shocking to gun-addicted segments of our country, was a fairly standard application of the legal doctrine known as the “duty to retreat.” The duty comes to us from English common law, which consists of the precedents and rulings made by judges in England sometime after William, Duke of Normandy, whupped the entire island until he got to Scotland. The doctrine stands for the simple and exceedingly reasonable premise that deadly force may be used only when all other reasonable options have been exhausted.

I know that in our toxic masculinity–bred culture “retreat” is a dirty, nearly unforgivable word. It’s worse than “surrender,” because at least surrendering implies a battle was waged and lost. Retreat implies backing down without a fight. It implies cowardice. American presidents do not like to say the word “retreat,” even when they order a goddamn retreat. Richard Nixon said we were getting “peace with honor” when we ran away from Vietnam. Joe Biden said we were “ending,” or concluding, operations in Afghanistan when we retreated from America’s longest war. George Washington was a crap battlefield general but a master of the organized retreat. He won the Revolutionary War by running away when all seemed lost and keeping his army together to lose another day. I could make an argument that this entire country would be different and better if we remembered Washington as the Great Retreater.

I wish I could relabel the duty to retreat as something else—perhaps the “duty to explore all options” or the “duty to live and let live”—something that wouldn’t make American men’s penises feel sad when it’s invoked. Nonetheless, despite its bad marketing, the duty to retreat is a foundational principle for living in a civilized society. You shouldn’t kill somebody unless you have to. Sure, there will be edge cases where reasonable people disagree on whether they simply had to take another life. But all that the duty to retreat requires is that nonhomicidal options are taken . . . if it is safe to do so.

If some maniac is threatening to kill you, and you can safely walk away, you should just walk away. If somebody breaks into your school and starts shooting people and you can safely flee, you should flee. If you can’t retreat safely, then you should, of course, defend yourself by any means necessary. But if you can retreat safely, you should. The duty to retreat wants you to deal with violent individuals the way we’ve all been taught to deal with fire: run away from the danger and wait for the professionals to handle it. Nobody tells you to stay inside a burning building with a bucket of water to show the fire who’s boss. They tell you to get on the ground, retreat from the flames, and get outside.

In this way, the duty to retreat is not only the appropriate moral stance it’s also the most pragmatic way to stay alive. You are much more likely to survive an encounter with an armed individual if you don’t start shooting at them. This is especially true in theft crimes like burglary and robbery. If a mugger asks for your wallet, give it to them. Don’t try to quick draw them like you’re Billy the freaking Kid. You’re not even Emilio Estevez. Sacrifice your wallet, withdraw, and live long enough to receive new credit cards in the mail.

Most people who object to the duty to retreat gloss over the phrase “if it is safe to do so.” But that is actually critical to the entire concept. Nobody is required to put themselves at risk, just to run away. Nobody who is backed into a corner is required to cower there. Indeed, in most violent encounters, retreat is not an option. If somebody is trying to kill you on the Orient Express, you don’t have to jump off the moving train like you are James Bond. And you don’t need a license to kill in order to defend yourself. The duty to retreat applies only to situations where a person can reasonably, safely, and without much effort, get away.

To put that in criminal law terms: the duty to retreat does not take away anybody’s legal right to self-defense. Self-defense is what lawyers call an “affirmative defense” to a homicide charge. You kill somebody. The cops arrest you and charge you with murder. You go to court and say, “No, no, no, I had to kill that person to defend myself.” Since you agree that you killed the person, you are not presumed innocent. Instead, the onus is on you to convince a jury that you had no option other than the use of deadly force to stay alive. If you convince the jury, you go home. Your homicide is justified. If, on the other hand, the jury feels that there were reasonable, safe, and nonhomicidal measures you could have taken to defend yourself, you go to jail. Nobody is convicted for “failure to retreat.” Instead, people are convicted for murder, manslaughter, or “imperfect self-defense” (which means you honestly thought you had to use deadly force to defend yourself but were demonstrably and unreasonably wrong and thus are still guilty of homicide, albeit with a reduction in the severity of your punishment).

For every thirty or so homicides in America, one is a justifiable self-defense homicide. That figure shouldn’t surprise people. Killing is not usually a defensive action. Most people, most of the time, have some safe, reasonable option other than killing somebody. The duty to retreat simply captures the idea that deadly force is a last resort, not a preferred choice.

The question about whether homicidal self-defense was reasonable or justified under the circumstances has been the critical question in probably every self-defense trial since dudes started fighting with rocks. But the invention and codification of private property inexorably led to the biggest, oldest, and most famous exception to the duty to retreat—what has become known as Castle Doctrine. Sometime in the seventeenth century, the English decided that the duty to retreat should not apply to situations where a person is violently threatened in their own home. The idea that “a man’s home is his castle,” and thus he can murder intruders in his castle as if he were an elf on the walls of Helm’s Deep, is why we call this exception Castle Doctrine. There is no duty to retreat from one’s own home.

There is also no duty to retreat from one’s own business because, of course, capitalist societies treat a home and a business as essentially the same thing for the purposes of shooting people who enter illegally. I could make an argument that whatever level of defense we’re willing to contemplate for a family dwelling should not apply to the damn McDonald’s, or Target franchise you may own, but I don’t feel like pulling out my translation of Das Kapital right now.

Castle Doctrine is a principle that gets rolled into an argument for self-defense. Normally, you can’t kill somebody who is threatening you unless your life is in danger. But in a Castle Doctrine case, a homeowner can kill somebody who has illegally entered (or attempted to enter) their home, even if the homeowner’s life is in no immediate danger. The homeowner is still claiming self-defense, but to make that affirmative defense, the homeowner need only show that they reasonably believed an intruder could be armed or dangerous.

The implications of this doctrine are shocking, or at least they would be if we weren’t all so used to them. It completely warps the normal inquiry into self-defense, because it allows people to kill when their own lives are not in any provable danger. It’s a “shoot first, ask questions later” principle embedded into the very core of our laws.

As you may have guessed, I think Castle Doctrine is a pretty dumb concept as an intellectual matter. Look, I’m a parent. A home invasion scenario, where my wife and children are present and threatened, is pretty much the scariest thing I can think of. I’m not a gun owner because (say it with me now) keeping loaded firearms in a house with small children is dangerous, ineffective, and fucking stupid. But I do have weapons—blunt force or stabbing weapons, like I’m the damn Terminator 3000—stashed throughout my home. If my family’s life were in imminent danger, I’d use them. But if not (allow me to repeat for the third time), I’d gather my family and run away. I’m not trying to get into a deadly shootout to defend my pride and my PlayStation. I’m trying to keep myself and my loved ones alive.

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Castle Doctrine is a dumb and unnecessary principle because people already have the right to defend themselves from violent attacks in their own home without availing themselves of any special legal privileges. Castle Doctrine is an argument, made by a killer, and that argument can be rejected by juries at criminal trials. Castle Doctrine doesn’t need to be repealed; it needs to be ignored.

Unfortunately, there’s a version of Castle Doctrine that cannot be ignored—a version that projects Castle Doctrine outside of one’s home, to any sidewalk, street, parking lot, or other physical place. A version pushed and promoted by the National Rifle Association that allows any yahoo with a gun to shoot first and ask questions later whenever they feel momentarily afraid of a Black person existing near them. The bad law that must be repealed is Chapter 776.012 of Florida’s state code . . . more commonly known as Florida’s stand-your-ground law.

I had to go full Rachel Maddow on everybody with that long wind-up because the only way to understand the stand-your-ground law is to understand that in its simplest forms all it does is remove the duty to retreat from any situation: “Stand your ground” as a moniker makes sense only in opposition to “duty to retreat.” In this way, stand-your-ground simply extends Castle Doctrine to any place a person is legally allowed to be.

Because of that, stand-your-ground adopts every stupid and violent problem associated with Castle Doctrine and extends the inane, toxic, testosterone-fueled violence to potentially everywhere. Instead of needing to show that your life is actually in danger in states with stand-your-ground, all you have to do is show that you were threatened or just felt threatened in any place you were legally allowed to be. Walking down the street and somebody threatens you and tries to snatch your purse? Pull out your Beretta and stand your ground. Get into a fender bender and the other guy tries to drive away without exchanging insurance information? Pop the trunk, grab your shotgun, and stand your ground. Somebody cuts you in line and starts shouting slurs and invectives at you? Reveal your AR-15 and stand your ground. Stand-your-ground turns being frightened in public into a justification for murder.