Elizabeth Banks Says Stand Your Ground Laws Are ‘BS’ that Grant You ‘Permission to Kill People’

Elizabeth Banks and Michael Rooker in Slither (2006, Gold Circle Films)
Gold Circle Films/Universal Pictures
AWR Hawkins

Mrs. America actress, Charlie’s Angels director, and CBS game show host Elizabeth Banks went on a Twitter tirade proclaiming “Stand Your Ground” laws are “BS,” and suggested they create an environment which “helps nobody but people who want justified reasons to use a deadly weapon.”

“Stand Your Ground is BS. We used to play hide and seek all over the neighborhood on summer nights. Intent was to play. We were kids but some of my cousins were big guys,” Elizabeth Banks wrote on Twitter to her 2.2 million followers. The Pitch Perfect director was responding to the Ohio state House’s passage of “Stand Your Ground” legislation last week.

Banks, 46, went after these laws in her weekend tweet storm, citing an incident the occurred when she and her cousins were kids. They were standing in a neighbor’s yard, she says, around 9 p.m. and a neighbor allegedly mistook them for burglars. Banks tweeted that she and her cousins were “hiding behind trees” when an arrow struck one of the trees. Banks did not say whether the state in which she grew up even had “Stand Your Ground” laws.

Banks described it as a “professional bow and arrow” and said she and her cousins begged the neighbor into allowing them to run off without being targeted again.

“All I can think about when people pretend Stand Your Ground is about anything other than permission to kill people are those moments when I myself stepped onto a neighbor’s property,” the Hunger Games star said.

Banks’ tweets culminated with her asking: “Where is the evidence that Stand Your Ground does anything but endanger your neighbors, their dogs, their kids? It helps nobody but people who want justified reasons to use a deadly weapon.”

To be clear, “Stand Your Ground” laws allow innocent citizens under attack to use force, including lethal force, to save their lives. By design, a “Stand Your Ground” law creates a framework whereby a citizen cannot be held liable for using such force in an instance where fear of losing his own life is demonstrable.

Giffords Law Center — a prominent part of Gabby Giffords’ gun control conglomerate — reports that “Stand Your Ground” laws exist in 27 states, and they deride “Stand Your Ground” statues as a “Shoot First” laws. Their approach sounds very much like that of Banks.

Indeed, “Stand Your Ground” has been proven to benefit minorities and others in society whom leftists like Banks and Giffords claim to be dedicated to helping.

For example, on September 9, 2016, Breitbart News reported data from John Lott’s book, The War on Guns: Arming Yourself Against Gun Control Lies,” which showed that Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law benefited black people more than white people.

Lott wrote: “From 2005 through October 1, 2014, blacks made up 16.7 percent of Florida’s population and 34 percent of the defendants who invoked Stand Your Ground. Black defendants who invoke this statute are actually acquitted four percentage points more frequently that whites who use this very same defense.”

Moreover, Lott stresses that black people benefit even more from “Stand Your Ground” in urban neighborhoods, where it’s far more likely for one to need to defend themselves from an attacker. “Blacks living in high-crime urban areas are the most likely victims of violent crime and the most likely beneficiaries of Stand Your Ground laws.”

After citing the benefits blacks derive from “Stand Your Ground,” Lott noted, “Blacks are disproportionately affected by rules that make self-defense more difficult.”

Elizabeth Banks didn’t mention how people who live in high-crime neighborhoods could (and do) benefit from “Stand Your Ground” laws. Instead, the actress, whose net worth stands at about $50 million, told her followers about that kind of world she doesn’t want to live in.

“I don’t want to live in a world where we fear our neighbors so much that we can’t freely lose a ball/dog/frisbee or cut through somebody’s yard to avoid harassment – all things I have done. What yards did you wander into and why?”

Banks has been calling for gun control for years and did so in December 2015, after the deadly mass shooting in San Bernardino, California. In 2017, after the Las Vegas mass shooting, she tweeted. “It would be wise to ban assault weapons, high-capacity magazines and silencers. None of which is excessive.”

AWR Hawkins is an award-winning Second Amendment columnist for Breitbart News and the writer/curator of Down Range with AWR Hawkins, a weekly newsletter focused on all things Second Amendment, also for Breitbart News. He is the political analyst for Armed American Radio. Follow him on Twitter: @AWRHawkins. Reach him at awrhawkins@breitbart.com. You can sign up to get Down Range at breitbart.com/downrange.

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