Expanded self-defense laws mean more guns, crime

On April 28, Justin Boersma went to a Starbucks in Lake Worth Beach. He didn’t get coffee. He got a first-degree murder charge.

A simple trip led to a confrontation. Without a firearm, it would have ended with bad feelings and minor damage. But the 19-year-old Boersma had a Glock 9mm. So it ended with Samuel Rossetti dead.

According to the probable cause affidavit, Boersma cut off Rossetti in the drive-through line. Rossetti responded by approaching Boersma’s car, yanking off the door handle and banging on the window.

Rossetti then walked back to his truck. He was “several feet” from Boersma’s car, investigators said, when Boersma fired five times.

Boersma has pleaded not guilty. A status conference is scheduled for Jan. 10. This incident joins other infamous Florida encounters where guns were the problem, not the solution.

For once, however, this state is not the center of the self-defense debate. Attention is on Kenosha, Wisconsin, where Kyle Rittenhouse beat murder charges, and Brunswick, Georgia, where three men did not.

Though circumstances vary from case to case, there’s one similarity. All the shooters were carrying firearms or had them nearby and used those weapons irresponsibly.

Last month, the Supreme Court heard arguments about New York’s requirement that people seeking concealed weapons permits show proper cause. Overturning the law would be a massive expansion of rights under the Second Amendment.

Florida leads the nation in concealed weapons permits and is one of the easiest states in which to obtain them. No surprise there. Florida started the trend of encouraging violent confrontations by passing the first “stand your ground” law in 2005.

Supporters claim that such laws amount to freedom. But even the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who wrote the seminal rulings, said the Second Amendment “is not unlimited” and “is not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.”

A bill in the Legislature would allow Floridians to carry firearms openly without a permit. The sponsor is Rep. Anthony Sabatini, R-Howey in the Hills. He might be the most conservative Republican in a very conservative House.

Such legislation has failed before. There is no Senate version. But Gov. DeSantis and Republicans in Tallahassee just turned COVID-19 quackery into state law. Never overestimate the Legislature.

The premise behind the push for unlimited Second Amendment and self-defense rights rests on the faulty premise that people will use those rights wisely. Boersma shows again that many people do not.

Rossetti was wrong to approach Boersma’s car. Inside was Boersma’s infant child. But Rossetti had walked away when Boersma fired.

“Justin acknowledged,” investigators wrote, “that at no time did he see the victim with a weapon and he did not know if there was one in” Rossetti’s truck.

The “castle doctrine” once meant that people had the right to protect themselves in their homes. “Stand your ground” expanded that right to wherever someone happens to be.

Yet self-defense claims fail if a defendant initiated the fatal confrontation, as in Brunswick. Consider other cases in Florida that arose from everyday irritations.

Three years ago in Clearwater, Michael Drejka shot and killed Markeis McGlockton, who had illegally parked in a handicapped spot. Like Rossetti, McGlockton was walking away. Drejka will get out of prison in 2038.

In 2014, Michael Dunn shot and killed Jordan Davis at a Jacksonville-area gas station after Dunn complained about Davis’ loud music. Dunn fired 10 times. He got life in prison.

Also in 2014, Curtis Reeves — a retired Tampa police captain — shot and killed Chad Oulson over Oulson’s texting during a movie. Reeves’ trial finally may come next year.

Unlike Rittenhouse, those defendants haven’t had $2 million legal funds raised by groups with a warped concept of heroism. The owner of the property Rittenhouse claimed to be protecting hadn’t asked for such help. The Kenosha police chief didn’t want out-of-town vigilantes.

Like all those other defendants, though, Rittenhouse was unprepared to handle his weapon in a situation he could have avoided. Boersma, Drejka, Dunn and Reeves used deadly force when it wasn’t necessary.

But the deadly force was too close. They bought it to protect themselves. How did that work out?