Make My Day - Research Paper Example

It protects citizens from charges if they apply force to resist an attack at their places of residence. Previously, it was difficult to quantify reasonable force to be used to dispel enemy attack, and many innocent citizens faced prosecution in case they confronted these burglars with any amount of force. This improved law justified the use of any force, including one that may result in the intruder’s death, to protect citizens from court litigations that may result in them serving a jail term (Willibanks, p. 182). Starting from Colorado, eighteen other states also joined the fray after they realized that it had substantially reduced its crime rates due to this change of approach in tackling crime.

Among these states are: Alabama, Oklahoma, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Texas, Tennessee and Florida. Thesis statement Adoption of “Make my day law” in some American states reduced crime rates and general disorderliness that was being experienced at the time. “Make my day law” and crime rates In Oklahoma, the events that led to enactment of this law started from a real life experience of Dr. Frank Sommer. On a night as he was sleeping in his house in Tulsa, he heard sounds of two intruders in his garage.

He picked his gun and headed downstairs to the garage to check what was wrong. As he looked through the keyhole of the door leading to his garage, he noticed two people busy ransacking his two cars. As he opened the door to confront the two, a sudden power failure made the garage dark and he could not locate exactly where the two burglars were. He then shot randomly, and one of the robbers was shot dead. The debates that arose thereafter were of the favor that the state adopts this law since you do not commit any crime when protecting what belongs to you.

The mover of the bill, Senator Charles Ford expressed his dissatisfaction with the fact that citizens must suffer when protecting their homes and families (Stout, p. 147). According to Clarke (p. 26), the effects of this legislation was immediately felt in this state; According to statistics provided by the authorities, within the first 6 months of its enactment, crime levels went down by half. In 1986, there were close to 60,000 robbery cases; this reduced to 31,656 by the year 2000. They go ahead to show that by the year 2003, eleven buglers were already killed by home owners.

These indicators, however, only showed home robberies as the crime that was significantly reduced; all other criminal acts virtually remained constant. This was a first step towards actualizing a crime free society. The state of Florida is not keeping records on the impact of these new laws on crime levels; but information from the judicial circles indicates that cases of self defense have significantly reduced. This is attributed to the new law that guards citizens from litigations relating to crimes committed within their premises, in the event that the intruder suffers physical harm.

Initial “Make my day” law enacted in Florida was well intended, and helped reduce crime rate (Stout, p. 172). It set laws that protected the owners from prosecution when attacked in their home. The authorities eventually pushed for the tougher “stand your grounds” legislation that extended this immunity cover to business premises, along