This may sound quite redundant to those familiar with the second amendment to the constitution, but apparently in most states, you are expected to attempt to flee from a perceived threat and only use force if you are cornered, this being the only form of legal self-defense most courts will entertain.

What I found most interesting about the article was not so much the age-old conflict between the gun-rights and gun-control people, but the bizarre add-ons to this piece of legislation that make a mockery of the concept of rights, such as this bill they are trying to import from Michigan:
Introduced last month by State Representative Dennis K. Baxley, a Republican who also sponsored "stand your ground," the new proposal would impose criminal penalties on businesses that try to stop employees from keeping guns in their cars while parked at work
In other words, your right to carry a gun extends beyond your own property and somehow can take legal precedent over the right of a business-owner to guarantee a secure environment for his/her employees on his/her property (not that workers in the US have ever been inclined to shoot up their places of employment..). It's hard to tell who has more contempt for individual rights these days, liberals or conservatives. One assumes Republicans have no issue with companies mandating drug tests for their employees (after all, workers, like myself, are free to seek employment elsewhere if they have a problem with someone asking them to pee in a cup as a condition of employment). Yet somehow, such an employee/employer agreement apparently can be outlawed when it comes to firearms.

This type of selective interpretation of individual rights has become par for the course among the so-called advocates of smaller government. Rights for conservatives seem to be whatever they want them to be, for instance, it's not enough for those who oppose reproductive rights to the so-called "rights" of the fetus. In several states they have enacted ridiculous legislation that bar pharmacies from dismissing pharmacists who refuse to fill birth control prescriptions. Again, the rights of individuals- in this case the owners, managers and stockholders trying to run their pharmacies- don't count if they don't fit the social design aspiration of those in power. While I would defend the right of an business owner to refuse any service he or she doesn't consider appropriate- however irrational their motivation might be- their is no "right" to a job that a business owner must provide, and to have government protect a pharmacist who refuses to honor the terms of his/her employment is outrageous.

And don't even get me started on the Eminent Domain decision..