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The Gov­ern­ment is be­ing urged to im­ple­ment safe­guards to pre­vent abuse of any pro­posed stand-your-ground leg­is­la­tion.

For­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj is­sued the warn­ing in a tele­phone in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia fol­low­ing Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s an­nounce­ment that Gov­ern­ment is con­sid­er­ing the Flori­da mod­el as a tem­plate for draft­ing sim­i­lar laws lo­cal­ly.

The Flori­da “stand-your-ground” law, en­act­ed in 2005, has sparked wide­spread de­bate in the Unit­ed States. Ac­cord­ing to sec­tions 776.012 and 776.013 of the Flori­da Statutes, the law broad­ens tra­di­tion­al self-de­fence by re­mov­ing the com­mon law du­ty to re­treat, pre­sum­ing le­gal jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for us­ing force in one’s home, ve­hi­cle, or res­i­dence, and of­fer­ing im­mu­ni­ty from pros­e­cu­tion if the use of force falls with­in statu­to­ry guide­lines.