Chiefs parade shooting could be a new test of expanded ‘stand your ground’ protections

— The man accused of firing the first shots at the Kansas City Chiefs Super Bowl rally told authorities he felt threatened, while a second man said he pulled the trigger because someone was shooting at him, according to court documents. Experts say that even though the shooting left one bystander dead and roughly two dozen people injured, 23-year-old Lyndell Mays and 18-year-old Dominic Miller might have good cases for self-defense through the state’s “stand your ground” law. “This illustrates in a dramatic way the fundamental problem, especially when it’s a public gathering where there are thousands and thousands of people, and even a highly trained police officer often cannot avoid injuring others in a gunfire exchange in a public place,” said Spitzer, who wrote the book “Guns Across America: Reconciling Gun Rules and Rights.” Trial attorney Daniel Ross described the stand your ground law as a “formidable defense” that he and many other Kansas City defense attorneys anticipate will be used in Mays’ and Miller’s cases. When Republican lawmakers in 2016 expanded the state’s already-extensive self-defense protections by enacting the current stand your ground law, Black Missouri lawmakers raised concerns. Zimmerman, a self-appointed neighborhood watchman who thought Martin looked suspicious, wasn’t arrested for 44 days after the Feb. 26, 2012, shooting as police in Sanford, Florida, insisted that Florida’s stand your ground law prohibited charges.