Trayvon Martin: how 'Stand Your Ground' laws in 20 states spurred hundreds of shootings The Arizona case has been called "the reverse Trayvon Martin." Cordell Jude, 22, who will go on trial next month for the murder of Daniel Adkins, 29, was black and the dead man was Hispanic. Arizona followed the example of Florida's ground-breaking Stand Your Ground law passed in 2005 and enacted its own dramatically expanded self-defence statute the next year. This legislation gives people who feel threatened the right to deploy lethal force rather than choose to retreat if they can - not just within their homes, but anywhere they have a legal right to be. With the blunt Western swagger of a state that was the scene of the shoot-out at the OK Corral, the Arizona law is officially called "Make My Day" -- the catch-phrase of Clint Eastwood's vigilante police officer in the Dirty Harry films. In some states, even gun rights supporters of Stand Your Ground laws shy away from the vigilante comparisons; not in Arizona evidently. The confrontation took place in early April 2012. Mr Adkins, who according to his family say had the mental age of a 13-year old, was walking his pet Labrador past a fast food drive-through counter when Mr Jude pulled around the corner to pick up his order, his pregnant fiancée sitting next to him. Mr Adkins version of events, like Trayvon's, will of course never be known. What seems clear is that Mr Jude slammed on the brakes, narrowly missed Mr Adkins, and the two men then exchanged insults. Mr Jude told police that Adkins "air swung" his hands in the direction of the vehicle and that he believed the walker was wielding a three-foot metal pipe or bat, a weapon that was never found. The driver said that he drew his pistol, which he had a permit to carry, when Mr Adkins again raised his arms - and shot Mr Adkins in the chest. His fiancée called the police and Mr Jude told them he had no choice but to shoot as he believed Mr Adkins would have killed them had he not fired. To the dismay of the Adkins family, it appeared that Mr Jude's assertions that his was a "Make My Day" case were going to be accepted. Why didn't he shoot my son in the leg? Daniel Adkins Sr asked at the time. It would've stopped him. He hit him right straight in the heart. He shot to kill. Only after three agonising months and an intense lobbying campaign, though one that garnered nothing like the attention of the Trayvon Martin case, was the shooter arrested. He will go on trial for second degree murder, the same charge brought against Mr Zimmerman, on Aug 14. While Mr Jude was still a free man, the Adkins family wrote to Trayvon's parents. "Nobody knows the pain of losing a son in this way besides them," Mr Adkins' father said. His mother, she just wants justice for her son, just like we do. I'll go anywhere it takes, talk shows, make signs, whatever it takes. I'm not letting my son die in vain. Such killings and prosecutions have put the focus on self-defence and lethal force laws, and the ease with which they have been adopted across a country with such a deeply-engrained gun culture. On Friday Mr Obama added his voice to those criticising Stand Your Ground law. "If we're sending a message as a society in our communities that someone who is armed potentially has the right to use those firearms, even if there's a way for them to exit from a situation, is that really going to be contributing to the kind of peace and security and order that we'd like to see?" he asked. And for those who resist that idea that we should think about something like these 'stand your ground' laws, I'd just ask people to consider: if Trayvon Martin was of age and armed, could he have stood his ground on that sidewalk? And do we actually think that he would have been justified in shooting Mr Zimmerman, who had followed him in a car, because he felt threatened? His attorney-general Eric Holder had earlier in the week slammed the same laws, noting that they "sow dangerous conflict in our neighbourhoods by allowing, and perhaps encouraging, violent situations to escalate in public... These laws try to fix something that was never broken. But because the laws have been enacted separately by states, not the federal government, the nation's top justice official has no influence over them. Indeed conservative commentators have lambasted Mr Obama and Mr Holder for trying to bully states over laws they are entitled to adopt. There is no sign, however, that Mr Obama, Mr Holder or the protesters will get their way. The laws themselves have powerful backers, not least the gun rights lobby that has helped to block even limited new gun controls proposed after the spate of recent shooting sprees. Quite the opposite, in fact: even as the controversy raged last week, a congressman in Iowa was introducing legislation to toughen Stand Your Gun laws. And Jan Brewer, the Arizona governor, was defending her state's "Make My Day" statutes. There is just as much dispute over the impact of the laws on crime and murder. A recent study by two Texas academics concluded that the annual total of additional "justifiable homicides" - in which a suspected criminal was killed in the act - had risen by 600 in states with Stand Your Ground laws, even as other murder rates fell. Similarly, a Wall Street Journal investigation identified a 50 per cent increase in "justifiable" cases in such states since the legislation was enacted. But in his own breakdown of the numbers, John Lott, a conservative academic and author of More Guns, Less Crime , concluded that overall killings are down in states with the new laws. Such statistical jousting of course is of little relevance to the Adkins parents - whose only wish, for which they have told supporters that they are praying, is that Arizona's Make My Day defence does not allow the man who shot their son dead to walk away, like Mr Zimmerman, a free man.