The Fatal Flaw in Florida-Style Gun Laws As the investigation of the shooting death of the teenager Trayvon Martin by a self-appointed neighborhood watchman goes forward in Florida, news accounts are reporting a toll of shootings, knifings and other violent homicides in which the state's dangerous Stand Your Ground law was successfully claimed as a defense. The killings included domestic disputes, barroom brawls and drug violence, according to The Tampa Bay Times, which surveyed 130 cases in which the 2005 law has been invoked. Seventy percent of the cases involved a fatality; more than half of the cases did not have to go to trial. So far, that is the laissez-faire situation in the Trayvon Martin slaying. The civilian shooter, George Zimmerman, ignored a 911 dispatcher's instructions, tracked the teen he found suspicious, unholstered his gun and fired - and then claimed immunity under the law. With the boy dead, Mr. Zimmerman was taken at his word when he claimed that his life was threatened in a confrontation. The victim was unarmed, walking back from a store. A videotape of Mr. Zimmerman's arrival handcuffed at the local police headquarters shows none of the cuts and bruises he claimed resulted from an attack by the teenager. Audio experts have been asked to analyze police tapes of screams from the scene and a possible racial epithet uttered by Mr. Zimmerman about the black teenager. Reported differences between local and state investigators over whether to charge Mr. Zimmerman initially only underline the dangerous vagaries of Stand Your Ground laws passed at the demand of the gun lobby in a score of states. Their lethal flaw is the abolition of the traditional legal duty to retreat from a threat before resorting to deadly force. The air of legalized mayhem stirred by the shooting is underscored by the separate news that Florida residents continue to flock in record numbers to obtain concealed-weapon permits. There are 900,000 residents licensed to carry guns in the state amid a population of 19 million people, with officials reporting 58,000 applications and renewals last month. The tragedy of Trayvon Martin is ongoing as political leaders nationally and in Florida extend personal sympathy while ducking the underlying gun-control issue. Stand Your Ground should be abolished from the land.