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LOS ANGELES, CA After Michael Dunn shot and killed unarmed 17-year-old Jordan Davis for playing loud music in a Jacksonville convenience store parking lot in 2012, his lawyer cited Floridas controversial Stand Your Ground law in his defense. After an initial mistrial, Dunn was convicted of first degree murder.

Three years after losing Davis, his mother Lucia McBath continues to fight to change the Stand Your Ground law in Florida and across the country, arguing that it empowered Dunn to shoot and kill her teenage son and continues to contribute to the epidemic of gun violence in the U.S. Speaking to ThinkProgress at the politics and entertainment convention Politicon in Los Angeles, McBath said she has a message for the man who signed Floridas Stand Your Ground bill into law: current presidential candidate Jeb Bush.

What I would like to say to him is that the law is not working to protect citizens, she said. Its not doing whatever you thought it was supposed to do. I would hope you would take a look at whats happening across the country, the mass shootings and the individual shootings, and really think about what youve helped to usher in.

Stand Your Ground which also played a part in acquitting George Zimmerman of the killing of unarmed Florida teenager Trayvon Martin allows state residents to use lethal force when they feel threatened, without first attempting to flee or deescalate the situation. For example, in the trial for Davis killing, Dunns lawyer Cory Strolla told the court: Michael Dunn was in a public place where he had a legal right to be, he had no duty to retreat and had the right to stand his ground and meet force with force, including deadly force.

In the five years after then-Governor Jeb Bush signed the law in 2005, so-called justifiable homicides tripled, while the gun homicide rate in the state has remained higher than the national average ever since. Twenty-three other states have since enacted their own Stand Your Ground policies.

Because of the nature of what happened with my son, Stand Your Ground is a very big issue for me, said McBath, now a spokesperson for the advocacy group Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America. There may not be a repeal of the law, but were trying to amend the law, doing things such as placing back in the duty to retreat. When youve taken the duty to retreat out of the law, that just increases the kinds of gun violence that weve seen in this country, and people walking away with immunity. We also need background check legislation, which is the number one way to stem gun violence in this country, and we need to close the dangerous loopholes in our gun laws.

She added that Bush and all other candidates running for president need to be pressed on their policy plans to deal with the ongoing threat of gun violence a debate recently revived by the recent mass shooting at a community college in Oregon.

Yet in the wake of that massacre, Bush has shown little interest in backing legal reforms, famously telling a South Carolina audience that stuff happens and nothing can prevent future acts of gun violence.

McBath called this response disturbing, and suggested it could hurt Bush in next years presidential election, which would have been the first in which her son Jordan could have cast a ballot.

The candidates running for presidential office need to be accountable to us, she said. The American people need to demand from those candidates their platform on gun violence prevention, and I think thats going to be a deciding factor on who we elect.

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Mother Of Slain Teen Says Stand Your Ground Laws 'Empowered ...

Jurors at a murder trial highlighting Nevada's stand your ground law must decide whether an elderly Sparks man is a premeditated killer or justifiably acted in self-defense when he fatally shot one unarmed trespasser and seriously wounded another, lawyers on both sides said Tuesday.

Wayne Burgarello, 74, admits he killed Cody Devine and shot Janai Wilson when he confronted them last year in a rundown, abandoned duplex he owns.

But prosecutors and a defense lawyer offered widely contrasting theories as to his motivation during their opening statements in the Washoe District Court trial, which is expected to last two weeks.

"The state will fail to prove that this is a cold, calculated, premeditated, lying-in-wait murder, simply because ladies and gentlemen it's not," Burgarello's lawyer, Theresa Ristenpart, told the jury.

Burgarello thought Devine was pointing a gun at him in the darkened back bedroom, she said. Although no weapon was found at the crime scene, the retired school teacher may have mistaken a black flashlight that police found beneath Devine's body for a gun, she said.

"Under our laws, Wayne acted in justified self-defense," Ristenpart said. "In a split-second decision ... he shot because he believes his life was threatened in a bedroom where no one should have been."

The case is the latest among several similar in the dozens of states across the nation with stand your ground laws that allow property owners to use deadly force when they fear their life is in danger. Like some others, Nevada's law carries a caveat that the killer must not have been the original aggressor.

Assistant District Attorney Bruce Hahn argued that Burgarello was in fact the initial aggressor.

Armed with a 9-mm pistol in one hand and a .357-caliber handgun in the other, Hahn said Burgarello broke through the chain-locked door of the duplex that had been abandoned for 9 years before advancing to the back bedroom, where Devine and Wilson had been injecting methamphetamine in the early hours of Feb. 13, 2014.

"Calling out, he opens the door and sees two forms on the floor under a blanket, a white comforter, and opens fire," Hahn said.

Read more:
Nevada Stand Your Ground Law at Issue in Trespasser ...

A version of this story first appeared in the April 24 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine.

Abigail Disney, 55, the New York-based philanthropist (and grand-niece ofWalt) who established herself as a prolific documentary producer withPray the Devil Back to Hellin 2008, wasn't looking to move into directing. "I didn't really have time to direct," she admits. But then the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting happened.

"I had wanted to do a project related to the gun culture in our country for a long time, but I thought I could wait until Sandy Hook said to me, 'You can't wait any longer.' That's what kicked me into motion," she explains. The challenge, though, was finding a particular focus for a film that could speak to both sides in what had become a deeply polarized debate.

"Gun films have a way of preaching to the choir," Disney says. "I think no single class of documentary does it more than films about guns because it's such an emotional, polarized subject; but I didn't want to be polarizing. I keep using gun metaphors it's a weird thing that happens when you talk about guns but one of the things that really triggered me was the perception out there that a Stand Your Ground law gives you the right to shoot a person in self-defense. You've actually always had that right. What's different about a Stand Your Ground law is that it relieves you of what has been called for centuries, since the Magna Carta, the 'duty to retreat' from that conflict if there is any opportunity to do so. That is the kind of moral discourse that we aren't having, which seems to be really important."

Determined to find someone in the pro-life world "who would put their weapons down, come to an armistice and be willing to talk in good faith," she discovered, after months of searching, Rev.RobSchenck, a prominent anti-abortion activist. "Rob was the first minister I talked with who had the courage to say, 'Wait a minute. This is a problem. And I need to step into it.'" Then, by accident, Disney says, she learned ofLucyMcBath, a pro-choice woman challenging Florida's Stand Your Ground law in the wake of her son's murder. The result is The Armor of Light,debuting at the Tribeca Film Festival on April 19, which traces the unlikely alliance that develops between Schenckand McBath.

After working on the film for two years, Disneysays she and Schenck "actually developed quite a strong friendship, which was a surprise to me and a really interesting part of the process." As for her hopes for the finished film, she says,"I didn't want to invite people to yet another wrestling match about guns. The goal was to make a film that respected evangelicals and respected their point of view. It's not like this film doesn't have a point of view about guns, a point of view about the NRA. I'm not pulling any punches. But I didn't want to be disrespectful. I didn't want to be snarky. I didn't want to trick anybody into an interview and make them look bad. I wanted everybody's point of view to stand on their own merits. And I wanted us to do the moral homework about gun control that this country hasn't done."

Read more:
Tribeca 2015: Sandy Hook-Inspired Doc Isn't "Another Wrestling Match About Guns"

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