"Stand your ground" laws just mean there is no duty(law) to seek retreat above all else before actively defending yourself.
"Castle", in California, simply means that if an intruder has bypassed a control (picked a lock, broke a window, etc) to gain entry then one can proceed on the assumption that they are there to do grave bodily harm. (And thus act accordingly.)
Close... they require the person standing-ground to perceive a threat. The laws do vary state-by-state, but they tend to be universally broad.
"For example, Michigan's stand-your-ground law, MCL 780.972, provides that "[a]n individual who has not or is not engaged in the commission of a crime at the time he or she uses deadly force may use deadly force against another individual anywhere he or she has the legal right to be with no duty to retreat if ... [t]he individual honestly and reasonably believes that the use of deadly force is necessary to prevent" the imminent death, great bodily harm, or sexual assault of himself or another individual."
According to this, if I thought someone was a habitual sex offender, I think I'd be within my right to sniper him from a mile off... so... clearly that's a stretch... but it has been stretched pretty thin before.
> It’s not that he wanted to shoot the intruders next door, he said, “but if I go out there to see what the hell’s going on, what choice am I going to have?” The dispatcher told him again to wait for the police, not to go outside with his shotgun, that nobody needed to die for stealing.
> Horn was unconvinced. “The laws have been changed…since September the first, and I have a right to protect myself,” Horn said. “I ain’t gonna let them get away with this shit. I’m sorry, this ain’t right, buddy … They got a bag of loot … Here it goes buddy, you hear the shotgun clicking and I’m going.”
> “Move, you’re dead,” he told the men, then he fired three times, killing both men, and returned to the phone in his house.
> “I had no choice, they came in the front yard with me, man, I had no choice,” he told the dispatcher. Police arrived seconds later. Horn wasn’t arrested, nor was he indicted by a grand jury that later considered the case.
IIRC IANAL: in a self defence situation you are required to use the least amount of force necessary or run away if possible (e.g. someone threatens to stab you in an alley. You may shoot them only if you can't escape. And you may only shoot them if there was no other option). The castle doctrine removes the «try to run away first» part, because it is not reasonable to expect someone to flee thier own home.
Stand-Your-Ground laws remove the «escape first» part outside of the home aswell.
You are always required to only respond with appropriate force. So you may not gun down someone who isn't a threat to your life.
Most versions of the "castle doctrine" while they have lower bars than is generally the case for self-defense outside of the home still require more than simple trespass (the term can apply to anything from merely eliminating the duty to retreat when in the home, to doing that plus presuming justification on a lower bar than would otherwise be the case.)
"Stand your ground" laws eliminate the duty to retreat outside the home for self-defense, but don't generally lower the justification threshold.
