The Florida Sheriff’s Association agreed earlier this week to support the state’s “Stand Your Ground” law.

Polk County Sheriff Grady Judd, the new president of the association, announced Friday that members agreed earlier this week without opposition to support the law “as currently written.”

“Our current judicial system is comprised of multiple checks and balances to ensure fair and equitable application of all laws, including ‘stand your ground,’” Judd said in a prepared statement.

When the National Rifle Association-backed law was approved in 2005, the association remained neutral on the issue.

Rep. Matt Gaetz, a Fort Walton Beach Republican who supports “stand your ground” and whose subcommittee will hold a hearing on the law, called it enlightening that a group that “has traditionally been tepid” on the law now “recognizes its value.”

“I think they recognize that Florida is a safer place when our citizens don’t have a duty to retreat and run,” Gaetz said.

The voice vote Tuesday came with 57 of the state’s sheriffs in attendance.

The sheriffs support the law as written.

Florida’s Stand Your Ground Law
A person who is not engaged in an unlawful activity, and who is attacked in any other place where he or she has a right to be has no duty to retreat and has the right to stand his or her ground and meet force with force, including deadly force if he or she reasonably believes it is necessary to do so to prevent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony.
F.S. §776.013(3)