A federal court has struck down one of the more nonsensical of Florida’s many risky gun laws — one that banned the state’s thousands of doctors from ever discussing firearms with their patients. There was no evidence that this was ever a problem or a common occurrence, yet the law was enacted last year on the strength of an anecdote from a couple who complained to their gun-obsessed legislator that their physician inquired if they owned guns.

The court wisely upheld the free-speech rights of physicians. Safety-minded Floridians must hope similar judicial wisdom applies eventually to the state’s far less laughable Stand Your Ground law.

That gravely loosened self-defense statute was invoked in the shooting death in February of an unarmed teenager, Trayvon Martin, by a self-appointed neighborhood watchman, George Zimmerman. Mr. Zimmerman initially walked free, but after a public furor he was charged with second-degree murder — a demonstration of the law’s dangerous vagaries, which have left courts, prosecutors and police fumbling with contradictory interpretations that abuse justice, more than ensure it.

In the boom in self-defense claims caused by the 7-year-old law, some killers in drug shootouts, gang wars and street brawls have walked free while comparable crimes end with long prison sentences in neighboring local jurisdictions, according to a detailed study of nearly 200 cases by The Tampa Bay Times.