(3) Only a few months after Bush signed the Florida law, Hammer worked with NRA operatives and friendly legislators on ALEC’s “Criminal Justice Task Force” to develop a new piece of “Stand Your Ground” model legislation for passage in states across the country. The proposal made a strong impression on ALEC members, who approved model legislation that mirrored the Florida law’s assertion that an individual gunman or a neighborhood watch member “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.” In states across the country, with support from the gun lobby, ALEC’s model legislation—sometimes in mirror form, sometimes with modest alterations—has been enacted over the years since Peadon and Bush dismissed the warning by Florida state Senator Steve Geller that the “Stand Your Ground” law ran the risk of encouraging Floridians to think that “you ought to be able to kill people that are walking toward you on the street because of this subjective belief that you’re worried that they may get in a fight with you.”
Posted on: Tue, 23 Jul 2013 16:18:29 +0000
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