Stand Your Ground

While the nation is rent and bent on accusations and counter-accusations, the National Rifle Association lobbied in Alaska to pass a law similar to the Florida one that has allowed the vigilante shooter of Trayvon Martin to escape unscathed for having used a firearm to cold-bloodedly murder another human being. Under the pretext that he feared for his life.

You have to ask why they are doubling down in the face of this case.  You are tipping the balance in favour of more shootings.  There is no other way to put it.  Senator Hollis French, Anchorage Democrat

This, from a former prosecutor, chairman of the judiciary committee which saw fit to give approval to the Alaska bill.  At the same time as challenges are being mounted in other states.  Where in Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick pledged his veto of a similar bill that might make its way across his desk.  Where, in New York and Iowa legislation has been stalled in committees.

And in Georgia, Texas and other states, lawmakers claimed they would make every effort to repeal laws already on the books.  The nation is taking a careful re-examination of itself in the wake of the killing of a 17-year-old American, at the hands of a 28-year-old American who claimed self-defence when he shot someone he suspected of theft, on February 26.

Was this an instance of racial profiling?  Both were members of visible minorities.  Is there little love lost between black and Hispanic Americans?  Is one group more susceptible to law-breaking than the other?  One more patriotic and reliable than the other?  Unfortunately, there are those who seek their advantage over this issue, convinced this to be yet another opportunity to slag their nation.

Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton are shaping the protests up to polarize the country even further.  And the four-million-member-strong NRA sees its advantage, despite the introspection and the realization that such laws are open to manipulation and questionable conduct, pushing to install it and enforce it, despite the issues so readily identifiable under the circumstances.

Laws don't do bad things.  People do bad things.  Those who attempt to put 'Stand Your Ground' on trial do so from a very weak position.  Marion Hammer, Unified Sportsmen of Florida, age 72, NRA's 1st female president from 1995-1998