The NRA's Florida "Gunshine" has led to a tripling of justifiable homicides
by Lefty CoasterFollow
Want to get a concealed weapons permit in Florida? Cash strapped Florida lowered the fee from $85 to $70 and extended the period from five to seven years to make it cheaper and easier to have a concealed carry permit in Florida. The Florida legislature has become the NRA's laboratory for expanding the envelope of gun freedoms. These new innovations happen first in pliant Florida and then the NRA exports the prototype Florida Gun Laws to other states like they did with these idiotic "Stand your Ground" laws.
Florida now has a mind boggling 900,000 people licensed to carry concealed weapons, and that total is climbing rapidly.
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A Blistering Editorial about Stand Your Ground Laws at CNN:
My Ethics: 'Stand your ground' laws are invitation to kill
Editor’s note: Edward L. Queen II directs the D. Abbot Turner Program in Ethics and Servant Leadership at Emory University’s Center for Ethics.
By Edward L. Queen II, Special to CNN
(CNN) – The true architects of the Trayvon Martin killing not only will not go unpunished, they also will go unnamed.
Those who created the conditions for Martin’s killing – those who, one might say, invited it – were the Florida legislators who voted for a law that undid not only decades of positive law regarding self-defense but also centuries of legal tradition.
In promoting “stand your ground” laws, self-proclaimed conservatives become grossly irresponsible radicals, drastically and dramatically undoing centuries of accumulated wisdom in their evisceration of the traditional formulation of self-defense.
They rip apart the traditional understanding of the legitimate use of deadly force in self-defense and invite people to kill.
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Florida: fertile ground for pro-gun laws
BY TOLUSE OLORUNNIPA
Yet the controversial 2005 law was just one of dozens of pro-gun laws that have gotten their start in Florida — forging the state’s “Gunshine” reputation — before spreading to other parts of the country.
“The NRA has been a victim of their own success,” said Dan Gelber, a Miami Beach attorney who fought many of the gun expansion laws as a legislator in the 2000s. “They’ve won every big issue, so they’re left trying to fight over fringe issues. Lots of elected officials are afraid to cross them.”
From bring-your-guns-to-work laws to all-out bans on local gun restrictions, Florida has become a haven for Second Amendment enthusiasts. Statistics show the pro-gun agenda has triggered more gun sales, more permits and a sharp rise in justifiable homicides.
• Florida has about 900,000 licensed concealed weapons carriers, far more than any other state and nearly twice as many as Texas.
• The number of annual applications for concealed gun licenses has grown from 26,800 to 123,000 since 1998 (February was a record month for application requests, with 53,835).
• The number of “justifiable homicides” — typically shooting deaths deemed legal under Stand Your Ground — has tripled in the last seven years.
..., murders by firearm have increased 45 percent since 1999, despite an overall drop-off in violent crime, according to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.
I am a gun owner and the idea of so many citizens of a state carrying lethal force with them everywhere they go backed up by a law that encourages them to shoot first and ask questions later scares the living shit out of me. I'm just glad to be living in a saner corner of the country far from Florida and its army of armed and dangerous citizens.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/04/01/1079649/-The-NRA-s-Florida-Gunshine-has-led-to-a-tripping-of-justifiable-homicides-
DO SOMETHING!
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