Stand Your Ground laws: The NRA’s latest outrage

Let’s make one thing perfectly clear: "Stand Your Ground laws," which, in one form or another, are in effect in 22 states, are another in the long string of outrageous acts perpetrated by the National Rifle Association, the same group that said the Newton Massacre was something freedom loving Americans must just learn to live with and accept.

The picture above depicts then Florida Gov. Jeb Bush signing the first Stand Your Ground Law in 2005. The only woman in that picture is Marion Hammer, a former NRA president and the association’s chief Florida lobbyist. She is credited with writing and pushing through the Florida law.

Hammer has tried to push through other heinous laws such as one that would have fined pediatricians a whopping $5 million and sentenced them to five years in prison if they asked their patients any questions about guns in their homes. The bill effectively stopped physicians from seeking information that might protect the lives of infants and toddlers. Thankfully, a federal judge (and a President Bush appointee) blocked implementation of that law, saying it violated the First Amendment.

Stand Your Ground laws are solely intended to shield the person in a confrontation carrying a gun from using it against someone else in the confrontation who is not carrying one.

Today I was in a telephone conversation with a friend of mine who happens to be a criminal defense attorney in Florida, and I came up with the following scenario: I am a gun-carrying burglar who decides to break into a residential home home in an exclusive neighborhood sometime after midnight. Someone in the home hears me, grabs a baseball bat and comes out to confront me. When I see him, I pull out my gun and shoot him dead.

The attorney said I would be perfectly within my rights under the Stand Your Ground law in Florida because the moment I saw that bat I feared for my life. He said I would be acquitted if the case ever came to trial, which it probably wouldn’t. He also said what I described is essentially what happened in the George Zimmerman/Trayvon Martin confrontation.

Now that’s scary.

Texas produces Senate cowards

270.

That’s about how many Americans Texas senators Coward Cronyn and Coward Cruz murdered today. The blood is dripping from their cowardly fingers.

According to every legitimate public opinion poll, the overwhelming majority of Americans favor stricter background checks before a person can purchase a weapon designed to do only one thing: kill. A majority favors the banning of magazines that hold more than 10 bullets and semi automatic attack war weapons in private hands. Even a majority of NRA members favor these regulations.

This is either Cronyn or Cruz; I can't tell them apart.

But, as we’ve all learned, money trumps democracy every single time, especially when dealing with a body of legislators as cowardly as Cronyn, Cruz and their ilk. The gun dealers and the gun manufacturers have the money; the American people don’t. Cowards Cronyn and Cruz simply lack the courage to stand up to special interests. Instead, they see it as their mission to make sure that America’s mass murderers are the most well armed mass murderers the world has ever known.

270.

That’s how many Americans are shot and killed every day of the year. But, according to Cowards Cruz and Cronyn, their deaths are not worth preventing. According to Cowards Cronyn and Cruz, the children killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School should be forgotten. Their brief lives and their tragic deaths are not anything to be concerned about, according to the two cowards we sent to the Senate.

Instead of looking at the overwhelming need for safety and sanity in the United States, Cowards Cronyn and Cruz blindly and unthinkingly catered to the whims of the gun lobby.

Between 20 and 40 percent of all guns sold in the United States today were sold without the seller performing any kind of a background check. According to a New York Times story on Wednesday, it is easy for criminals to purchase weapons over the Internet, weapons that will later be used to kill innocent Americans during the commission of criminal activities.

Because Cowards Cronyn and Cruz could not come up with logical explanations to explain their cowardly stance, they resorted to what they do best: lying. They claimed requiring stricter background checks would result in a national gun registry, even though the bill contained specific language to prohibit that. One of their fellow murderers, Senator Coward Coburn of Oklahoma argued the bill would raise taxes. Another, Senator Coward Flake of Arizona said the bill would require a background check on a gun sold via an office bulletin board. (Actually, I wish the bill did require that, but it didn’t. Another lie.)

The people of Texas are too wishy-washy to do anything about this, but I’m sincerely hoping that voters in other states will be angered enough by the actions of this cowardly minority in the Senate (a majority, in fact, did vote for sensible gun legislation, but the cowards made sure a majority didn’t win this time) to replace them with representatives who put the will of the people ahead of loyalty to a lobby.

As President Obama said last night: "Sooner or later, we are going to get this right. The memories of these children demand it, and so do the American people."

The enemy of my enemy is my friend

The blood-drenched National Rifle Association exposed -- a must-see video.