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Despite all the lethal mayhem caused by the Stand Your Ground laws now on the books in nearly two dozen states, the gun lobby is inviting more trouble.
In Georgia, for instance, a pernicious bill approved by the House authorizes an array of dangerous laissez-faire gun provisions. One would allow convicted felons who kill someone with an illegally possessed gun to seek justification under the state’s Stand Your Ground law. A second would allow concealed guns on college campuses, despite the opposition of 78 percent of polled Georgians.
In Florida, meanwhile, despite mounting incidents of vigilante justice, the Legislature not only defends the Stand Your Ground provision that was involved in the notorious shooting of the unarmed teenager Trayvon Martin, but it is actively considering other risky measures.
One would allow schoolteachers to pack firearms in class. Another, an amendment to the Stand Your Ground law, would give legal protection to Floridians who fire warning shots in the name of self-defense — a reaction to a domestic-dispute case in which a wife faces heavy prison time for firing at, and missing, her husband. The latter is just the latest in Florida’s steady stream of aberrational gun cases that have surfaced since the law was enacted in 2005, leading 21 other states to do the same.
The pro-gun zealots who occupy the statehouses appeared to let up after the schoolhouse gun massacre in Newtown, Conn., in 2012. But as the country enters a new election cycle, the gun lobby is prodding lawmakers for even more advantageous laws, despite growing evidence that Stand Your Ground, far from protecting the public, hobbles prosecutors and gives defense lawyers unwarranted leeway to invoke self-defense in a mockery of law and order.
The number of justifiable-homicide cases in Florida has jumped by 200 percent since enactment of the law, according to a survey of F.B.I. data by Mayors Against Illegal Guns, a gun-safety group alarmed by the way the statehouses run roughshod over community gun controls.
Justifiable-homicide cases rose 83 percent in Georgia, where the House’s deplorable gun bill has now moved to the Senate, where the gun lobby is busily at work. Georgians should stand up for sanity and rebuff the latest threat to public safety from lawmakers beholden to the gun lobby.
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