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http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nati...7_gunlaw27.html

 

 

Florida OKs new self-defense law

 

By Manuel Roig-Franzia

 

The Washington Post

 

MIAMI — It is either a Wild West revival, a return to the days of "shoot first and ask questions later," or a triumph for the "Castle Doctrine," the notion that enemies invade personal space at their peril.

 

Such dueling rhetoric marked the debate over a measure that passed the Florida Legislature so emphatically that National Rifle Association backers plan to take it to states across the nation over the next year. The law will let Floridians "meet force with force," erasing the "duty to retreat" when they fear for their lives outside of their homes, in their cars or businesses, or on the street.

 

Gov. Jeb Bush signed the legislation yesterday.

 

NRA Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre said the Florida law is the "first step of a multi-state strategy" that he hopes can capitalize on a political climate dominated by conservative opponents of gun control at the state and national levels.

 

"There's a big tailwind we have, moving from state legislature to state legislature," LaPierre said. "The South, the Midwest, everything they call 'flyover land' — if John Kerry held a shotgun in that state, we can pass this law in that state."

 

The Florida measure says any person "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."

 

Florida law already lets residents defend themselves against attackers if they can prove they could not have escaped. The new law would allow them to use deadly force even if they could have fled and says that prosecutors must automatically presume that would-be victims feared for their lives if attacked.

 

The overwhelming vote margins and bipartisan support for the Florida gun bill — it passed unanimously in the state Senate and was approved 94 to 20 in the state House — have alarmed some national gun-control advocates, who say a measure that made headlines in Florida slipped beneath their radar.

 

"I am in absolute shock," said Sarah Brady, chairwoman of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence. "If I had known about it, I would have been down there."

 

Critics argue the new Florida measure is so broad it will cause fights between neighbors, parents at soccer games or drinking buddies to escalate into gunfights.

 

 

 

 

"It's almost like a duel clause," said state Rep. Dan Gelber, a Miami Beach Democrat and former federal prosecutor. "People ought to have to walk away if they can."

 

Gelber believes Florida's major prosecutor groups, populated by state attorneys who must run for re-election, stayed out of the fight and many lawmakers supported the bill because they fear the NRA. Law-enforcement groups did not try to block the measure.

 

Florida Attorney General Charlie Crist, a leading candidate for the Republican governor's nomination in 2006, was among those who wrote letters of support. With that kind of high-level backing, Rep. Dennis Baxley, a Republican from Ocala who sponsored the House measure, could ridicule critics as "hysterical."

 

As in the mid-1980s fights over the right-to-carry law, the state's big newspapers have almost unanimously opposed Baxley's measure, although their outrage did little to stop its easy glide. South Florida Sun-Sentinel columnist Howard Goodman said the state was "getting in touch with its inner Dirty Harry."

 

Martin Dyckman of the St. Petersburg Times told tourists, a bedrock of the state's economy, to stay away: "Lebanon might be safer."

 

Marion Hammer, a Florida lobbyist and former NRA president who conceived the new measure, said the old law unfairly forced Floridians to make split-second decisions about a criminal's intent, and notes that was deemed impossible generations ago by Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes.

 

"Detached reflection," Holmes said in one of his most oft-quoted pronouncements, "cannot be demanded in the presence of an uplifted knife."

 

In other developments:

 

Bullet ID numbers: California Attorney General Bill Lockyer introduced legislation yesterday that would require all bullets sold in the state to bear tiny identification numbers to help investigators solve crimes. Anyone bringing bullets into the state not bearing the tiny serial number etched by laser could be punished for up to a year in prison.

 

Guns in bars: Arizona Gov. Janet Napolitano, a Democrat, vetoed a bill Monday that would have let people bring their guns into bars and restaurants as long as they weren't drinking alcohol and the businesses didn't prohibit firearms.