Bring out the fireworks! (NOT!)
And according to the news bit in Yahoo, the hearings may happen.
MIAMI (Reuters) – Florida lawmakers will hold hearings this fall on the state’s “Stand Your Ground” self-defense law, which has become a lightning rod for criticism following the acquittal of George Zimmerman in the shooting death of unarmed black teenager Trayvon Martin.
The announcement on Friday by Will Weatherford, the speaker of Florida’s House of Representatives, marked the biggest concession yet by the state’s Republican leaders to protesters’ demands for a top-to-bottom review of the law, which allows people in fear of serious injury to use deadly force to defend themselves rather than retreat.
Except, that the Sun Sentinel caught something that is not a cause of celebration for the haters of Stand Your Ground:
For a brief moment there, Florida House Speaker Will Weatherford stood apart from Republican leaders in Tallahassee by saying he would convene a legislative hearing on the state’s controversial Stand Your Ground law in the wake of the George Zimmerman verdict.
But after suggesting that lessons might be learned and changes made to protect the innocent, Weatherford quickly dashed hopes by choosing one of the law’s biggest supporters to chair the hearing.
So much for an objective review of the law’s unintended consequences.
Consider what the committee chair, Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fort Walton Beach, told the Tampa Bay Times after agreeing to lead the hearing: “I don’t support changing one damn comma of the Stand Your Ground law.”
“It would be reactionary and dangerous to make Floridians less safe to pacify uninformed protesters,” said Gaetz, who chairs the House Criminal Justice Subcommittee.
So there you have it. A committee hearing with a foregone conclusion.
The article goes on admitting that there is simply too many people who support Stand Your ground laws to make a change feasible or even something to consider a thought. They will continue to go after it as Assault Weapon has lost its luster and Universal Background Checks are getting old. They need a new product to hate and the Zimmerman verdict (even though SYG had nothing to do with the case but who are we to challenge The Narrative) is still fresh enough and lied about enough to have some legs.
And we will be there come the Fall, just in case.
Who the hell is this Trayvon guy anyway and who cares???
Nobody said anything about the three black kids who beat and stomped the crap out of a 13 year old white kid on a school bus leaving him with 2 black eyes and a broken arm. I guess racism works only one way?
Yes, yes it does.
The demands to change “Stand Your Ground” remind me of the Revrum’s demands for stricter sentences for dealing in crack cocaine. They demanded them, because “their people” were “devastated” by their own appetites. A few years after the stricter sentences were passed, suddenly the same revrums were screaming and bellowing because “their people” were getting longer sentences for drug crimes. Because of the laws they had demanded.
Since the numbers show blacks — more likely to be victims of crimes — make use of self-defense more often than whites, I suspect changing the laws around self-defense will result in more blacks going to prison. Which will give the revrums another reason to ignore what’s happening around them.
Wait….a panel chaired by someone who fully supports the law being discussed is “unfair”….but putting Biden in charge of a task force investigating tougher gun laws and staffing it with rabid anti-gun members (including one who’s son is serving time for planning a Columbine-style school shooting) is “fair”? “You keep using that word…I do not think it means what you think it means.”
So, let me get this straight.
The progressives are concerned about the unintended consequences of a law suddenly?
Where were these people when Obamacare was being pushed? Oh, that’s right, they were too busy calling the conservatives “tin foil hat conspiracy theorists.” to notice any potential of unintended consequences.
They only care about the results when they’ll not end up in their favor.