Translation: “The NRA lobbyist told me it wouldn’t be a problem.” See how well that worked out?
After reports emerged this week that every single Florida state senator voted to pass what has become known as Florida’s state Stand Your Ground bill in 2005, then-Senate Democratic leader Les Miller said he regretted that vote more than any other he took in the Senate, and didn’t understand the law at the time.
“I’m not at an attorney,” Miller told the Tampa Bay Times. “So we relied on the advice of our staff and the lawyers in the caucus.” That advice, he said, was that the law would allow people to defend their homes and their cars – not to become vigilantes on the streets.
Had he known it would be used in street confrontations, he would not have voted for the bill, he suggested. “People are dying because of the ‘stand your ground’ law,” Miller said. “It was a bad bill.”
News reports and judicial analysis from the time suggest there were warnings about the law’s effects even before the law’s passage. But Miller’s comments reflect disagreement and confusion about the bill during debate, with some insisting it only protected the home and vehicle.
Most Republicans are as nearsighted (dumb) as Miller is. The rest are corrupt, Capitalist, Fascists.
There is no way the debate on the Bill was so thin that he could have failed to understand this was a shoot first measure. He buckled to the NRA and now he’s trying to duck the blowback. Sounds just like our Congresscritters. Nobody told me the Patriot Act authorized domestic spying! Bullshit.