The 4'11" power behind the "Stand your Ground" legislation
This law was NRA driven from the get go. It was not introduced because of citizen demand or need. It was introduced and passed by the Florida legislature purely because the NRA wanted it. We can all thank Marion Hammer.
"So maybe call her the Lady Gaga of guns. She certainly is wild about firearms. “I’m four foot- 11, I’m 67 years old. If you come at me, and I felt that my life was in danger or that I was going to be injured, I wouldn’t hesitate to shoot you,” she declared the other day.
But do not call her simply a lobbyist. To do so drastically underestimates her while equally overestimating the state legislature.
Hammer does not so much lobby as orchestrate the legislature to do her bidding and therefore the bidding of the NRA, where she formerly served for three years as its first woman president. She continued to serve as a consultant and lobbyist known for standing her own ground. The NRA credits her with being the propelling force behind the Stand Your Ground Law that the Sanford chief of police and local prosecutor cited when they instructed the investigating detectives not to arrest George Zimmerman for shooting 17 year-old Trayvon Martin in February.
She has acknowledged having a hand in actually drafting the enabling Stand Your Ground legislation back in 2004. She introduced it through a proxy, State Sen. Dennis Baxley, whom she had previously arranged to receive the NRA’s 2004 Defender of Freedom Award."
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Yet, she does not seem to be one of those NRA executives who are really just doing the bidding of the gun industry by cynically seeking to manipulate decent working people with the fear that government is trying to take away their rights. She seems to be a true believer and she has proposed a simple way to ensure gun rights.
“Get rid of all the liberals,” she said.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/03/28/marion-hammer-woman-behind-stand-your-ground.html
http://www.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=488695
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