by Jon Ralston Mon, 07/22/2013 - 13:16
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The Legislature is a strange place for most NV residents (really, you have no idea!), so @KLeonardNV and… t.co/V1asoo1sm7
1 hour 39 min ago.
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If you are not subscribed to Team @TheNVIndy's Behind the Bar newsletter about the NV Legislature, you are missing… t.co/Lpt4uavGF3
2 hours 14 min ago.
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Good morning from The #WeMatter State.
On this date in 1920, NV ratified the 19th Amendment giving women the right… t.co/JXmqzYGW9z
2 hours 45 min ago.
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Here is a wonderful TikTok about Day One of the legislative session from our audience engagement manager,… t.co/A6FC6AfNuK
14 hours 36 min ago.
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It's good to be the governor, Chapter 6,792... t.co/NpiT7pPN67
16 hours 19 min ago.
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Not to start a fight -- I am Zen Jon, after all -- but on which badge does Taylor look happier? t.co/TIwufikNuN
18 hours 31 min ago.
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This is a monumental achievement for NV.
Sure, we've has female speakers and African-American leaders in the Senat… t.co/5byoUmFtpv
18 hours 52 min ago.
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Read this whole thread and follow all of our reporters covering the Nevada legislative session that begins today.… t.co/vF8Jz8YFY4
22 hours 44 sec ago.
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She gets me, she really gets me. t.co/Ng283WlB7M
23 hours 54 min ago.
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The #WeMatter presidential primary is exactly one year from today, according to schedule approved by the DNC over t… t.co/Ozu4Ej5Y7H
1 day 1 hour ago.
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Good morning from The #WeMatter State.
On this date in 1933, "Home Means Nevada" was formally adopted as NV's stat… t.co/7hE4MgDAqr
1 day 2 hours ago.
As Democrats who were there in 2011 try to distinguish it from Florida’s law and as that session’s majority leader, now-Rep. Steven Horsford, says states should reevaluate such statutes, a little history is in order.
Florida, governed by Jeb Bush and with a speaker named Marco Rubio, passed its law in 2005, with language lifted from the conservative American Legislative Exchange Council and pushed by the National Rifle Association. Nevada didn’t pass its law until six years later, one of nearly two dozen states that now have one.
There are differences in the laws – Nevada did not cut and paste the ALEC/NRA language – but the practical effect is the same: If you are somewhere you are supposed to be and are attacked, you can use deadly force to defend yourself.
The key language:
►Florida: A person who is not engaged in an unlawful activity and who is attacked in any other place where he or she has a right to be has no duty to retreat and 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 to himself or herself or another or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony.
►Nevada: A person is not required to retreat before using deadly force as provided in subsection 1 if the person:
(a) Is not the original aggressor;
(b) Has a right to be present at the location where deadly force is used; and
(c) Is not actively engaged in conduct in furtherance of criminal activity at the time deadly force is used.
The Nevada law was proposed in 2011 by Speaker John Oceguera, who was preparing to run for Congress and was trying to burnish his NRA bonafides, especially as colleague and potential primary foe John Lee was competing with him for Top Gun Guy in Carson City.
The bill was not controversial in gun-happy Nevada, where the NRA has spread around a lot of money and where firearms issues almost always bridge the partisan divide. (That changed a bit in 2013 when campus-carry and background check bills were quite partisan.)
AB 321 had many co-sponsors, was seen as merely codifying a Supreme Court decision. Even the ACLU was not opposed.
Oceguera offered a simple one-page presentation for a one-page bill. “It just makes sense that if someone attacks you, you have a right to defend yourself,” his presentation said. “This bill simply recognizes and codifies that right.”
Those who testified in the Assembly for the bill included the Independent American Party and law enforcement. A week later, with little discussion and a motion to pass by liberal Assemblyman Tick Segerblom, the bill passed out of the judiciary panel.
By the way, the NRA sent a letter to legislators (attached here) in which the group argued that despite the high court’s decision, “memorializing this language into the Nevada Revised Statutes is a major step in the right direction for citizens of the Silver State.” (Another firearms group, Stillwater, also sent a letter, attached here.)
Three weeks later in the Senate, the Judiciary Committee hearing lasted a few moments and three days later, with a motion by Minority Leader Mike McGinness, itthe bill flew out of committee.
In neither house were any significant remarks made on the floor. Only three lawmakers voted no on the bill, all in the Assembly – Democrats Peggy Pierce, Maggie Carlton and Richard Carrillo.
The practical impact of the law is almost identical to Florida’s.
If Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman were in Green Valley and Martin threw a punch at Zimmerman and the neighborhood watcher responded with deadly force, that would be legal – just as it is in Florida and just as thr reverse would have been true if Martin had the gun and Zimmerman assaulted him. If Zimmerman were not the initial aggressor, he would have had every right to use his gun in either state.
I understand the defensiveness of Democrats now, especially African-American lawmakers such as Horsford, William Horne and Kelvin Atkinson who supported the bill but undoubtedly have been deeply affected by the Zimmerman case. All three of those men surely have experienced what the president said he experienced -- and all three have children.
So be it. Horsford may want the law reviewed, but he won’t be there in Carson City to do it, nor will Horne.
So the Democrats who pushed this bill through just two years ago either still agree with the concept or they don’t. Or they are just reacting to an emotionally charged national story.
I guess we’ll find out in 2015.
(Image from the american-journal.com.)
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