Conservative Cookie Cutter Legislation from a Single Secretive Source

ALEC model legislation is the basis for 'cookie cutter' one-size-fits all standard legislation that benefits a select group of secretive corporations being passed in state after state.  It is not original legislation, it is not legislation that is written on the basis of ALL legislators being invited to compare notes and share what works in their states.

The NCSL in contrast provides very open meetings on issues and legislation, so what has been tried and proven effective solutions can be selectively adapted in other states on a non-partisan or bi-partisan basis.  There is no financial incentive offered and no inducement to enact  special interest legislation at the NCSL, unlike ALEC.

The World Bank, in describing corruption in politics and government, uses the single clear, concise definition.  They use it worldwide, and they use it to define corruption in a variety of circumstances.  It has a very simple criteria, which is elaborated on here at some length, and in greater detail than this excerpt, but this is the basis, the core definition:

How do we define corruption?

The term corruption covers a broad range of human actions. To understand its effect on an economy or a political system, it helps to unbundle the term by identifying specific types of activities or transactions that might fall within it. In considering its strategy the Bank sought a usable definition of corruption and then developed a taxonomy of the different forms corruption could take consistent with that definition. We settled on a straightforward definition—the abuse of public office for private gain.¹ Public office is abused for private gain when an official accepts, solicits, or extorts a bribe. It is also abused when private agents actively offer bribes to circumvent public policies and processes for competitive advantage and profit.

I would argue that ALEC is effectively an entity that rewards politicians for an abuse of public office for gain, a form of corruption, a form of .  ALEC is comprised of corporations that draft government legislation that benefits them unfairly and preferentially, either directly or indirectly, and which rewards the conservative politicians who enact that legislation for those corporations by political support directly to their campaigns, to their parties, and indirectly through PACs and Super PACs.  Where ALEC corporations do not reward the conservative politicians who enact the corporate drafted legislation with financial incentives relating to election, they reward conservative politicians by subsidizing and financing the advancement of the causes, largely the culture war causes, of those politicians instead of and in place of donating huge amounts of money to influence elections.  The domination of the media through ads, often misleading and misrepresentative and factually inaccurate ads, in the 2010 and 2012 elections is unprecedented.  These are the corporations and few wealthiest individuals that are funding those media blitzes with unprecedented millions upon millions of dollars.  In either case, an action occurs that is outside the appropriate public political process, the legislation is written so as to benefit the  corporations rather than being in the interest of the constituents, and there is some form of compensation offered for doing so, and often very large amounts of money are involved.  That is the bribery, the financial reward, for writing legislation which INCREASES their profits and which DECREASES either the financial well being of citizens, or services, safeguards and protections for those citizens.
If it were so innocent, it would be done in the open. Politicians wouldn't lie about it.  People wouldn't be thrown out of ALEC meetings - not just any ordinary curious people have been thrown out, but politicians who had paid to attend, and who had been INVITED to attend as well as the press have been barred or removed from attendance.
I call that corruption, where there is an action that is sought for gain, and a payoff for performing that action.  If it were not being done by conservatives, and involving conservative culture war causes, the conservatives who condone ALEC legislation would call it corrupt too.  But instead they apply a double standard to what is corrupt and what is not corrupt in our political process.  They have, simply, been seduced.  It is hardly the first time we have seen double standards applied by conservatives, with one lower standard used to assess their own conduct, and a higher standard applied to others. 
What is so insidious about ALEC is that their 'model legislation', that they write for their tame pet legislators to pass for them, is that they arrange for that same exact legislation to be passed over and over, state after state, with only minor variations, where they can contrive a conservative majority of politicians to do their corporate business rather than the tax payers 'business.

The Center for Democracy's PR Watch noted this about the Florida legislation which is so very similar to the recently vetoed Minnesota Shoot First legislation:

ALEC Ratified NRA-Conceived Law That May Protect Trayvon Martin's Killer

Submitted by Brendan Fischer on March 21, 2012 - 6:06pm

"A Florida law that may protect the man who shot and killed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in February is the template for an American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) "model bill" that has been pushed in other states. The bill was brought to ALEC by the National Rifle Association (NRA), and fits into a pattern of ALEC bills that disproportionately impact communities of color.
As Media Matters reported earlier, Florida's "stand your ground" law is nearly identical to the ALEC Castle Doctrine Act.
From the Florida law:

(3) 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.

And from the ALEC model:

(3) 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.

Florida Senator Durell Peadon, an ALEC member, introduced the law in his state and it passed in early 2005; the NRA was behind the bill and its lobbyist Marion Hammer reportedly "stared down legislators as they voted." After Governor Jeb Bush signed it into law, Hammer presented the bill to ALEC's Criminal Justice Task Force (now known as the Public Safety and Elections Task Force) months later.
As the Center for Media and Democracy has uncovered, the NRA boasted that "[h]er talk was well-received," and the corporations and state legislators on the Task Force voted unanimously to approve the bill as an ALEC model. As CMD and Common Cause have noted, ALEC Task Force meetings are closed to the press and public, but corporations and ideological special interests or trade groups like the NRA vote as equals with elected officials. At the time, as CMD has documented, Wal-Mart was the corporate co-chair of the Task Force. Since becoming an ALEC model, 16 states have passed laws that contain provisions identical or similar to the ALEC "Castle Doctrine Act." In 2007 it was passed in four states and highlighted by ALEC on their "legislative scorecard," as discovered by Common Cause.
As the Center for Media and Democracy has uncovered, the NRA boasted that "[h]er talk was well-received," and the corporations and state legislators on the Task Force voted unanimously to approve the bill as an ALEC model. As CMD and Common Cause have noted, ALEC Task Force meetings are closed to the press and public, but corporations and ideological special interests or trade groups like the NRA vote as equals with elected officials. At the time, as CMD has documented, Wal-Mart was the corporate co-chair of the Task Force. Since becoming an ALEC model, 16 states have passed laws that contain provisions identical or similar to the ALEC "Castle Doctrine Act." In 2007 it was passed in four states and highlighted by ALEC on their "legislative scorecard," as discovered by Common Cause.
In 2011, controversial governor and ALEC alum Scott Walker signed into law in Wisconsin a Castle Doctrine bill that echoes the ALEC bill in key elements. On March 3 of this year, 20-year-old college student Bo Morrison was shot and killed by a homeowner in Slinger, Wisconsin as the young man hid from police after attending an underage drinking party. Because of the Castle Doctrine, no charges will be filed in the shooting. Like Trayvon Martin, Bo Morrison was black.
Codifying Racial Bias
“The 'Stand Your Ground' law is a license to kill,’’ former U.S. attorney Kendall Coffey told NBC News, noting that the number of "justifiable homicides" in Florida has tripled since the law was passed in 2005.
The Castle Doctrine and its "stand your ground" provisions give license for people to engage in vigilantism without liability. As such, the ALEC bill can put the decision to take a life in the hands of a person whose fears are motivated by prejudice and racial bias. The law establishes a presumption that a person acted in self-defense if a killer claims they had a reasonable fear of bodily harm, but in situations like the killing of Trayvon Martin, where there were few eyewitnesses other than the alleged killer and the person who is killed, the presumption of immunity can be very difficult to rebut. In those circumstances, unfounded fear based on racial prejudice that leads to murder could end up being protected under the law.
If the ALEC "Castle Doctrine Act" opens the door for racial bias to be protected under the criminal justice system, the ALEC model "Voter ID Act" may sanction racial prejudice in the electoral system.
The ALEC "Voter ID Act" would require voters show only certain kinds of photo IDs at the polls, which could potentially disenfranchise millions of people who do not have the required photo ID but who have proof of identity and residency -- primarily people of color, the poor, and the elderly. A study from the Brennan Center found approximately 5 million people nationally do not have the state-issued IDs that the new laws require to vote. In Wisconsin, around 220,000 eligible voters lack ID, including around half of all African-Americans and Latinos and a quarter of all elderly citizens.
"The heart of the modern block the vote campaign is a wave of restrictive government-issued photo identification requirements," states a December report from the NAACP. "In a coordinated effort, legislators in thirty-four states introduced bills imposing such requirements. Many of these bills were modeled on legislation," the report notes, approved by corporations and politicians through the "American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)—a conservative advocacy group whose founder explained: 'our leverage in the elections quite candidly goes up as the voting populace goes down.'"

ALEC Meetings Not Representative

While some ALEC bills disproportionately affect communities of color, it may be little surprise that African-Americans and Latinos are mostly absent at ALEC meetings. The 2011 ALEC meeting in New Orleans was overwhelmingly white based on the observations of those attending. But the lack of representation is striking for an organization purportedly concerned with giving a voice to those affected by government action.
After the Center for Media and Democracy analyzed and made available over 800 previously-secret ALEC "model bills" in July, ALEC's National Chair, Louisiana Rep. Noble Ellington, spoke with NPR's Terry Gross about the organization. Gross asked Ellington, "Why give corporations such a big say in drafting legislation?" Ellington replied, "Well, partly because they're one of the ones who will be affected by it."
While corporations may have had a say in drafting legislation, people representing populations most affected by ALEC model bills -- like communities of color -- were not in the closed-door meetings where politicians vote as equals with lobbyists. But some are raising their voices -- Color of Change has launched a campaign encouraging corporations that rely on business from African-Americans to stop funding the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) through corporate membership dues.
The Color of Change ALEC petition is available here. The group's petition demanding justice for Trayvon Martin is available here."

No one should be surprised at the Trayvon Martin shooting; it is part of a consistent larger pattern in these states with the Shoot First laws. In these states there has been a huge increase in the number of shootings of people where self defence is claimed, where little if any investigation is performed, where no one is arrested or prosecuted, where too much benefit of the doubt is given the shooter.  Many of the victims are unarmed, as Trayvon Martin was; many of the incidents were conflicts initiated by the shooter, as Trayvon Martin's was.  And in many of the shootings, so long as the shooter asserted self-defence, there was little if any investigation, and no prosecution because the bar for doing so was made unfairly difficult for police.  Subjective fear, rather than objective threat, became the yardstick.  These are exactly the results predicted by law enforcement and the prosecutors organizations when they originally opposed this legislation.
There is nothing inherent in having a gun which should give a person a greater benefit of the doubt than a person who is shot.
But right wing lawmakers get a lot of money either donated to them or their party, or spent on their behalf for passing these laws for special interests instead of representing OUR interests, and that is wrong, that is corrupt.
Look at the laws in the states with this legislation.  They were all passed on overwhelmingly partisan votes by conservative legislatures, and the laws are all so similar they are as identical as cookies from the same cookie cutter on a plate.  And the same special interests benefit, every time.
A perfect example of this is described in this Media Matters piece:
NRA's Campaign For "Stand Your Ground Laws" Continues After Trayvon Martin's Killing

March 21, 2012 7:00 am ET by Matt Gertz

The National Rifle Association's effort to pass Florida-style "Stand Your Ground" laws in other states has continued unabated in the wake of the February 26, Florida teenager Trayvon Martin was confronted, shot, and killed by neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman.
Since Martin's tragic death, media outlets have noted the role of the state's laws in providing Zimmerman with a legal self-defense claim that may prevent him from ever being successfully prosecuted. According to Mother Jones, Florida courts have found that under that statute, a "defendant's only burden is to offer facts from which his resort to force could have been reasonable" while "the State has the burden of proving beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant did not act in self-defense."
16 states have reportedly passed similar legislation since Florida's 2005 adoption of the statute, often with the strong support of the NRA. This is no coincidence; the NRA has been affiliated for years with the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which has pushed model legislation expanding when it is legally permissible to use deadly force through its network of conservative state legislators.
The controversial circumstances of Martin's death have not slowed the NRA's effort to push for the passage of such laws: The organization's lobbying arm spent the weeks following his death promoting similar statutes in Iowa, Alaska, and Minnesota.

• On March 16, the NRA's Institute for Legislative Action (ILA) criticized the Judiciary Committee chairman of Iowa's state Senate for failing to hold hearings on "NRA-initiated HF 2215, the Stand Your Ground/Castle Doctrine Enhancement." According to NRA-ILA, the bill would "remove a person's 'duty to retreat' from an attacker, allowing law-abiding citizens to stand their ground and protect themselves or their family anywhere they are lawfully present." The group urged supporters to contact state Senators and tell them to support the bill. NRA-ILA previously told supporters to contact Democratic members of the Iowa House after they "left the Capitol building in an attempt to block consideration of these pro-gun bills" on February 29.
• On March 14, NRA-ILA urged Alaskan supporters to contact their state Senators and tell them to support House Bill 80, which it termed "important self-defense legislation that would provide that a law-abiding person, who is justified in using deadly force in self-defense, has 'no duty-to-retreat' from an attack if the person is in any place that that person has a legal right to be." NRA-ILA also promoted the bill on March 5, March 8, and February 29.
• On March 5, NRA-ILA executive director Chris W. Cox criticized Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton for vetoing House File 1467, which Cox said "would have removed the duty to retreat for crime victims currently mandated under Minnesota state law and precluded victims from facing prosecution for lawfully defending their lives." NRA-ILA also urged supporters to contact Dayton and urge him not to veto the bill on March 1 and February 29.

The NRA has referred to Florida's statute as "good law, casting a common-sense light onto the debate over the right of self-defense." The organization is unlikely to be satisfied until that "common-sense light" has been spread across the country, regardless of what tragedies occur in the meantime.

A Summary

What this doesn't mention is how many of the people shot, allegedly in self-defense, under the Stand Your Ground laws, more accurately described as Shoot First laws, were in fact unarmed, and who posed a questionable danger to the shooter.  Some of them were for example, shot in the back.  Yet they have not been arrested either.  To date, I have yet to find a single example of a person regardless of the circumstances of these individual shootings who has been held accountable, due to the requirement that the shooter ONLY needs to have "FELT" or "BELIEVED" he was at risk, RATHER than he actually WAS AT RISK by an objective criteria.  The laws make the criteria entirely subjective, and remove any civil liability. 

To prove a shooter did not BELIEVE he was at risk, you have to prove mental state. Short of being able to produce evidence of planning a shooting, on a par with first degree murder, that is impossible.  So far as I can find, few if any of these appear to have been investigated in any detail.

from Think Progress:

The Tragedy Of Trayvon Martin

Mar 20, 2012
By Brad Johnson
On February 26, 2012, a 17-year-old African-American named Trayvon Martin was shot and killed in Sanford, Florida. The shooter was George Zimmerman, a 28-year-old man. Zimmerman admits killing Martin, but claims he was acting in self-defense. Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law, passed in 2005, allows people to use deadly force if they believe they’re in imminent danger. Three weeks after Martin’s death, no arrests have been made and Zimmerman remains free.


FBI tells ABC News they are monitoring the Trayvon Martin investigation and have been in touch with local authorities. Late Monday, March 20, after a letter from the NAACP, the United States Department of Justice, the FBI and the U.S. Attorney announced they were launching “a thorough and independent review” of the shooting death of Trayvon Martin. The Florida state attorney has sent the Trayvon Martin case to a grand jury. The Seminole County grand jury will be called to session on Tuesday, April 10.
Here’s everything you need to know about the case:


1. Zimmerman called the police to report Martin’s “suspicious” behavior, which he described as “just walking around looking about.” Zimmerman was in his car when he saw Martin walking on the street. He called the police and said: “There’s a real suspicious guy. This guy looks like he’s up to no good, on drugs or something. It’s raining and he’s just walking around looking about… These a**holes always get away” [Orlando Sentinel]


2. Zimmerman pursued Martin against the explicit instructions of the police dispatcher:
Dispatcher: “Are you following him?”
Zimmerman: “Yeah”
Dispatcher: “OK, we don’t need you to do that.”
[Orlando Sentinel]


3. Prior to the release of the 911 tapes, Zimmerman’s father released a statement claiming “[a]t no time did George follow or confront Mr. Martin.” [Sun Sentinel]


4. Zimmerman was carrying a a Kel Tel 9 millimeter handgun. Martin was carrying a bag of Skittles and a can of iced tea. [ABC News]


5. Martin weighed 140 pounds. Zimmerman weighs 250 pounds. [Orlando Sentinel; WDBO]


6. Martin’s English teacher described him as “as an A and B student who majored in cheerfulness.” [Orlando Sentinel]


7. Martin had no criminal record. [New York Times]


8. Zimmerman “was charged in July 2005 with resisting arrest with violence and battery on an officer. The charges appear to have been dropped.” [Huffington Post]


9. Zimmerman called the police 46 times since Jan. 1, 2011. [Miami Herald]


10. According to neighbors, Zimmerman was “fixated on crime and focused on young, black males.” [Miami Herald]


11. Zimmerman “had been the subject of complaints by neighbors in his gated community for aggressive tactics” [Huffington Post]

12. A police officer “corrected” a key witness. “The officer told the witness, a long-time teacher, it was Zimmerman who cried for help, said the witness. ABC News has spoken to the teacher and she confirmed that the officer corrected her when she said she heard the teenager shout for help.” [ABC News]


13. Three witnesses say they heard a boy cry for help before a shot was fired. “Three witnesses contacted by The Miami Herald say they saw or heard the moments before and after the Miami Gardens teenager’s killing. All three said they heard the last howl for help from a despondent boy.” [Miami Herald]


14. The officer in charge of the crime scene also received criticism in 2010 when he initially failed to arrest a lieutenant’s son who was videotaped attacking a homeless black man. [New York Times]


15. The police did not test Zimmerman for drugs or alcohol. A law enforcement expert told ABC that Zimmerman sounds intoxicated on the 911 tapes. Drug and alcohol testing is “standard procedure in most homicide investigations.” [ABC News]
16. In a cell phone call moments before his death, Martin told a teenage girl that he was “hounded by a strange man on a cellphone who ran after him, cornered him and confronted him.” “‘He said this man was watching him, so he put his hoodie on. He said he lost the man,’ Martin’s friend said. ‘I asked Trayvon to run, and he said he was going to walk fast. I told him to run but he said he was not going to run.’ Eventually he would run, said the girl, thinking that he’d managed to escape. But suddenly the strange man was back, cornering Martin. ‘Trayvon said, ‘What, are you following me for,’ and the man said, ‘What are you doing here.’” [ABC News]


17. Zimmerman told the police “he had stepped out of his truck to check the name of the street he was on when Trayvon attacked him from behind as he walked back to his truck.” “He said he feared for his life and fired the semiautomatic handgun he was licensed to carry because he feared for his life.” [Miami Herald]


18. Zimmerman was not a member of a registered Neighborhood Watch group. Zimmerman also violated basic Neighborhood Watch guidelines by carrying a weapon. [ABC News]


19. Sanford police chief Bill Lee planned to wrap up the case last Monday without bringing any charges, because, he said, “there is no evidence to dispute the shooter’s claim of self-defense,” which is a sufficient claim under the “Stand Your Ground” law. [Miami Herald]

20. In the first five years “Stand Your Ground” was in effect, justifiable homicides tripled, and the law was a factor in at least 93 cases involving 65 deaths. An investigation of cases from the law’s passage in 2005 to 2010 found that charges were dropped or dismissed for 57 people, and 7 others were acquitted. [Tampa Bay Times]


A petition created by Trayvon’s parents to investigate his killing has been signed by over 500,000 people.

ALEC drafted Legislation: Castle Laws and Corporations

Trayvon Martin is a young black teen in Florida who was unarmed, walking home from the store with a pocket full of candy for his brother, minding his own business, when he was shot by a vigilante self-appointed neighborhood watch captain with a history of violence. The case, which arises out of the Florida Castle Doctrine laws, reflects a gun nut who took his gun under the auspices of his concealed carry permit, followed and harrassed Trayvon Martin in his car, and then got out of the car engaging in a physical confrontation with the much smaller teen, ending with shooting him, despite the police having directed him not to do so.

The older, larger, armed man, George Zimmerman, claims self-defense, even though neighbors reported they heard the boy calling for help. The police department has badly botched any investigation. Under Castle Doctrine in Florida -- as would have been the case here had the legislation not been vetoed, the right to 'self defense' is entirely subjective, extends beyond the home as defined by the Heller decision, and prevents the shooter from being held liable in a court of law for wrongful death as well as providing for minimal investigation, if any, and no prosecution. In this case, the shooter initiated the conflict with someone minding their own business. His comments on the 911 calls suggests an element of racism, as does the conduct of the police.

Trayvon Martin appears to have been the victim of lethal violence at the hands of a 'loose cannon' about whom there had been prior complaints within the gated community where the killing occurred. 

Trayvon Martin appears to be the victim of too-lax concealed carry permit laws, and of vigilante-ism.

Trayvon Martin appears to have been the victim of racism, and of police incompetence.  Certainly there appears to be some damning evidence of their misconduct.

That is because of the way that Castle Doctrine, ALEC-style, Republican-style, Tea Partier-style, Gun-nut style drafts legislation, so as NOT to hold people accountable for wrongly shooting other people. 

One of the worst aspects of the right-wing ALEC model Castle Doctrine law works, as was the case with our recent vetoed Shoot First legislation, is that it allows people to shoot others for subjective cause, but does not require them to face an assessment of objective cause.  If the shooter claims it was self-defense, and if the victim of the shooting is dead, there is no investigation or subsequent prosecution.  The word of the only person left standing is sufficient.  When someone is killed, when someone is shot to death - that is not enough.

"I felt like I was threatened" is all the assertion necessary.  It doesn't matter if the victim is smaller than the shooter, or weaker, or younger.  It doesn't matter if the victim is minding his own business on a public street, and the shooter provokes and pursues a conflict with an innocent victim.

Where the Heller decision limits one's right to self defense and firearms to the home, the new right-wing extremist legislation, promoted by ALEC, which was co-founded by the NRA, an organization that represents and lobbies for gun manufacturers, acts for gun manufacturers.  ALEC is a special interest group which has one agenda, and one agenda only - to make money for their members, which includes the founding organization of the NRA, and their gun manufacturer clients.  It is clear - if you tune out the rhetoric, the frantic ideology, and just follow the money.

I am not anti-gun, I am not anti-2nd Amendment or freedom.  I AM, adamantly, emphatically, against special interest manipulating our government and exploiting our citizens.  I AM, adamantly and emphatically, against ILLEGAL guns, of which we have far too many, and against gun violence, of which we have far too much.

The Shoot First legislation was badly flawed, but it also had some bad solutions to some very real problems that SHOULD be addressed by a consensus of our legislators, not by partisan party sell-outs to special interests.

First  - the cast of characters, then second, how the Trayvon Martin killing illustrates much of what is wrong with the Castle Doctrine legislation as it has been attempted in Minnesota, and as it has been passed in other - mostly right wing dominated - states, with tragic results.

The change in the purpose of the NRA and it's membership in ALEC was outlined in this article from the Milwaukee Express, from back in December 2008.

What the Gun Industry and the NRA Don’t Want You To Know
A Shepherd Q&A with Tom Diaz of the Violence Policy Center
By Lisa Kaiser

The gun industry and the National Rifle Association (NRA) don't want you to know that gun sales have stagnated for years, and their campaigns to legalize concealed carry and fight restrictions on the sales of highly lethal weapons are part of their strategy to boost stagnant gun sales.
Tom Diaz, senior policy analyst at the Violence Policy Center, argues that this business strategy does a disservice to the sport shooters and hunters who make up the bulk of the NRA's membership, and has resulted in turning the United States into the "last great market" for cheap and highly lethal weapons. Diaz, the author of Making a Killing and the forthcoming No Borders: Transnational Latino Gangs and American Law Enforcement, spoke to the Shepherd about the true motives of the gun industry, how President George Bush allowed assault-style weapons to be imported into the United States, and what President-elect Barack Obama should do about gun violence.
Shepherd:You're a gun-control advocate, but you are also a gun nut?
Diaz:I'm a former gun nut. Prior to 1994, I was a member of the NRA. I owned multiple firearms-handguns and assault rifles. I shot in pistol competitions. I favored the use of firearms. I even testified against the Washington, D.C., gun ban in a sort of NRA robot manner. I thought, "I'm a good person. Why should anyone take my guns away from me?"
Shepherd:So what happened?
Diaz:I was an attorney on the House of Representatives' crime subcommittee. I was hired to work on terrorism, but I ended up working on gun stuff. I put together some hearings for pending legislation. Now, remember, I'm from a military family. I learned how to shoot in the Boy Scouts in Mississippi. But these larger gun issues were sort of abstract to me. So I put together a hearing on kids and guns and began investigating it. I heard the kids' stories firsthand, from all over the United States, and from all socioeconomic groups.
What I realized was that the gun industry and manufacturers had changed the profile of who their target market was. It was not about self-defense or the right to bear arms. They were hyper-marketing very lethal guns and they flooded the U.S. with them. The NRA doesn't represent sport shooters and hunters. They were selling these killing machines. I was shocked and tormented by these kids' stories. One girl told a story of a friend literally dying in her arms from a stray bullet.
Shepherd:The average person, even the average gun owner, may not know how the gun industry is marketing to new groups of people. What exactly are they doing?
Diaz:This is something that a lot of sport shooters and hunters don't realize. Firearms are very durable products. They are not going to wear out if you take care of them. So how do I, as a gun manufacturer, get you to buy more guns? They recognize this problem. They discuss it. This is their innovation: In the past 25-30 years they have come up with new designs that are more lethal. They push them through magazine articles and gun shows.
Then there is the NRA campaign to allow concealed weapons to be carried everywhere. So the manufacturers started marketing small handguns, so you could walk around with a gun in your pocket. And they are marketing to women and children to broaden their market.
This is not on the radar of most hunters. But then they get hunters and recreational shooters all worked up about people trying to take their guns away. But I don't know any rational person in the gun-control movement who wants to take away someone's hunting rifle. But I am sickened by this proliferation of firearms. And they are inappropriately used when people are angry or depressed. And we are arming up criminals who shouldn't be able to get their hands on guns.
Shepherd:While the NRA is focused on the right to bear arms, you view gun ownership and gun violence as a public health issue. How does this change the discussion of gun ownership?
Diaz:First, adopting a public health perspective would allow us to know more about firearms and death caused by them. The industry has been instrumental in suppressing data on gun violence. Think about it: If you run a tire company that is making defective tires, and the tires cause cars to flip over, there are tracking systems that will alert people if there is a problem. There is data on the safety of every product except guns. That data is suppressed. But if we had it, we could end the debate on guns and crime because we would know the facts.
But the second thing a public health perspective would do is to consider where someone's right should be hemmed in because of the damage it could do to someone. There was a time when cars didn't have seat belts. But people realized that accidents are life-threatening, so now all cars are manufactured with seat belts. So if gun violence was addressed from a public health perspective, guns would not be eliminated. But we could control the types of firearms that are most lethal, like the military-style automatic weapons.
Shepherd:So if the information is being suppressed, who is gathering the data on gun violence?
Diaz:The gun lobby-by that I mean the NRA and the manufacturers-have deliberately shut down the sources of information. There is very little data collected by the federal government. Some data have been patched together from various sources, and much of the research is privately funded. From my point of view, that's insane. And think about it: If the gun manufacturers were so confident about the utilitarian nature of their product, then they wouldn't worry about the data collected on how they're used. The ATF [The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms] used to release their list of the top guns used in crimes each year. But legislation was passed and now the ATF can't release this data. We want that changed-we want full data and an open discussion. Even law enforcement has trouble getting this information. And there is no data on the guns being trafficked to Mexico. The ATF information is ridiculous. The Mexican government gave them the information, but the ATF won't break it out according to the types of guns being trafficked.
It doesn't make any sense. Would we try to create an energy policy without reliable information about how much is used, what the sources are, and what demand will be? That is just crazy.
Shepherd:How would you assess the Bush administration's stand on gun issues?
Diaz:This is not my opinion, but it's a factual judgment: This administration has been a disaster for the country. If there were a ratings system, and 1 was excellent and 10 was very bad, I would give them a 15 on gun issues.
The Bush administration has been prime co-conspirators with the gun industry. Secretly, the administration has opened the valve for the import of assault riles into the country. This is something that [current President Bush's] dad was against. His father's policy was that only firearms for sporting purposes could be imported into the country. But the current Bush administration-with no publicity-has opened that valve and the U.S. is now flooded with cheap and lethal assault weapons. The most problematic ones are coming in from Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. But they're coming from countries that wouldn't allow them to be sold locally-Brazil, some European countries; there's even a Canadian manufacturer of these weapons. The last great market for cheap guns is the United States, and Bush is complicit in this.
Shepherd:If you were one of Obama's advisers, what would you tell him?
Diaz:First, I would tell him to open up the information valve. The Freedom of Information Act means what it means. Information on gun violence should be collected and we should have a full debate. Second, I would tell him to shut down this valve that allows military-style assault weapons to be imported into the country. He can change that easily with an executive decision. Third, I would tell him to renew the debate about assault weapons. The 1994 law was a joke. The gun industry easily got around it because there were so many loopholes.

The way that information is controlled is just ONE of the many problems that originate with the NRA, and additionally with ALEC.

So what is the relationship between the NRA, the gun manufacturers, and ALEC?  Per usual, in the following the emphasis added is mine - DG.

From SourceWatch
National Rifle Association

The National Rifle Association (NRA) was founded in 1871 to "promote and encourage rifle shooting on a scientific basis," and is "widely recognized today as a major political force and as America's foremost defender of Second Amendment rights," according to the NRA website. [1] Affiliated organizations include the Institute for Legislative Action, the NRA's lobbying arm, and the NRA Foundation, a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization, which provides "a means to raise millions of dollars to fund gun safety and educational projects of benefit to the general public." [1]
It is reported that NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre made over $900,000 a year, circa 2007. [2]

All that sounds very nice; gun safety is important, and education - real education that is factual, not silly Tea Party revisionist education - is a laudable goal to have.  The problem comes where the NRA diverges from that goal, and becomes the front, the actors, the minions of the gun industry rather than the gun enthusiasts, whom they use and manipulate to be the 'Indians' to their 'Chiefs'.  It is when organizations of ordinary individuals are manipulated and used to shape and influence policies that serve those special interests INSTEAD of citizens and our society, that there is a problem.  When we have far, far higher numbers of gun deaths, gun accidents, murder/suicides and mass shootings every year, when guns are a significant part of the problem of domestic violence, stalking, and the culture of exploitation by older men of young underage girls, we have a problem --- a problem that other comparable countries, similar countries, do NOT have.  What is different? Guns and the gun industry, and the toxic nature of our exploitive special interest politics that do not serve us, but instead serve narrow profits for a few.

So.......how does that tie the NRA to ALEC?  Where IS that money trail?

continuing from Source Watch:
Ties to the American Legislative Exchange Council

The NRA is a long-time member and longtime funder of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), and an NRA representative has served on the Public Safety and Elections Task Force for many years. ."[3]

Tara Mica, NRA-Institute for Legislative Action State Liaison, was the co-chair of ALEC's Public Safety and Elections Task Force for a number of years, until the Spring of 2011. [4] [5] [6] (formerly known as the Criminal Justice and Homeland Security). [7]

The NRA was a "Vice-Chairman" level sponsor of 2011 American Legislative Exchange Council Annual Conference, which in 2010, equated to $25,000.[8]

See this video from 2008 where ALEC's Michael Huff discusses "ALEC’s strong relationship with the NRA and explains the support of gun rights and ownership." [9]

ALEC is not a lobby; it is not a front group. It is much more powerful than that. Through ALEC, behind closed doors, corporations hand state legislators the changes to the law they desire that directly benefit their bottom line. Along with legislators, corporations have membership in ALEC. Corporations sit on all nine ALEC task forces and vote with legislators to approve “model” bills. They have their own corporate governing board which meets jointly with the legislative board. (ALEC says that corporations do not vote on the board.) They fund almost all of ALEC's operations. Participating legislators, overwhelmingly conservative Republicans, then bring those proposals home and introduce them in statehouses across the land as their own brilliant ideas and important public policy innovations—without disclosing that corporations crafted and voted on the bills. ALEC boasts that it has over 1,000 of these bills introduced by legislative members every year, with one in every five of them enacted into law. ALEC describes itself as a “unique,” “unparalleled” and “unmatched” organization. It might be right. It is as if a state legislature had been reconstituted, yet corporations had pushed the people out the door.

There is a lot of money being spent here, and it is not being spent for fun, it is not being spent on behalf of ideology.  It is BUYING people with a certain ideology who have consented to sell their services in government to these special interests.  It is money that is being spent to increase profits, to increase the wealth inequality in this country by making the playing field less level for ordinary people.
In business or in politics, ALWAYS follow the money.  Be concerned, be very distrustful, if you see that money lying through propaganda or buying people's services who are supposed to be serving others.  THAT is corruption, and THAT is dangerous.
 Continuing from SourceWatch, continuing with my emphasis added:

Lobbying, Political Contributions and Independent Expenditures

According to the Center for Responsive Politics' Open Secrets website, "between 2001 and 2010, the NRA spent between $1.5 million and $2.7 million on federal-level lobbying efforts. During the 2010 election cycle, the NRA spent more than $7.2 million on independent expenditures at the federal level -- messages that advocate for or against political candidates. These messages primarily supported Republican candidates or opposed Democratic candidates." [10]
In the 2010 federal congressional elections, the NRA contributed $902,700 to Republican candidates and gave $373,350 to Democratic candidates.[11]
Starting with the 1994 elections, writes Richard Dreyfus in the American Prospect, "the NRA closely coordinated its election strategy with Republican Party officials. According to Tom King, a Democratic political strategist who calls the NRA a “wholly owned subsidiary of the Republican Party,” the Republicans provided the NRA with polling data and lists of vulnerable Democrats in order to coordinate campaigns. . . In addition to strategizing with the Republicans, the NRA-ostensibly a single-issue organization-was throwing its lot in with other conservative groups, many of whom had little interest in guns but shared the NRA’s desire to unseat Democrats. Together, these groups pursued lower taxes, free market economics, a smaller federal government, and a cutback in safety and health regulations." [12]
According to a 1999 CBS News report, "Campaign contributions from the NRA are proving to be an accurate barometer of how individual senators would vote on gun control." The report notes that "Thirty-two of the 34 senators who supported the NRA on each of four key gun control votes received money for their last election from the gun industry lobbying group." [13]

So how does this benefit the gun industry?  How does this influence politics, other than paying off, directly and indirectly, right wing politicians?  How does this manipulate and control our politics?  It does so in a couple of ways.  One of those ways is to get much more into politics, instead of gun safety and firearm education.  It gets involved in politics by becoming a media source, a wholly-owned and operated for special interest profit media source, that can control - or attempt to control, skew, and direct - information and misinformation and disinformation.  The right wing control of mass media goes waaaay beyond just Rupert Murdoch.  We have witnessed that just recently in the Rush Limbaugh/Clear Channel/Premier Radio/Bain Capital and Mitt Romney connection.

From SourceWatch :"NRA News"

In December 2003, Associated Press reported that the NRA was investigating buying a radio or television channel to allow it to bypass electioneering restrictions on advocacy groups. "We're looking at bringing a court case that we're as legitimate a media outlet as Disney or Viacom or Time-Warner," the NRA's executive vice president, Wayne LaPierre, told AP. "Why should they have an exclusive right to relay information to the public, and why should not NRA be considered as legitimate a news source as they are? That's never been explored legally," he said. [14]

Under the 2002 McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform law, advocacy groups with corporate or union funding can't run television or radio ads identifying candidates in the month before a primary or two months before a general election. However, news organizations are exempt from these restrictions. The NRA is already a major publisher, producing seven monthly publications for subscribers and newsstand sales; it sought to classify itself as a "media outlet," which would allow it to run commercials near elections. [14] (In 2010, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down key parts of the McCain-Feingold campaign finance law in the Citizens United decision.)
In June 2004, the NRA revealed that it would commence broadcasting NRANews, a three hour daily program.

What is their strategy? HOW does the NRA, independently and through ALEC, benefit their manufacturing clients, the ones who appear to control and direct the MAJOR expenditure of the NRA funds?  Make no mistake, this kind of operation takes A LOT OF MONEY.  It isn't all coming from hunters and sports shooters, or the lunatic survivalist and militia members on the fringes who are accumulating their private arsenals, to the profit of the gun industry.

Continuing from SourceWatch, which references multiple sources to describe the calculated manipulation and marketing of a product against which there is a lot of 'push-back' where the product kills people in significant numbers, so as to keep the product profitable, in spite of the number of deaths, or illness or injury.

NRA and tobacco

The NRA was admired by Philip Morris management and cited as a template for carrying out effective pro-industry activities in which a corporation itself could not legitimately engage. The NRA is mentioned numerous times in the tobacco industry's documents as a successful lobbying group worthy of emulation. Operation Downunder Conference Notes (Philip Morris 1987) mention the NRA's "Make it Hurt" strategy (creating political risk for legislators where none otherwise exists). In a 1985 speech, Bill Murray of Philip Morris admires how the NRA has been able to motivate its members to action, something the tobacco industry had been unable to do. The NRA served as a template for the National Smokers Association (an early Philip Morris's smokers' rights group which preceded the National Smokers Alliance). A January 1988 PM Five Year Plan states,

In 1988, we intend to create local smokers' rights associations throughout the U.S. The basis for these associations will be a network of 50,000 "block captains" who will monitor local smoking issues, write or visit political decision-makers, write letters to local newspapers and generally serve as a grass roots voice for smokers' rights. We intend to link these "captains" to local, state and ultimately a national rights organization. Once the national organization is established and funded, we will spin the Smokers Newsletters into it and create a self-sustaining membership organization similar to the National Rifle Association.at Page 123

The tobacco industry also found common ground with the NRA as an organization that supported a controversial, yet legal product. A Tobacco Institute strategy document states industry strategy to

Identify large, influential groups concerned with freedom of expression and other Constitutional "rights" (e. g. the National Rifle Association and the Second Amendment, groups opposed to polygraph tests and the Fifth Amendment,minority groups and the 14th Amendment, etc.) and encourage their support for consistent and fair application of Constitutional protection for legal products and practices.[1]

The legislation sponsored and written by ALEC, sponsored and promoted by right wing politicians, does several things.  It allows more people, people who should NOT be carrying guns to carry.  It allows more people to do so in more places, under more circumstances - including alcohol consumption - to create greater use, and as a result greater dangers and more shootings.  It creates FAR LESS accountability, in the form of what investigation is allowed, when and how prosecution is allowed, and exemption from wrongful death liability.  It makes shootings legal in this country that previously would have been criminal, and that would be criminal in any other developed and civilized country in the world.  It negates centuries of common law and settled law and accepted legal thinking.  It kills people, injures and maims people, it endangers people, for one purpose and one purpose only - special interest profits.  It serves the profits of those special interests by using the camoflage of being about education and sportsmen; the NRA, and it's money masters at ALEC serve ONLY the profit margin of speical interests, notably the gun industry.

Follow the money; watch where and how it is spent; observe whether the expenditures are direct or indirect; observe the financial strategy.  Most of all - watch who gains profit, or control that subsequently enhances profit.  Follow the money, not the Magic-act style misdirection.  See who it serves, ultimately; watch who ends up paying, and watch who ends up harmed.

End Part 1; Part 2 - How does the Trayvon Martin killing illustrate the problems?

The Right Wing Wants to Institutionalize Hate, to Make It LEGAL Wrongly to Harm Others, Even Kill Them

George Zimmeman

I will be writing more on the failing of the vetoed Shoot First legislation separately, but I was struck this weekend by the racist overtones of a fatal shooting of a black teen by a white man with a violent past in Florida who had a legal carry permit.  It is an incident that is pertinent, because so far, the shooter has not been arrested, despite the young victim having been unarmed and much younger and much smaller than the shooter, with the victim weighing in at 140 lbs. to the shooter's 200 lbs. - in other words, he was not a plausible threat to the shooter.  The shooter had a concealed carry permit, despite a background which included violent conduct, including against law enforcement officers.  Zimmerman's victim had no violent events in HIS background, and in fact had saved his father's life, pulling his father to safety from a burning building.
More to the point, despite being directed by the police dispatcher NOT to follow this young man, the shooter did so.  Under the Shoot First legislation, it is legal to shoot someone while in your car, if you FEEL threatened, regardless if you actually ARE threatened.  The criteria for shooting becomes not objective, but subjective.  The duty to retreat, the obligation to attempt to avoid shooting someone if you safely can, would no longer exist.  It would be perfectly legal to go looking for trouble, to follow someone, to pursue shooting someone who was not pursuing or attempting to harm you.  This case has a number of facets which underline the problems with the recently vetoed Shoot First legislation, especially that only ONE side - the shooter's version of events - can be told.

The case of the Trayvon Martin shooting also brings up the issue of violence and hate crimes.  In the case of Trayvon Martin, the only basis that appears to exist for his being considered suspicious is that he is black, and was walking in a white gated community where black teens were not common.

View more videos at: http://nbcmiami.com/.

Alongside the above video from the Florida television station was this one, of two teens who tried to set another teen on fire.

View more videos at: http://nbcmiami.com/.

And last week in Kansas, there was this allegedly racist case of two other teens, who were black, who set a white middle school teen, 13 years old, on fire in what appears to be a hate crime.

In the recent Ohio shooting, the shooter may have singled out one of his victims because, allegedly, he was dating the shooter's ex-girlfriend., and the other victims were that victims friends who happened to be sitting with him.  If this is true, the shootings were not random. The shooter was described as something of an outcast, a loner with few friends.  His background was one of domestic violence.  While this shooter may not have been bullied at school, he appears to have been bullied and abused at home, both directly and as a witness to violent abuse, including intimidation using firearms.

What struck me about this was that when kids are expressing hatred, they resorted to other means than firearms.  Adults who have access to deadly force, as in the case of Trayvon Martin's shooting, also appear to seek to use it, when they have a reasonable expectation of getting away with it.

The FBI uses this definition of hate crime:

"Defining a Hate Crime

A hate crime is a traditional offense like murder, arson, or vandalism with an added element of bias. For the purposes of collecting statistics, Congress has defined a hate crime as a "criminal offense against a person or property motivated in whole or in part by an offender's bias against a race, religion, disability, ethnic origin or sexual orientation." Hate itself is not a crime—and the FBI is mindful of protecting freedom of speech and other civil liberties."

The kind of bias by frequency was broken down by the FBI for the most recent year available on their web site, 2010:

By bias motivation
An analysis of data for victims of single-bias hate crime incidents showed that:
■48.2 percent were victims of an offender’s bias against a race.
■18.9 percent were victims of an offender’s bias against a religion.
■18.6 percent were victims of an offender’s bias against a particular sexual orientation.
■13.7 percent were victims of an offender’s bias against an ethnicity/national origin.
■0.6 percent were victims of an offender’s bias against a disability.

I was saddened, ashamed and disappointed to see that the Southern Poverty Law Center identified no less than 12 hate groups in the state of Minnesota, far fewer than were identified in the surrounding five state area.  They are listed below:

Aryan Nations 88 Neo-Nazi  - Mora
Crusaders for Yahweh Christian Identity - St. Paul
Crusaders for Yahweh Christian Identity - Duluth
Israelite Church of God in Jesus Christ Black Separatist North - Minneapolis
National Socialist Movement Neo-Nazi
Parents Action League Anti-Gay - Champlin
Remnant, The/The Remnant Press Radical Traditional Catholicism  - Forest Lake
South Africa Project White Nationalist
True Invisible Empire Traditionalist American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan Ku Klux Klan
Vinlanders Minnesota Racist Skinhead
Weisman Publications Christian Identity - Burnsville
You Can Run, But You Cannot Hide Anti - Gay - Annandale

This 2010 Fox News coverage of hate crimes confirms much of this:
Inside Militia, Hate Groups in Minnesota
Updated: Tuesday, 30 Mar 2010, 8:35 AM CDT Published : Monday, 29 Mar 2010, 9:47 PM CDT

MINNEAPOLIS - FBI agents arrested nine members of a Christian militia group based in Michigan, who were suspected of plotting to kill a police officer. These groups are everywhere. But a Homeland Security Intelligence report last month said extremist "chatter" is on the rise, which is the biggest increase since before the Oklahoma City bombing. In Minnesota, so-called militia and hate groups are a mixed bag.
Investigators say the group called Hutaree hoped their spree of violence starting next month would lead to an uprising against the entire U.S. government. The group's website says they are preparing to battle the coming antichrist. The suspects face charges of conspiracy as well as possessing a firearm during a crime of violence, teaching the use of explosives and attempting to use a weapon of mass destruction.
The arrests offer an insight into radical groups, some of which operate here in Minnesota.
Charles Weisman is the owner of Weisman Publication, which is an online bookstore of extremism, publishing titles like, "America: Free, White and Christian."
The Southern Poverty Law Center tracks hate groups in the U.S.
In Minnesota, it identifies eight hate groups. It includes an eclectic list that has neo-Nazis in Austin, Minneapolis and Rochester and even the Ku Klux Klan, which has been active in Minnesota since the 1920's.
But there's also the Israelite Church of God in North Minneapolis, which it identifies as black separatists, who traditionally oppose integration and intermarriage and believe blacks, not Jews, are the "chosen people of God."
Weisman told FOX 9 he shares a racial philosophy similar to the founding fathers.
"They didn't necessarily consider them to have the same political, or mental equality at all times,” said Weisman.

I was struck by the convergence of hate crimes based on race, and by the attempts to make it legal to act in hateful, harmful ways.  In Anoka Minnesota, the high school had to contend with the right wing opposition to making the schools safe for gay students and other students who were targeted by bullying.  Those students were not shot or set on fire, but they were driven to suicide.  Attempts to make the school more safe were opposed by Right Wing Evangelicals who felt that denying their kids the right to bully other kids over their sexual orientation violated their religious right to hate, to condemn them as an abomination, an offense to God, and as un-natural.  

Among those in the area who are anti-gay, is one of the religious right wing extremist groups who are too widely accepted, the Bradlee Dean so-called ministry in Annandale, that appears on the hate list above.  Dean also likes to fear monger against Muslims over the fantasy that Muslims are trying to establish Sharia law in the U.S.  Dean's dubious ministry, which belongs to no denomination, and which has no clergy that have been ordained by any recognized organized religious faith so far as I can determine, is on the hate groups list, highlighted above.  One of his close associates, Michele Bachmann, has argued that it is unreasonable even to attempt to limit bullying because 'boys will be boys, and we wouldn't want them to be like girls".  (Apparently Michele Bachmann is unaware that girls in certain age groups are as likely or more likely than boys to be the ones doing the bullying.)  According to a September 2011 Huff Post article:

A string of suicides among gay and bullied teenagers in Minnesota's largest school district, Anoka-Hennepin Schools, has critics blaming the district's representation, Rep. Michele Bachmann, and anti-gay activists.
Over the last two years, nine teens in district schools have committed suicide, and Bachmann's allies are being accused of standing in the way of "blocking an effective response to the crisis and fostering a climate of intolerance that allowed bullying to flourish," Mother Jones reports. Bachmann signed a pledge this month stating that homosexuality is a choice.
The situation in Anoka-Hennepin Schools is so bad that Minnesota public health officials have deemed the area a "suicide contagion" because of the unusually high number of suicides and attempted suicides, according to the school district's website.
She historically wasn't a supporter of anti-bullying legislation. In 2004, she took part in a rally that pushed for the ban of gay marriage, according to the New York Daily News. Slate reports that in 2006, she said passing a bill that prevents bullying wasn't worth the time.
"I think for all of us, our experience in public schools is there have always been bullies," Slate reports Bachmann telling the Minnesota state legislature. "Always have been, always will be. I just don't know how we're ever going to get to the point of zero tolerance... What does it mean? ... Will we be expecting boys to be girls?"
Critics are arguing that Bachmann's impassiveness for bullying issues, her opposition to gay rights alongside Anoka-Hennepin Schools' controversial policy on teaching or talking about sexual orientation, creates a threatening environment for at-risk youth in the district.

We have racial, religious, and gender issue intolerance in the state of Minnesota.  We have violence, and we have hate groups, at least some of them part of the Minnesota right wing extremists that appear to have hijacked the GOP, and the conservative GOP auxiliary, the Tea Party, and similar groups in Wisconsin.  If the most extreme hate groups are not part of the mainstream of those groups, they are tolerated, and embraced when numbers are needed for conservative wedge issue causes.  They want to keep it legal to bully and harass others who they identify as 'other' and different.  They want to make it as legal as possible to go driving around in your car, by giving you a legal excuse to shoot someone else and not be held fully accountable on the basis of an objective criteria for self-defense.
The Heller SCOTUS decision of 2008 restricted the 2nd Amendment right to possess firearms to people in their homes for self-defense.  The Shoot First legislation, apparently drafted from behind the scenes by ALEC and funneled through the right wing majorities of our legislature before being vetoed, would extend that to vehicles and other locations.  The Shoot First legislation would - like the case above of Trayvon Martin, make it justifiable to follow someone in your car, provoke an encounter, a conflict, and then shoot an unarmed kid, so long as you subjectively felt afraid, regardless of objective criteria, like the victim of the shooting being younger, and much smaller, and unarmed.
Such legislation would give legal cover to crimes where unreasonable fear and bias hatred made shootings more likely.  It is an attempt to legalize hate activity, and potentially hate-motivated gun violence.
In this context we should remember that it was the case of R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul, MN that overturned the ordinance under which a teen was prosecuted for burning a cross on the lawn of a black family, considered a hate crime straight out of the historic violent and terrorizing acts of the KKK.  There is a good case to be made that the right wants segregation of people, that it wants to justify a fear of black people in a white neighborhood, and wants segregated white schools, for example.  It is evident in their legislation, and in what they fund and defund.

In the early morning hours of June 21, 1990, the petitioner and several other teenagers allegedly assembled a crudely made cross by taping together broken chair legs.^[1] The cross was erected and burned in the front yard of an African American family that lived across the street from the house where the petitioner was staying.^[1] Petitioner, who was a juvenile at the time, was charged with two counts, one of which a violation of the St. Paul Bias-Motivated Crime Ordinance.

Per the wikipedia entry on hate crime:

"Hate crime" generally refers to criminal acts that are seen to have been motivated by bias against one or more of the types above, or of their derivatives. Incidents may involve physical assault, damage to property, bullying, harassment, verbal abuse or insults, or offensive graffiti or letters (hate mail).[3]  A hate crime law is a law intended to prevent bias-motivated violence. Hate crime laws are distinct from laws against hate speech in that hate crime laws enhance the penalties associated with conduct that is already criminal under other laws, while hate speech laws criminalize speech.

The argument by the right is that they should not be penalized on the basis of the motive for their actions, they should not have an extra penalty for acting out of hatred and fear.  In point of fact, we take into account in determining what kind of crime occurs the motivation of people for all kinds of crime.  For example premeditation versus impulse of the moment violence is a criteria that frequently used to separate manslaughter from murder.  What the right is really worried about is being penalized for hating and fearing those they identify as other than themselves, and therefore wrong, bad, or dangerous for being different from themselves.

From the Opposition to Hate Crime section of the Hate Crime entry on wikipedia:

The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously found the St. Paul Bias-Motivated Crime Ordinance amounted to viewpoint-based discrimination is in conflict with rights of free speech, because it selectively criminalized bias-motivated speech or symbolic speech for disfavored topics while permitting such speech for other topics.[58] Many critics further assert that it conflicts with an even more fundamental right: free thought. The claim is that hate-crime legislation effectively makes certain ideas or beliefs, including religious ones, illegal, in other words, thought crimes.[59][60][61][62][63][64][65]
In their book Hate Crimes: Criminal Law and Identity Politics, James B. Jacobs and Kimberly Potter criticize hate crime legislation for exacerbating conflicts between groups. They assert that by defining crimes as being committed by one group against another, rather than as being committed by individuals against their society, the labeling of crimes as “hate crimes” causes groups to feel persecuted by one another, and that this impression of persecution can incite a backlash and thus lead to an actual increase in crime.[66]

That seems to me to be the crux of a range of right wing and specifically ALEC legisltion; we should not penalize the hate thinkers, speakers, and those who act hatefully, because we might hurt their feelings, we might prevent them from terrorizing people who are different from them in some way the right exaggerates or misrepresents.  They want greater freedom to influence and actively harm others, not simply hold their own views and beliefs.
The reality is, the right wingers want to make it easier, and more legal, to inflict their hate thought in the form of action to abuse others who think or believe or act differently than they do.  It is true in their opposition to hate crime laws, it is true in their opposition to schools protecting children from bullying by anti-gay evangelical students and others, it is true in how they craft the laws that would make it easier for them to shoot someone they didn't like by claiming fear or threat when no objective basis for it exists.  The right wing doesn't want people to be protected from their hatred, and they seek every opportunity, including the recent Shoot First legislation that was defeated, to do so.

In fact, they are perfectly free to believe or say what they like, no matter how hateful.  They are not free, and should not be given protection, to do so in a way that threatens others, either by actual violence or intimidation or harassment.  We have too many hate groups here in Minnesota, and far too many of them are actively and effectively politically connected to the right wing.  We need to be free from bigots spouting faux patriotism, false interpretations of the U.S. Constitution, and filiopietistic claims about the founding fathers in order to justify hateful speech and actions that harm others.  We have a variety of dominionists on the right running for President, who would make the U.S. Constitution and U.S. law, from the federal level down to School Boards, subordinate to their version of the Bible. We have a variety of right wingers who want a free pass to inflict any amount of pain, from verbal abuse and harassment to shooting those who are 'different' to be excused under law.

It would be dangerous to let that extreme form of right wing ideology pass their legislation, not any of it, and most certainly not that which allows people to shoot other people without objective justification, which allows them to pursue and harass other people to initiate the conflicts they subjectively use to justify those shootings.

But we should not allow them the less obvious cases of legislatively institutionalizing their hate under the justification of their faith either.  That is the danger of extremism; the GOP currently embraces extremism every time they treat the word 'moderate' or 'compromise' as dirty words, as things to be penalized, as a basis for opposition.  The right extreme is making war on the moderates in their own party, and they are making a culture war on the rest who are outside their party and their ideology as well. 

That is BAD legislation, it is dangerous legislation, in some cases LETHAL legislation; it should be fought against intensely.  The most fundamental right of people to be themselves, to be safe in their own communities or anywhere in the United States, regardless of their age, gender or sexual orientation, race or religion is at stake.  The essence of the life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is on the line.

Not Part of the Regular Field Trip

We have a lot of legislation pending that would expand gun use and gun carry, notably the offensively titled 'Shoot First' legislation that would make it more excusable for people to shoot other people first, and ask questions afterwards, instead of before shooting.

We have more open and concealed carry than we used to have; and we have more freedom to bring guns into public parks like this one where a shooting occurred.  I would argue to our readers that if we don't want people shooting in public parks - like this one, where children are present - then we should not be allowing them to bring their firearms into the park, and we should not be making it even easier for them to elude being held accountable for shootings either - as the 'shoot first' legislation does.

The major law enforcement organizations in Minnesota oppose the legislation.  If WE oppose our children discovering the bodies of men who have been shot, while the children on are on field trips, we should oppose the legislation that makes guns more prevalent as well.

We don't want dead bodies for show and tell in school, or on school field trips.  Tripping over a stick or stone is one thing; dead gun shot corpses is another entirely, whether homicide or suicide.

Lets go back to keeping firearms out of public places, and to discouraging gun violence, particularly too-ready gun violence in place of restraint and accountability.  Our kids belong in parks; guns and dead bodies do not.

from KARE11.com




dead body on field trip in Eden Prairie
updated 1 hour 10 minutes ago 2012-02-24T16:51:00

EDEN PRAIRIE, Minn. - Eden Prairie police are investigating after a group of middle school students discovered a dead body while on a field trip to a local wildlife refuge Thursday morning.
Police spokesperson Katie Beal says the group of approximately 125 students and chaperones were exploring the Richard T. Anderson Conservation Area in Eden Prairie shortly after 10 a.m. when the body was found.
A smaller group of 30 students from Bloomington's Oak Grove Middle School was walking down a trail when they came upon the deceased male, who police say was dead from a gunshot wound to his head.
An autopsy has yet to be performed, but the wound appears to be self inflicted. Eden Prairie police say they are not looking for suspects.
Bloomington Public Schools spokesman Rich Kaufman says the district has mobilized its crisis response team. Grief counselors are on hand to help kids who might be struggling with the incident.
Parents of those students were notified and a handful of kids were picked up from school.