# Manuel Roig-Franzia at The Washington Post – Fla.

#
Manuel Roig-Franzia at The Washington Post –

Fla. Gun Law to Expand Leeway for Self-Defense – it seems that
Florida slipped one under the radar of the Brady Bunch. For some
reason they don’t understand that if somebody comes at you with a
knife, he has forfeit his right to life, and you are completely
justified in shooting him dead, no questions asked. Fortunately, the
Florida legislature understands the reality of the situtation. Bravo!
[trt-ny]
bq.
The Florida measure says any person “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.”

Florida law already lets residents defend themselves against attackers
if they can prove they could not have escaped. The new law would allow
them to use deadly force even if they could have fled and says that
prosecutors must automatically presume that would-be victims feared
for their lives if attacked.

The overwhelming vote margins and bipartisan support for the Florida
gun bill — it passed unanimously in the state Senate and was approved
94 to 20 in the state House, with nearly a dozen Democratic
co-sponsors — have alarmed some national gun-control advocates, who
say a measure that made headlines in Florida slipped beneath their
radar.

…

[Florida lobbyist Marion P.] Hammer, a 4-foot-11 dynamo with a
national reputation for her persuasive powers, dismissed the papers as
“liberal, anti-gunners” and “Chicken Littles.” The current law
unfairly forces Floridians to make split-second decisions about a
criminal’s intent, she said, and NRA lobbyists like to note that was
deemed impossible generations ago by legendary Supreme Court Justice
Oliver Wendell Holmes. “Detached reflection,” Holmes said in one of
his most oft-quoted pronouncements, “cannot be demanded in the
presence of an uplifted knife.”
[End the War on Freedom]

I’m pleased to see this development. It’s strange that Florida actually had worse self-defense laws than California, and I’m happy to see that at least partially rectified.