The state House last night added a major amendment to a Stand Your Ground bill that gets its final vote today. It's a provision for innocent bystanders who get shot during stand your ground confrontations to file lawsuits against the shooters.
The original Stand Your Ground law allows people who feel threatened to resort to deadly force immediately without first trying to run away. Under this new bill, the same protections would apply if they only threatened to use force, perhaps by drawing a gun and firing a warning shot.
Many consider that an unwelcome expansion of the Stand Your Ground law that became notorious after the Trayvon Martin shooting. But House speaker Will Weatherford says its time has come. "I feel confident that it's good bill and I think it will pass overwhelmingly tomorrow", Weatherford said.
The amendment to make Stand Your Ground shooters liable in some cases was filed by North Florida State Representative Matt Gaetz, who had to resort to some extreme hypotheticals to explain how the liability would work. As some of his colleagues cringed, he said some innocent victims might have a hard time proving negligence to a jury.
"If representative Berman were aiming at me and were to accidentally shoot representative Metz, that may not be negligent because he's very close to me", explained Gaetz. "But if she were aiming at me and accidentally shot representative Perry, then representative Perry would have a better factual claim in a negligence action than representative Metz would."
Another Stand Your Ground repair bill is making its way through the Legislature. Its main feature makes it clear that no one who starts a fight can end it with a gunshot and then claim self-defense under Stand Your Ground.