The Waterkooler

Fla. Gun Law to Expand Leeway for Self-Defense
You would think that a law would not be necessary to allow you to defend yourself in your own home. But then we would have to remind you that we live in a country brimming with anti-gun nuts who would rather you retreat into the bathroom and cower in your shower while intruders roam freely through your house as they please. They want you to hide there in the bathtub as a sitting duck to these would-be killers in your home. Only then - from behind the shower curtain - do you have the right to defend yourself.

Well, thanks to Jeb Bush, Floridians are no longer commanded by law to hide in their bathrooms as criminals and murderers take over their homes.

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."

Of course, this is going to upset a lot of criminal coddlers in this country...

"I am in absolute shock," Sarah Brady, chair of the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, said in an interview. "If I had known about it, I would have been down there."

Well, you may be shocked but it seems like common sense here at the Waterkooler. Critics disagree:

Critics argue that the measure is so broad it will encourage fights between neighbors, parents at soccer games or drinking buddies to escalate into gunfights.

But law enforcement officials think it is a good idea.

Law enforcement did not try to block the measure, siding with the NRA rather than opposing the group, as many sheriffs and police officials had done during the debate two decades earlier over right-to-carry.

Florida Attorney General Charlie Crist, a leading candidate for the Republican governor's nomination in 2006, was among those who wrote letters of support. With that kind of high-level backing, Rep. Dennis Baxley, a Republican from Ocala who sponsored the House measure, could ridicule critics as "hysterical."

Hysterical is an understatement. Citing Dirty Harry, some Floridian journalists warn tourists of the middle east-esque dangers the state now poses:

Martin Dyckman of the St. Petersburg Times told tourists, indisputably a bedrock of the state's economy, to stay away: "Lebanon might be safer."

Read the bill here