After all the post-Trayvon sturm und drang over Stand Your Ground laws – remember how they were called a license to kill? – Florida Governor Rick Scott’s 19-member committee tasked with examining the law and making recommendations where necessary decided that the law is basically fine as it stands. miamiherald.com is reporting that, “The task force made a handful of recommendations for the Legislature, but began the report by stating that, at its core, the self-defense law is fine as it is. ‘All persons who are conducting themselves in a lawful manner have a fundamental right to stand their ground and defend themselves from attack with proportionate force in every place they have a lawful right to be,’ the report reads.” . . .
Since you can’t empanel a group like that an expect them to recommend nothing, they dutifully wrote up a few recommendations to justify their existence.
The group’s recommendations included reconsidering the state’s 10-20-Life law, tightening standards for neighborhood watch groups and commissioning a study to look into issues of racial disparities and unintended consequences of Stand Your Ground.
And, shockingly, the fact that the Governor’s task force, chaired by Lt. Gov. Jennifer Carroll (above) didn’t recommend shredding Florida’s Stand Your Ground law didn’t make everyone happy.
“It’s what I expected,” said Sen. Chris Smith, D-Fort Lauderdale, told the News Service of Florida. “When you put a task force together of people who wrote the bill and full of people who support Stand Your Ground I knew the task force wouldn’t come up with anything earth-shattering in their final report.”