7 Crazy Gun Laws That Put Our Lives at Risk

The National Rifle Association has been so effective at defeating just about every proposed gun control measure in the U.S. Senate, the House of Representatives, and in state houses across the country for more than a decade, that it may be time to replace the term "lobbying" with a new one: "NRAing."

Unsatisfied with simply preventing what groups like the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence describe as common-sense initiatives (e.g., renewing the long-expired assault weapons ban), today's NRA and its executive director, the unyielding Wayne LaPierre, have been working hard to enact pro-gun laws. For example, according to Mother Jones, LaPierre and company are bent on bringing the same law that protected the killer of a Florida teenager from going to prison to all 50 states.

In fact, during the past four decades, the NRA has fundamentally changed the very meaning of the term "gun laws." If you think "gun laws" refers to laws that limit the availability of guns, think again. The following list of absurd legislation (and proposed legislation) shows how some are fighting to extend the right to bear arms to even schools and workplaces.

As the U.S. Senate considers adding more gun-control measures in a vote Monday, consider this list of gun laws that may cost far more lives than they save.

THOM SENZEE is a contributor to The Advocate. Follom him on Twitter @tsenzee.

Depending on your perspective, Kennesaw, Ga., is either a case study in over-the-top, contrarian politics or the poster city for the NRA's argument that more guns makes people safer. Responding to an Illinois town that banned guns outright in 1982, Kennesaw made it illegal for a head of household to not keep and maintain a firearm. The law has never been enforced, according to NBC News.

Incredibly, Florida, which ranks 25th on the Brady Campaign's 2013 States Scorecard on Gun Violence, makes it unlawful for a doctor or other medical professional to broach the subject of gun safety in order to protect children in a gun-owning household.

From the Brady Campaign: "In 2011 the Florida legislature passed the 'Privacy of Firearm Owners Act,' (FOPA) an NRA-sponsored bill that drastically limits the freedom of medical professionals to talk to and advise their patients about the risks of firearms in the home. And this law doesn’t just hurt doctors — it also prevents thousands of Floridians from receiving individualized advice and counseling that can’t be replicated elsewhere."

Florida's so-called Stand Your Ground law is still in effect, even after the tragic death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in 2012. Martin's killer, George Zimmerman, successfully used the law as a defense for pursuing and gunning down the youth, who was armed with nothing more than a bag of candy. In recent years, the Supreme Court of the United States has found that Stand Your Ground laws such as Florida's are constitutional.

Previously, American jurisprudence assumed a violence-minimizing posture by which individuals were generally obligated to do their best to avoid gun violence. Before Stand Your Ground or "Shoot First" laws, there was assumed to be an obligation to try to escape from armed assailants if at all possible. Now, to the contrary, 24 states have laws that make it perfectly fine to chase down and shoot someone you even think is armed and might shoot you.

Some gun-control advocates refer to Stand Your Ground Laws as "licenses to kill" because such laws, they argue, have the unintended consequence of emboldening people to shoot other people even when there's no real threat, just because someone upsets them or makes them uncomfortable.

Despite assurances that existing homicide laws prevent that from happening, the parents of 17-year-old Jordan Davis, another unarmed African-American Florida youth, who was shot and killed in 2012 by a man who said he felt threatened by loud hip-hop music playing inside the vehicle Davis occupied, believe Stand Your Ground effectively killed their son.

In fact, Davis's murderer, 47-year-old white software engineer Michael Dunn, is currently serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole, after the law he thought would immunize him from conviction failed to do so. The fact that Stand Your Ground didn't work as a defense for Dunn does nothing to bring back Jordan Davis. The victim's parents believe Florida's Stand Your Ground law will embolden others to murder until it is repealed.

An HBO film titled 3 1/2 Minutes, Ten Bullets explores how racial bias causes Stand Your Ground laws to disproportionately harm young men of color.

Even if employers are allowed to ban guns in the workplace, some states have enacted legilation called Guns in Parking Lots Laws, which forbid the prosecution, and in some cases the firing, of employees who bring guns to work but leave them in their cars. One Tennessee Democrat told Fox News that the law was outrageous.

“It’s outrageous,” Tennessee House Democratic Caucus chairman Mike Stewart told Fox News. “What’s next? Are we going to have a law that forces a family to let an armed person into their living room? Where does it stop?”

At least one state law, Section 563.031.1.5 of the Missouri Revised Statutes, not only puts the burden on prosecutors to prove that someone who kills with a gun did not merely "believe" they were under threat of "unlawful force," but also removes the obligation to retreat from the threat.

Missouri law also allows a person to kill another person with impunity even if they are under the influence of alcohol, as long as they believe they're threatened. From the statute itself:

"The defendant shall have the burden of injecting the issue of justification under this section. If a defendant asserts that his or her use of force is described under subdivision (2) of subsection 2 of this section, the burden shall then be on the state to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant did not reasonably believe that the use of such force was necessary to defend against what he or she reasonably believed was the use or imminent use of unlawful force."

According to the Brady Campaign 2013 Scorecard, four states, Alaska, Arizona, Vermont, and Wyoming, allow individuals to carry concealed guns without obtaining a permit. An estimated 11 million Americans carry concealed firearms, according to The Christian Science Monitor.

In a story headlined with the query, "Is Price of an Armed America a More Dangerous America?" the Monitor tells the story of two concealed gun-carrying neighbors who killed each other with one shot each over a petty argument.

A gun lobby effort to force California to allow the concealed carrying of guns was recently stopped in its tracks by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The case may still go to the Supreme Court.

Following the 2007 tragedy in which Seung-Hui Cho gunned down 32 people at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in Blacksburg, some state legislators responded by seizing the moment to forward another of the NRA's objectives: Get rid of universities' designations as "gun-free zones." The argument, of course, is that more guns would mean fewer mortalities, because murderous gunmen like Cho could be gunned down by a gun-toting university professor or student.

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 33 states introduced concealed-carry bills aimed at forbidding colleges from banning concealed weapons on campus in the months immediately following the Virginia Tech attack. In the end, only four states passed such laws: Texas most recently, with Kansas, Arkansas, and Tennessee before that.

The good news for "common-sense" gun-control advocates is that Thursday, following more than 14 hours of filibuster-style debate on the Senate floor, Democratic Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut secured a promise from the Republican majority's leader, Mitch McConnell, that he will allow a vote on the so-called "No-Fly, No-Buy" gun-control bill, banning gun purchases by people who are on the government's list of those considered dangerous to board airplanes. There will also be a vote on strengthening background checks.

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