[Congressional Record Volume 158, Number 55 (Tuesday, April 17, 2012)]
[House]
[Page H1856]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                                GUN LAWS

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. The Chair recognizes the gentleman from 
Georgia (Mr. Johnson) for 5 minutes.
  Mr. JOHNSON of Georgia. Mr. Speaker, all Americans, and I being one 
of them, hope for justice in the Trayvon Martin case; but I stand here 
today because we must stop stacking the deck against all innocent 
Americans.
  Over 10,000 Americans died a preventable death by gun violence last 
year--10,000. And over 2,000 of those, Mr. Speaker, were children. Many 
of those children were inner-city youth, and many of the victims died 
at the hands of inner-city perpetrators.
  Trayvon Martin's case is a little different, but it is another sad 
addition to these statistics which are very tragic. But his case caught 
the attention of the American people and it illuminates problems in our 
society. This is indeed, ladies and gentlemen, a teachable moment. The 
Martin family's fight for basic justice has been delayed by Florida's 
``shoot first and ask questions later'' law which, incidentally, is 
misnamed as the ``stand your ground law,'' and it grants criminal and 
civil immunity regardless of the facts when individuals take the law 
into their own hands. We call this ``vigilante-ism'' or 
``vigilantism.''
  Florida's law, like so many similar laws in 25, ladies and gentlemen, 
of the 50 States, was the result of collusion by some of the Nation's 
wealthiest corporations in conjunction with the National Rifle 
Association through a secretive networking organization called the 
American Legislative Exchange Council, also known as ALEC.
  ALEC promotes model legislation written by its corporate members and 
disseminated to conservative State lawmakers around the country. The 
public whose votes elect these lawmakers to represent them are kept in 
the dark about the fact that their Representative is a member of this 
network of special interest groups and of corporate interest that wine, 
dine, and support these lawmakers' campaigns with campaign 
contributions. Any lawmaker who is a member of the group can log on to 
its Web site--and I would encourage you to do so, too--and if you're a 
member, you can find hundreds of model bills to copy and introduce in 
your legislature.
  The public, however, is not able to access that information because 
you must be a member; and in order to be a member, you've got to go 
through some kind of a screening process so they can make sure that you 
are of like mind because they don't want any infiltrators in there. 
They want to keep the business secret.

                              {time}  1110

  Membership fees for legislators are very small, $50 a year, whereas 
the corporate members have to pay tens of thousands of dollars per year 
for their memberships. These memberships are mostly big-lobby interest 
groups, big corporate-lobby interest groups, and what they do when they 
get into these meetings that they hold at exclusive resort locations, 
luxurious amenities, wining and dining these legislators, they spoon-
feed them legislation which supports their, the businesses, interests.
  Now, 60 percent of the legislators in the United States of America, 
on a State level, secretly belong to ALEC. They are members of that 
network. Thousands of these ALEC bills have been introduced around the 
country and many of them have passed. This gives the ALEC members 
secret and persuasive influence over our legislators, whom we elect to 
represent us.
  The Florida Shoot First, or, in other words, Stand Your Ground is 
what it's called, but it's actually the Shoot First law, was written by 
an NRA, National Rifle Association, lobbyist in one of those committees 
that the bought-and-paid-for legislators are members of.
  I will have further comment on this as the days go by. But the 
American public needs to be educated about this, and so we will talk 
further about it.

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