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has been shot to death for texting at the movies so just shut up, liberal scum, is trying to decide how to make itself safer so Sean Hannity will feel more comfortable moving down there to kill bonefish. Luckily, the National Rifle Association is there to help.

The current bill would amend the state's expansive Stand Your Ground law-which permits residents to use deadly force in numerous circumstances-so that it also allows the nebulous "threatened use of force." In effect, it means that gun owners could walk free for brandishing their gun in a threatening manner or firing a shot indiscriminately to "warn" a potential assailant. That also means gun owners would get blanket immunity from the state's "10-20-life" law, which mandates an automatic 10-year sentence for anyone accused of flashing or using a gun in the commission of a felony. Numerous Florida politicians, including Jeb Bush, have long credited that measure with significantly decreasing the state's gun crimes.

It is occasionally mentioned here that the Republican party is terribly afflicted with a prion disease that has eaten away the party's higher functions and driven the party mad. Short-term memory is the first thing to go.

Ironically, the NRA originally lobbied in favor of those mandatory sentencing minimums for gun-brandishing Floridians. In 1999, Hammer stood beside then-Gov. Jeb Bush as he signed "10-20-life" into law. That was part of the pro-gun lobby's longstanding dictum that "we don't need new gun laws, we need to enforce the ones that are already on the books." But in this case, the NRA wants to do away with a gun law that's been on the books for nearly 15 years-a law that it helped pass.

It is hard not be somewhat in awe of what the NRA has done since we all had that "teaching moment" in Newtown, Connecticut. It has quadrupled-down and, in many cases, it has won. At the very least, it has more than blunted what seemed then to be irresistable momentum toward a sensible national regulatory policy regarding guns. I don't recall who first mentioned it, but there's a lot to be said for applying to the NRA what Lincoln said at Cooper Union on a completely different issue.

These natural, and apparently adequate means all failing, what will convince them? This, and this only: cease to call slavery wrong, and join them in calling it right. And this must be done thoroughly - done in acts as well as in words. Silence will not be tolerated - we must place ourselves avowedly with them. Senator Douglas' new sedition law must be enacted and enforced, suppressing all declarations that slavery is wrong, whether made in politics, in presses, in pulpits, or in private. We must arrest and return their fugitive slaves with greedy pleasure. We must pull down our Free State constitutions. The whole atmosphere must be disinfected from all taint of opposition to slavery, before they will cease to believe that all their troubles proceed from us.

We must not simply let them have their guns. We must love their guns the way they do. That's what the country has learned from its teachable moment.

Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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