0 the nra wanted to roll this law out everywhere and they prioritized it. so florida went first. but then in short order, 21 other states had passed some version of the stand your ground law. they started with florida in 2005 and look how far they got. the nra had incredible momentum on this, but as they moved along, along, winning in the states, those states were starting to feel the effect of those laws. of what living under laws like that means for the states. in florida, where they tried it first so they had the longest experience with it, the "tampa bay times" started studying stand your ground cases and found shocking outcomes. one man killed two people, unarmed, and got acquitted. under stand your ground, you could be acquitted if you shot somebody who is lying on the ground and be acquitted for shooting somebody in the back of the head. the tampa bay newspaper said it was impossible to know how many stand your ground cases florida had but appears to be several hundred and of the ones they could track, nearly 70% of accusers went free. that's lived experience of stand your ground in florida after the nra got the first new stand your ground laws on the books. nationwide, it looked like this. this is the number of legally determined justifiable homicides in the country. at the start of the nra's campaign. and here's what happened after the other states piled on. more people can shoot more people in this country with impunity. from 2005 on, on, on, on up. never mind, you know? never mind, you know? it was full steam ahead for the nra and stand your ground. this is what they wanted. full steam ahead. keep passing those laws. almost february 26th, 2012. when they lost their momentum because a neighborhood watch volunteer shot and killed trayvon martin who had been walking home in the rain wearing a hoodie and carrying iced tea and a bag of skittles. there would be no arrest in the case for six weeks even though there was no doubt as to who had pulled the trigger. the shooter said he had acted in self-defense. and, of course, self-defense in florida now is stand your ground. a lot of the country was outraged about this case. outraged about the handling of this case in florida. outraged that the shooter was not being arrested. he's not being arrested, how can it be that he's not being arrested? we all learned quickly because florida had this law. this stand your ground law. the lady in the blue jacket. right. ah. oh. and it turns out it's not just florida. florida was first, but now basically everybody has this law. why does everybody all of a sudden have this law? this seems new. where did this law come from in all these states that not many people noticed before this marquee case in florida suddenly shocked everybody with its implications in this case? the law came from something called a.l.e.c., stand your ground, defend your castle laws may have been an nra priority. the way the nra pushed them was through the american legislative exchange council. a.l.e.c. for short. see the legislative scorecard from a.l.e.c. for model legislation. the castle doctrine, stand your ground, is right there on the a.l.e.c. list. this chilling marquee case in florida attracts enough outrage that the big mainstream corporate interests that belong to a.l.e.c. started to get embarrassed to be associated with the law, right? the uproar was not just about florida. once people realized what this law was and how it had spread, it was not just about the nra or the stand your ground law. it's about the way the law had been written as model legislation by this group that the nra and all of these corporations were part of. and the corporations, these other constituent members of a.l.e.c. beyond the nra, they started to get embarrassed about being associated with this. why on earth does kraft foods want to shoot first and ask questions later bill on its legislative agenda? so kraft foods, yeah, drops their membership from a.l.e.c. which had been pushing these stand your ground laws. pepsico drops their membership from a.l.e.c., coca cola drops their membership from a.l.e.c. companies stop dropping out of a.l.e.c. one after another after another and a.l.e.c. announced we're getting out of the stand your ground business. i mean, why would pepsi be working on gun laws? right? didn't make any sense. so a.l.e.c. when they got the pressure started to see the pressure manifest as its corporate sponsors dropping out and a.l.e.c. thereby dropped the issues. the laws do not go away. the nra stays as much a part of a.l.e.c. as ever. they kept on. the nra doing a trap shooting event with a.l.e.c. sponsored by the machine gun maker browning arms company. the nra remained very much a part of a.l.e.c. with the protesters camped out at rick scott's office and florida the birthplace of the stand your ground law, and with rick scott refusing thus far to go back to his office because apparently he does no want to talk about this stuff, the power of the nra is once again back at the center of american politics. the way it has been since december. since the mass shooting at that elementary school in newtown, connecticut. what happened in florida is a different tragedy from what happened in newtown, but it turns out that while the impetus might be different, the fight is the same. and the adversary is the same. and all of the anti-nra outrage, and anti-nra work that we have seen as a nation since the newtown tragedy, it matters all over again, right? i mean, the newtown families are continuing to lobby members of congress. continuing to lobby in the states. pushing on after even losing that big senate vote. just this week, newtown families, there's francine wheeler, taking her case to states like pennsylvania who are considering changing in their gun laws. changed by a new group, dresses up at one point in cow costumes saying it's time to stop being cowed by the nra. congresswoman gabby giffords and her husband, the astronaut, mark kelly, visiting seven states in seven states. the congressional black caucus saying they're ready to legislate against stand your ground, encouraging president obama to not give up on the issue despite the uphill fight. all of this work to organize against the nra since newtown. on the other side, the nra is standing there in the wake of the trayvon martin outrage saying, yeah, yeah, we're going to defend stand your grounds this is our law. the forces against the nra are stronger than they have ever been for a lot of reasons. are they strong enough now to make a difference? moments ago, on this network, a member of the group that is camped outside the florida governor's office said he just now got a phone call from the governor. he says the governor told him that he will finally meet with the protesters tonight. maybe the governor just wants his office back or maybe there is room here for something to change. joining us now is marc caputo for the "miami herald." thanks for being here. >> thanks for having me. >> you have written about the role of stand your ground in the overall trayvon martin/george zimmerman case. you've also written that regardless of the outrage and all the pressure, nobody should expect this law to change. are you at all surprised to hear the governor at least wants to talk to the protesters in his office about it tonight? >> no. i think they made it quite clear they're going to stay there for quite some time, so if they stay in his office and they increase in numbers, eventually he's going to have to address them. in 2006, a similar group, the kind of the forerunners of this group held a sit-in when george bush was a governor, involving the death of a young man named martin lee anderson. they stayed and stayed and jeb bush finally met with some of the folks and they went away. rick scott has gotten the message. >> in thinking about the power of the nra, when this initially passed, it was not at all a subtle thing, right? jeb bush, it was nra language, jeb bush signed the law with nra lobbyists standing next to him, touted this as something they not only got done in florida but they were going to get done all the way across the country. the authorship was very clear. has the political power of the nra changed at all relative to its opponents since newtown, since the sort of re-politicization of guns in this country after that tragedy in connecticut? >> well, we haven't seen any evidence of that changing in florida. understand, florida has very urban areas, miami, tampa, jacksonville, but it's still a southern state in many of its sympathies, and part of that is gun culture. florida was nicknamed the gunshine state for a reason. we like guns here. there's 1.15 million concealed weapon permit holders. so that's a pretty big constituency. that doesn't mean common sense gun reform is resisted by all gun owners or potential gun owners, but right now the economic interests are favoring the gun -- how would i say, the proponents of more gun rights. the folks who are pose gun rights or want to scale back gun rights or want to have more gun control, if you will, they really have an uphill battle. understand the legislature is overwhelmingly republican. democrats barely have about 36%, 37% of the seats on average in the house and the senate together. and the governor's office is controlled by a republican. the first thing is the democrats have to find a candidate and probably win the governor's office and slowly chip back and win in the legislature. even if they do that, there are going to be democrats who represent rural areas who probably won't want to change because a lot of their constituents favor having fewer gun restrictions and the last quinnipiac poll in florida showed that stand your ground was favored by a majority of florida voters, and a smaller percentage, obviously, favored repealing it or changing it. >> because of the national attention to this case, and because florida's pioneering stand your ground law ended up being copied and done in a lot of other states, two dozen other states around the country almost, a lot of people are looking at the george zimmerman verdict and the trayvon martin case in general and hearing very conflicted analysis as to whether or not stand your ground is important. was determinative, even, as to what happened in that case. having watched the case closely, is stand your ground effectively the definition of self-defense in florida? was it central to the case in way it was decided? >> yeah. remember this is that stand your ground is self-defense in florida. if you have a self-defense defense in florida, it's a stand your ground defense, especially in lethal force cases. this was a lethal force case. therefore, stand your ground has something to do with it. was it determinative? we can't know. we weren't in the jury room. we do know this. the jury instructions had almost word for word stand your ground language. juror b-37 told cnn that they had discussed stand your ground. in fact, she twice of her own accord mentioned stand your ground. so for anyone to say stand your ground had nothing to do with the case, it's strange. it's false. it's like, you know, on my end it's almost like describing a sphere to a flat earth society person. i just can't understand why they say it has absolutely nothing to do with it. it is an argument of degree, but we don't know the degree. it had something to do with it. also understand this about stand your ground, a big change it made. before it passed in 2005, florida had what many states have which is a duty to retreat when you're in a confrontation in public. if you're lawfully in an area and some guy comes up and picks a fight with you, you had a duty to retreat before using lethal force. you had a duty to retreat, quote, to the wall. they changed that and said you have a right to stand your ground and meet force with force anywhere in public. assume that you were lawfully there and engaged if lawful activity. again, stand your ground certainly had something to do with this case. how much? we don't know. it certainly had something to do with it. >> marc caputo, political columnist for the "miami herald." i'm going to send you a new ear piece as thanks for being here. >> sorry about that. i was smiling too much. i apologize. >> it's all right. i appreciate you being here. >> thanks. lots and lots and lots to come tonight, including the most important drip in the drip, drip, drip saga of skeeviness involving governor ultrasound. the biggest drip yet. stay with us. you know throughout history, folks have suffered from frequent heartburn. but getting heartburn and then treating day after day is a thing of the past. block the acid with prilosec otc, and don't get heartburn in the first place. 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