Coming soon to your legislature: ALEC and the NRA

What does Walmart have to do with Trayvon Martin?

March 28, 2012
by Lauren Feeney
billmoyers.com

What does Walmart have to do with the tragic death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin? The answer starts with Florida’s 2005 Stand Your Ground law, promoted across the country as “model legislation” by the American Legislative Exchange Council, or ALEC — “a corporate-backed organization that has managed to keep a low profile even as it exerts vast influence,” as Paul Krugman of The New York Times explains:

Despite claims that it’s nonpartisan, it’s very much a movement-conservative organization, funded by the usual suspects: the Kochs, Exxon Mobil, and so on. Unlike other such groups, however, it doesn’t just influence laws, it literally writes them, supplying fully drafted bills to state legislators.

The citizen’s advocacy group Common Cause has an explanation as to why it believes ALEC, which mostly promotes corporate interests, has campaigned for Stand Your Ground laws nationwide. The National Rifle Association is a longtime funder of ALEC. The NRA pushed for the Florida bill’s passage and one of its lobbyists then asked a closed-door meeting of ALEC’s Criminal Justice Task Force to use the law as a template for other state legislatures. At the time, that task force was co-chaired by Walmart, America’s largest seller of guns and ammunition. In September 2005, the bill was adopted by ALEC’s board of directors.

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