'Stand Your Ground' law 
Capitol Spotlight for weeklies for week of April 30, 2006
By Jim Campbell
OPA Capitol News Bureau
The Senate fired the "Stand Your Ground" bill authorizing self-defense gunfire outside the home directly at the governor's desk, whizzing past the only five senators to stand against it.
One of the five senators said election-year reality predicted the outcome of the new gun law, one of the few high-profile measures finding fertile ground in the opposite chamber with just a month left in the 2006 lawmaking session.
Notably, the House revived a series of anti-abortion measures that had failed to get a Senate hearing as well as an overhaul of lawsuit laws and approved a resolution limiting spending growth to 6 percent. The Senate passed a $6.5 million general appropriations bill which includes $300 million in new education money, and 5 percent pay raises for state workers, action promptly branded "irresponsible" by House leadership. The House earlier passed a general appropriations bill of slightly more than $6 billion and has proposed $500 million in tax cuts. 
Talk of a special session to resolve budget differences increased, some calling it inevitable.
Acceptance by House author Kevin Calvey, R-Del City, of a Senate amendment restoring the title made the "Stand Your Ground" measure a "live round" needing only the governor's signature to become law.
House Bill 2615 by Calvey, a candidate for Congress, and Sen. Harry Coates, R-Seminole, expands provisions of the "Make My Day" law, allowing people to use deadly force against intruders in their homes.
Other locations, such as a vehicle, would be covered as well. 
"We've all heard of car-jacking cases where the thief actually drove of with the children still buckled up," Coates said. "The law needs to be on the side of the parent trying to protect their children."
Sen. Cal Hobson, D-Lexington, called it a reckless measure sure to pass in an election year.
"It is more important to you to have the phrase 'stand your ground, 'make my day,' blow your head off' or whatever in an election year," he said. "We want this done - all of you know why - it's 2006. If it was 2007, we might have these smart lawyers who disagree on the fine points to sit down and discuss it."
Coates said the current "Make My Day" law allowing deadly force in the home has dramatically reduced burglaries and predicted similar success for the new law.
"Alabama, Florida, Indiana, Mississippi and South Dakota already have similar laws on their books," Coates said.
Sen. Jim Wilson, D-Tahlequah, said there were only 17 stranger-to-stranger homicides in Oklahoma in 2004, the latest statistics he could find.
"There was only one where this law would protect someone," he said. "That was a road rage situation. Oh, here's another statistic," he continued. "Two guys shot at each other and killed a stranger, a 13-year-old girl."
Sen. Jay Paul Gumm, D-Durant, argued that "inherent in the right to keep and bear arms is to use those arms to protect yourself."
Sen. Jonathon Nichols, R-Norman, said nothing in the bill would prevent a prosecutor from investigating a shooting as a homicide.
"I am comfortable voting for this bill because of the multiple layers of protection against the abuse of this law," he said.
Sen. Connie Johnson, D-Oklahoma City, said too often it's her African-American community "that's on the short end of the stick."
The "No" votes were cast by Hobson, Johnson, Wilson and Sens. Bernest Cain, D-Oklahoma City, and Judy Eason-McIntyre, D-Tulsa.
***
The Republican-controlled House amended a bill originally intended to limit where sex offenders may live to include a series of anti-abortion measures that had failed to get a Senate hearing.
They include a stronger parental consent provision and would require a woman seeking an abortion to be told the fetus might feel pain and be offered an ultrasound image of the baby. Further provisions are recognition that an unborn child is a separate victim if the mother is slain and money would be put into a revolving fund for nongovernmental agencies offering counseling and support to pregnant women.
Arguing passionately for the measures, Rep. Lisa Billy, R-Purcell, said she has friends who have experienced abortions and "still face the nightmares of that choice they made long ago when they didn't have all the choices."
As he did during the first action on the measures, the Legislature's only physician cautioned against them before voting for the amended bill.  He said he would pray that women not feel "so afraid, so criminalized" that they won't seek information, that there are not more back-alley abortions with dire consequences. 
Rep. Doug Cox, R-Grove, also criticized expansion of punitive damages against doctors.
"For those of you on my side of the aisle, I thought we were trying to argue against punitive damages," he said. "It makes me wonder. Are we really for tort reform or only when it is politically to our advantage?"
Billy said it was "indeed an honor to rise as a defender of life."
"When they see that ultrasound, there will be people willing to pray with them, to give them counsel," she said. "That is called freedom, my friends, that is not a roadblock."