Some 24 states followed Florida in putting Stand Your Ground laws on their books, at least ten of which are nearly identical to the measure that’s gained national attention after George Zimmerman, 28, shot and killed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Fla., last month and was not arrested because he said he was acting out of self-defense.

In 2005, Florida passed its Stand Your Ground law, which offers legal immunity to individuals who use deadly force when they believe they are being threatened by another. The National Rifle Association pushed the legislation through state legislatures across the country as an expansion of the nation's gun rights laws.

After Florida passed its law, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) adopted its legislative language as one of the model bills it proposes to legislators across the country on behalf of its member associations, in this case the NRA.

A Sunlight Foundation analysis using automated textual analysis  found that not only are the laws similar, but at least 10 of  the states based their legislation on nearly identical bills to the one Florida passed and ALEC adopted.

Because some states do not make the original legislation available online, there could be even more states that used what became an ALEC model bill to guide their legislation.

The analysis was able to detect striking similarities and identical phrases across multiple bills, including the phrase, “[a] person is presumed to have held a reasonable fear of imminent peril of death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another when using defensive force that is intended or likely to cause death or great bodily harm …,” which is just one of the provisions of the law that is intended to protect people who may have killed another person from being arrested or prosecuted.

Michigan’s House Bill 5153 that passed the state legislature in 2006 was the most similar to Florida’s bill, according to the analysis. When compared to the Florida bill it returned the highest rate of matches than any other bill did at 146 fragments matched. The state bill with the lowest matching rate to Florida was Mississippi Senate Bill 2426 at 20 matching fragment counts.

The ten states that were revealed to have varying degrees of similarities to the Florida bill are:

• Michigan
• South Carolina
• West Virginia
• Kentucky
• Oklahoma
• Tennessee
• Wisconsin
• Wyoming
• Kansas
• Mississippi

The NRA hasn’t commented on the Martin case specifically, but has said the Stand Your Ground law is good legislation and to call it otherwise would be a mistake.

Florida State officials have said that it will be more difficult to prosecute the shooter, George Zimmerman, if they decide to do so, because of the law.

Breanna Edwards contributed to this post.

The NRA exemption to the DISCLOSE Act has reportedly grown wider.

As we predicted, the appalling exemption demanded by the NRA has now been expanded. Even more groups will now elude public scrutiny, even as the Supreme Court recognizes that disclosure is the necessary response to expanded speech rights for corporations and unions. The only thing worse than this growing, egregious self-interested loophole would be the ignorance we'd be immersed in without the DISCLOSE Act's transparency requirements.

If one were ranking the most cynical, distasteful moments in inside-the-beltway- machinations, yesterday’s announcement by Democratic leaders in the House that they “reached a compromise with” (e.g. caved to) the NRA so the NRA would not oppose the DISCLOSE Act would score high. One of the most powerful special interests in Washington likely twisted arms, threatened retribution—possibly in the form of negative campaign ads—and ultimately managed to have themselves exempted from key requirements of the DISCLOSE Act, a bill that is intended to shine a light on electioneering spending—like negative campaign ads—by the most powerful special interests in Washington.

It’s not a done deal, but if the proposed NRA amendment finds its way into the final legislation, what it will mean is that the NRA will be exempt from the DISCLOSE Act’s requirement that an organization’s top donors be disclosed when the organization pays for campaign ads. Besides creating an unjustifiable carve-out for the NRA, the NRA has positioned itself to be a conduit for undisclosed money in elections. It has created for itself a new business opportunity, that of shell organization for other interests that may want to hide behind the NRA while directly affecting federal elections. The Supreme Court opened the door to exactly this type of activity in its Citizens United v. FEC decision—but by way of the DISCLOSE Act, Congress is attempting to use strong disclosure provisions to minimize the distorting impact of money on elections. For everyone except the NRA (and possibly a few other organizations that qualify under the narrow terms of this deal).

According the Washington Post, the deal would prohibit the use of any corporate or labor union money to pay for the NRA’s campaign-related expenditures. But, as money is fungible, it is easy to imagine the NRA replacing individual contributions with corporate funds in a non-campaign expenditure account, having that much more to spend on electioneering activities. They may never do that, but this amendment insures the public will never know.

We are disheartened that some would forgive the exemption on the grounds that it is so narrow it won’t open the floodgates for secret money in elections. Perhaps it won’t. But the simple fact that the NRA could demand such an exception in a shadowy backroom deal demonstrates why we need more, not less, sunlight on the entire process. It also raises the concern that yet another organization will demand its own carve-out as the bill works its way through the Senate. And perhaps another during conference? Where does the deal-making end and backbone begin?

There will always be loopholes in legislation, whether they are created inadvertently, or by clever lawyers taking advantage of the vagaries of the law, or by courts imposing their own spin on what a law should or should not accomplish. But the willful creation of a blatant loophole that entirely contradicts the intent of the underlying bill is almost too much to accept. Almost. Because in the end, Sunlight grudgingly—and fighting against all our instincts and knowledge of how reform legislation is only as strong as its smallest loophole—accepts that the DISCLOSE Act is still too important to crumble under the weight of the NRA exemption. The Supreme Court did significant damage to the political process in the Citizens United case and, on balance, the DISCLOSE Act’s disclosure provisions still address the corrupting influence of new corporate money in elections by shining a light on where it is coming from. But, if Members of Congress acquiesce to the NRA’s demands, they will demonstrate their willingness to accept more of the status quo and less sunlight.

Politico reports that there has been a breakthrough in the deadlock in the House over the DISCLOSE Act, the legislative response to the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision.

House Democrats have reached an agreement with the National Rifle Association on campaign-finance legislation that would roll back the Citizens United Supreme Court decision, removing a major obstacle on the bill, according to House sources. The deal would exempt the NRA and some other large organizations from strict campaign finance disclosures in the bill, which is being pushed by Democratic leaders in the wake of the Supreme Court’s ruling in the Citizens United case. The NRA had objected to some of the disclosure requirements for the new campaign finance proposals, and that had kept moderate, pro-gun Democrats from backing the legislation. The NRA said it would not comment until specific legislative language is revealed.

The deal would exempt non-profit organizations with over one million members, have existed for ten or more years, have members in all 50 states and receive 15 percent or less in contributions from corporations.

Aside from the NRA, I can only think of a few organizations that could fit into this exemption. AARP is one that comes to mind. Citizens Against Government Waste boasts of more than one million members, but I have no idea where they get their money from. If you can think of any other organizations, please leave them in the comments.

We'll have more on this development soon after fully digesting this latest development.

The Sunlight Foundation's recommended legislative response to the Citizens United decision can be found here.