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Tillis even led the effort to pass the kind of Stand Your Ground laws that caused the shooting death of Trayvon Martin.

radio ad sponsored by Senate Majority PAC, referring to Republican Senate candidate Thom Tillis

This radio ad, captured by a conservative blogger, has inspired outrage in the closely fought election campaign between Sen. Kay Hagen (D) and Thom Tillis, the North Carolina house speaker. In response, the conservative American Commitment PAC has even run its own ads, accusing Democrats of race-hustling.

Senate Majority PAC, which is affiliated with Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), did not respond to repeated queries about this ad, having apparently decided it is no longer necessary to respond to The Fact Checkers questions. But what evidence is there that a Stand Your Ground law caused the shooting of Trayvon Martin?

Martin was an unarmed 17-year-old African-American who was shot and killed in 2012 by 28-year-old George Zimmerman, who was acting as a self-appointed watchman in a gated community in Florida where Martin was living. Zimmerman claimed self-defense, but the killing spawned outrage, especially in the black community. Zimmerman faced murder charges from a special prosecutor appointed by Floridas governor, but was acquitted of murder and manslaughter charges by a jury in 2013.

The key question is whether Floridas Stand Your Ground law which permits a person to meet force with force, including deadly force if he or she has reason to feel threatened in the confrontation was the cause of the shooting death. The controversial law was passed in 2005 with the help of the National Rifle Association and similar laws have been approved in nearly half of the states.

As a legal matter, Zimmermans attorney did not raise a stand your ground defense at the trial. But after the trial a juror acknowledged that jurors had discussed the self-defense law before finding Zimmerman not guilty. The law also changed the standard instructions to jurors in homicide cases, so that the judge said that Zimmerman had no duty to retreat and could stand his ground if he felt threatened. (The law may have also played a role in the initial failure of the local police to prosecute Zimmerman.)

But while that might have been a factor in the not-guilty verdict, even though it was not raised as a defense, that does not mean the law caused the killing, as the ad asserts. The actual cause relates to Zimmermans state of mind at the time of the shooting, including whether he aspired to become a law enforcement officer and whether he had engaged in racial profiling because of Martins race and even his attire (a hoodie). But those questions may never be satisfactorily answered.

Equally murky is Tillis role in North Carolinas 2011 passage of a Stand Your Ground law. Such laws were promoted by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a limited-governmentgroup that offers model legislation for lawmakers to adopt. In 2011, ALEC named Tillis a legislator of the year, one of eight lawmakers to receive the honor. But the Raleigh News & Observer, which wrote extensively about ALEC, reported that Tillis had no role in promoting the self-defense law, other than to be an active member of the American Legislative Exchange Council.

As always, the burden of proof rests with the organization or candidate making a claim. It is telling that Senate Majority PAC does not bother to offer any defense of this radio ad. Perhaps it hoped it could slip this past reporters asking too many questions.

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Fact Checker: Was the Stand Your Ground law the cause of Trayvon Martins death?