The Gadfly is a week late and a dollar short on this story, but that doesn't make it any less relevant to the ongoing national conversation about the epidemic of deadly gun violence in America and our country's leader's embarrassing and sickening dearth of courage to do anything meaningful about it.
The headline of the article cited below states, "I'd hate to be a former Zimmerman juror today." The connotation being that the jurors in the Zimmerman trial should be feeling some level of guilt by their decision to acquit him in the slaying of Trayvon Martin. The Gadfly could not disagree more. Those jurors were only following, as instructed, the letter of Florida's stand your ground law and contrary to claims of right wing gun goon types, it most definitely played a crucial role in Zimmerman's acquittal. So for the writer of this article, to insinuate that the jurors should be experiencing remorse for their vote to acquit, is to completely ignore the fact that those jurors really had no choice in the matter, based on the stand your ground statute, to declare the killing justified and give Mr. Zimmerman his freedom.
What is not in dispute among sound minded Americans is that the blood of 17 year old Trayvon Martin will eternally stain the hands of the politicians in the Florida legislature who passed the insidious and cowardly "stand your ground" gun law in the first place. It is the same blood that stains the hands of the Florida people who voted those politicians in to power and continue to support them along with the "stand your ground" atrocity. For as a result, George Zimmerman is running around threatening his ex-wife and girlfriend with his guns - and the Florida criminal justice system has yet to find a way to hold him accountable for it.
George Zimmerman is a free man. George Zimmerman is also a murderer. Sane people who live in the reality-based universe know it. Some (too few unfortunately for us all) in the media know it too.
Observe:
The news that Zimmerman had been arrested again isn’t surprising. It’s just a matter of time before the entitled gun nut and wannabe cop hurts someone else. Just since his release from jail in July, he’s been stopped by law enforcement for speeding at least three times, and police have been called to his home by his estranged wife, who said he threatened her with a gun (she refused to press charges). He also toured the factory that produced the weapon he used to kill Martin. Zimmerman is not now and never was a mild-mannered guy who was at the wrong place at the wrong time and reluctantly killed a young thug who attacked him in self-defense; he is himself a thug with an anger problem looking for trouble.http://www.salon.com/2013/11/19/id_hate_to_be_a_former_zimmerman_juror_today/
The Gadfly will say it again. The "stand your ground" law is a law of the cowards, by the cowards and for the cowards. It gives license to anyone who simply "feels" threatened to whip out their firearm and shoot to kill - regardless if the individual they "feel" threatened by is armed or even within physical contact vicinity.
In the old American West, if a man pulled a gun and shot another man before that other man ever drew his weapon, it would most assuredly result in a charge of murder. Hell - when the Earps and Doc Holliday faced down the Clanton/McLaury gang in Tombstone Arizona in 1881, the Earps patiently waited until one of the opposition pulled their gun before pulling their own and opening fire. They did not start shooting solely because they had a "feeling" that their lives were in danger.
But now we have this coward's law which states that one only has to "feel" threatened in order to terminate the life of any individual who has instilled in you some measure of a "feeling" of being a danger to you. Ultimately, it is just another symptom of America's increasingly paranoid and socially ill culture. Instead of taking on the hard work of addressing the root causes of gun violence and criminal behavior in our communities, we take the coward's way out by passing laws like "stand your ground" that simply add another layer of irresponsibility and legal malfeasance to a social fabric that is already drowning in a crisis of lost courage and resolve and has had a life preserver made of lead tossed to them.
As it is - the real tragedy here is that George Zimmerman still has his guns and is running around, a free man, waving those guns at anyone who he "feels" threatened by. Meanwhile, a 17 year old boy lies in his grave, shot down for the crime of being an anonymous minority wearing a hooded sweatshirt and walking with iced tea and candy in George Zimmerman's fiefdom. The Gadfly believes it is safe to state that Trayvon Martin "feels" nothing at this point in his life.
----TFG
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