Category Archives: guns

stupid piled on stupid

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Honest, I do NOT want to keep writing about this ‘stand your ground’ stuff. But I declare, it seems like every twenty minutes something completely predictable and completely stupid happens–and what’s the point of having a blog if you can’t take a moment out of the day to point out the effect stupidity has on the world around us?

You might have heard about the series of shootings in Tulsa Oklahoma over the weekend. A couple of white guys drove through a predominantly black neighborhood the night before Easter and shot five random black guys, killing three of them. Two men–Alvin Watts and Jake England–have been arrested and charged with the crimes. The motive appears to be generally racist and generically vengeful. The shootings took place on the second anniversary of the killing of England’s father. The man who shot and killed England’s father was black; he wasn’t charged with murder because Oklahoma is another ‘stand your ground’ state and he claimed self-defense.

It seems fairly certain that the earlier ‘justified’ killing, fueled in part by some non-specific racism, has led to these recent ‘unjustified’ killings. This is stupid piled on top of stupid.

But stupid appears to be in unlimited supply. There are people who see all these unrelated shootings as engagements in some undeclared race war being implemented by President Obama. I’m not kidding–there are folks actually claiming that. Here are four examples taken directly from four different members of freerepublic.com:

“Much like the ‘War on Terror’, there won’t be any actual declaration that the race war has begun. Just a series of incidents like this. The number of incidents will grow and then a spark will set off a riot in a city or a number of cities.”

“This race riot that Obama and Holder started is sickening. I feel so sorry for all my friends in America that remember what our country used to be.”

“It’s just what Obama wanted too. Another way to divide the country, and this is all part of his grand re-election scheme. Think about it, if he loses he’ll blame all the racist whites and spark the final wave of a giant race war in this country.”

“It’s a been a small scale guerrilla war for now. The shootings in Tulsa show that the whites have begun to engage. Look out this summer. A hot summer, high gas and food prices, possible government shutdown over the debt ceiling, war in the mid east, financial meltdown in Europe. Throw in a presidential campaign where the incumbent seems perfectly comfortable orchestrating a racial Götterdämmerung. They’ll be lucky to keep the trucks rolling and the interstates open.”

These folks are as unhinged as the people who keep declaring the world is going to end on a specific date. They’ve been predicting race wars and religious wars and communist invasions across the Mexican border and other lunatic apocalyptic crises for half a century. It’s always on the verge of happening–and even though it never does happen, these folks are waiting for it. They’re armed and prepared and waiting.

And the really truly stupid thing about all this–the stupid conspiracy theories, the stupid laws, the stupid shootings–is that they’re all grounded in nothing but free-floating fear. It’s a volatile feedback loop: stupidity leads to fear, fear leads to a desire for protection, that desire leads to stupid laws based on fear and the stupid belief that guns are a solution, easy access to guns makes lethal violence more likely, lethal violence leads to more fear, and the green grass grows all around, all around.

Stupid. Stupid piled on stupid, piled on still more stupid. Stupid is George Zimmerman following Trayvon Martin because he ‘looks suspicious.’ Stupid is a law that allows Zimmerman to legally shoot that young man. Stupid is a pair of guys ‘avenging’ a death by randomly shooting people who are the same general color of a person who committed an earlier stupid act of violence.

It’s so easy to be stupid. And stupid is so hard to root out.

an innocent man

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This is going to be an unpopular thing to say, but it has to be said at some point. George Zimmerman–the man who unquestionably shot and killed Trayvon Martin–is innocent.

This is a fundamental aspect of the U.S. Constitution. Every citizen who stands accused of a crime must be presumed innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law. This isn’t some legal nicety we can overlook simply because it’s unpopular. If the presumption of innocence has any value at all, it has to apply to everybody–even George Zimmerman. It’s true that standard only applies to juries, but when you hear somebody say Zimmerman ought to be tried and punished, they’re basically saying the Constitution shouldn’t apply to people they don’t like. And that’s fucked up.

So there it is, George Zimmerman shot and killed Trayvon Martin and wherever he is right now, he’s an innocent man. I hate to say it, but he’s probably innocent in two ways. He’s presumptively innocent and may, in fact, be not guilty under the law. According to Florida’s statute 776.013 (3) – Justifiable Use of Force, Zimmerman may never have his innocence challenged. It’s very possible he’ll never be charged with a crime. The law clearly states “A person who is not engaged in an unlawful activity and who is attacked in any other place where he or she has a right to be has no duty to retreat and has the right to stand his or her ground and meet force with force, including deadly force if he or she reasonably believes it is necessary to do so to prevent death or great bodily harm to himself.” The way the law is written, it’s very nearly a license to kill–and indeed, ‘justifiable’ homicides in Florida have increased threefold since the law was enacted.

We can’t know with any certainty what took place in the final few moments before George Zimmerman shot and killed Trayvon Martin. But we can make some educated guesses based on what we do know. We know what Zimmerman told the police during his 911 call. We know, for example, he was unreasonably suspicious of Martin. We know he was following the young man, and continued to do so even after the police told him he shouldn’t. We also know Trayvon Martin knew he was being followed and was nervous about it. We know Zimmerman prejudged Martin (“These assholes, they always get off”), and we know he felt antagonistic toward Martin (he called Martin either a “fucking coon” or a “fucking goon”).

That’s what we know. We can surmise Martin felt threatened by the man following him and decided to confront Zimmerman. We can surmise Zimmerman felt threatened by the confrontation and so pulled his weapon. We can surmise Martin felt threatened by the weapon and may have struck Zimmerman in self-defense. And we can surmise Zimmerman felt threatened by the assault and shot Martin in self-defense.

The way the Florida law is written, the last person to survive feeling threatened is innocent.

Trayvon Martin was innocent in reality. George Zimmerman is innocent under the law. The people who aren’t innocent are the members of the Florida legislature who enacted this stupid fucking law.

There won’t be any real justice for Trayvon Martin. There won’t be any justice for George Zimmerman. The only possible justice that could come out of this tragedy is if the good people of Florida rise up and force their legislature to repeal the law, and maybe vote out the idiots who thought the law was a good idea to begin with.

But this is Florida, where guns don’t kill people–people kill people. And in Florida, you can get away with it.