Our culture and our laws have been dragged in this direction for decades. What people are in denial about is that there was not a clear legal path to convict Zimmerman of anything. Feeling really strongly that he's asshole doesn't work in the jury room, and it's not supposed to.
1. He had a gun he was permitted to carry and conceal.
2. No one was present to say how the conflict began.
3. At some point Zimmerman was tackled and / or punched, which he said put him in fear of his life.
That's all that's needed for a "lawful" killing these days.
That's all the present law requires to give someone the right to shoot to kill. And it is precisely what the modern NRA gun fetish ideology is pushing for. Their mythology is that America is a teeming battleground, full of illegitimate sub-humans of various descriptions, and that a certain demographic of "law-abiding citizens" is all that stands between us and some fanciful version of The Walking Dead.
And it's not even the terrible "Stand Your Ground Laws" that are the problem. As it stands today, in nearly every state and municipality, people can carry a weapon, start a fight, and then simply kill with the flick of a trigger if it isn't going their way.
That's not going to work well for someone who isn't plugged into the system fairly well, of course, or for anyone not near the top of the cultural pecking order.
And make no mistake, Zimmerman is an unbalanced individual. But he's also the embodiment of a culture of personal power carefully nurtured and given free reign through a deliberate, malevolent twisting of the meaning and purpose of the Second Amendment.
This is the fantasy of a fearful, threatened segment of our population, and it dovetails with the species of rightwing politics we saw at the Bundy Ranch as well. "Piss off conservative men, and we'll just shoot you. Take the guns we're using to shoot you, and we'll shoot you. Look at us wrong, have the stereo up too loud, and we'll SHOOT YOU."
People are making a large mistake getting wound up about the outcome of Zimmerman's case, or even the idea that he is a particularly evil or racist person. He is living out a fantasy carefully cultivated and feverishly maintained, and if we don't do anything about that, his story will be one we hear every day.
Zimmerman is not the exception. He's the new rule.
= new reply since forum marked as read
