Assume that all claims made by the right wing about Trayvon Martin’s behavior before dying are true. Assume that Trayvon punched George Zimmerman in the nose, then fell upon him and slammed Zimmerman’s head against the sidewalk before Zimmerman was able to get out his gun and shoot Trayvon. Assume that Zimmerman was properly licensed to carry a concealed weapon. Assume that the Florida prosecutors are correct that Zimmerman has committed no crime under Florida’s stand-your-ground law. If this is all true, the right wing has delivered to America legal murder.
If I obtain a license to conceal and carry a gun, and I go to a stand-your-ground state, I can murder anyone I choose if I can merely provoke a reaction in the victim that makes me think I might be attacked . Under the old self defense laws, I could not get away with that because I would have a duty to avoid conflict and to retreat if threatened.
In Florida, however:
776.013 Home protection; use of deadly force; presumption of fear of death or great bodily harm
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 or herself or another or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony
.
Because George Zimmerman had the right to be where he was, and because he was not engaged in any unlawful activity (he was licensed to carry a concealed weapon), and if Trayvon became fearful of his own safety and punched out Zimmerman, and Zimmerman then believed that he was in danger of great bodily harm (a skull fracture), Zimmerman could lawfully murder Trayvon. Notice that there is no duty on Zimmerman’s part to “avoid conflict”, let alone retreat from that conflict. In fact, Zimmerman’s provocations created the very threat that Zimmerman then used to justify Trayvon’s killing. Case closed.
The stand-your-ground law was passed in Republican-dominated state legislatures at the urging of the National Rifle Association on the same rationale (read :fear) employed in passage of the conceal-and-carry laws: everyone you encounter in daily life secretly wants to rob and kill you, and the police are useless to protect you.
The NRA also argued that conceal and carry, and stand your ground would be powerful deterrents against those citizens, er, criminals, who would leave you alone because they would worry that you might be carrying a concealed weapon.
Actually, to give the devil his due, a visibly armed, uniformed police officer is a powerful deterrent against an criminal attack. But that is why we have visibly armed uniformed cops, so that when cops confront a criminal, the criminal surrenders without a fight 99% of the time. More importantly, a cop is trained to determine what level of force should be used, and whether behavior is sufficiently suspicious to cause a cop to detain a suspected criminal.
But none of that is true if you are confronted by someone in civilian clothes who, unbeknownst to you, is carrying a concealed weapon. Trayvon’s alleged behavior in responding to Zimmerman following him was reasonable and predictable. Trayvon had no way of knowing that Zimmerman was armed and because Zimmerman was armed , he was almost certainly emboldened in stalking Trayvon. Personally, I have never been intimidated by obnoxious in-your-face-boors, but then it never occurs to me that they might be armed. If I had been Trayvon, I can easily see myself telling Zimmerman to fuck-off-or-I’ll hit-you-so-hard-my-knuckles-will-be-wearing-your-teeth, and I too would be dead. And the killer would walk free.
Conversely, if I saw a black man whistle at a white woman in Florida, I could shoot him, if I confronted him and he gave me any lip. That’s the kind of progress we have made since 1955. Geraldo Rivera’s advice: it’s your own fault if you get shot wearing a hoodie, or presumably, for whistling at a white woman.
This is what the right wing is talking about when they talk about freedom.