Sunday, March 25, 2012

Guns And Bigotry - A Deadly Mix

By now, almost everyone has heard the story of Trayvon Martin.

Trayvon was a 17 year old boy who was shot by a nut job named George Zimmerman.  Zimmerman was playing vigilante and shot and killed Trayvon, who was unarmed, in what Zimmerman claimed to be self-defense, taking refuge in the short-sighted "stand your ground" law in Florida.

Sadly, something like this tragedy was completely predictable and preventable.

Zimmerman shouldn't have been allowed to carry a gun, given his long history of violent and unstable behavior.  

The police made things worse by not even arresting Zimmerman, much less charging him with a crime.  All this did was give the bigots further encouragement to take out their irrational fear and hatred of people unlike them. At least, with the police, the city is holding the police chief accountable for his improper actions.

What sickens me as much as this senseless murder is the way some of the right are trying to excuse this horrendous act or even justify it.  

Some of the stupidity that has come out of them included Geraldo Rivera blaming the murder on the fact that Trayvon was wearing a hoodie.  If a hoodie was a sign of a criminal, we would end up locking up, or killing, almost every single man, woman and child.

Even more vulgar than Rivera is the reprobates at Little Green Footballs who are using blatant racism to try to excuse the murder by arguing about Trayvon's skin color, as if the pigmentation in a person's skin is somehow correlated to criminal behavior.

And such horror have been visited upon us in Wisconsin too, with the needless killing of Bo Morrison.

How many more times do we have to experience these senseless, pointless tragedies and the disgusting aftermath of bigots, gun nuts and fools trying to rationalize and normalize something that is not rational and should never become normal?

If you want a more personal perspective, please read this moving piece by Steven Reynolds at Blogging Blue.


4 comments:

  1. Here is where I agree, while I believe we have the right to own guns, there should be horrible consequences when we misuse them. Maybe there is more to the story, but it sounds like this guy should be in jail. Of course, the race of the victim has nothing to do with my opinion, I am only racist because I don't agree with democrat ideology.

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    Replies
    1. Isn't racism a core value of conservatism?

      Conservatives (Republicans) believe in maintaining social classes, don't they?

      I will defy you.

      Delete
    2. They dont use class envy to advance an agenda if thats what you mean.

      Delete
  2. Little Green Footballs isn't the offender--they're the ones exposing the vile emanations of Breitbart minion Dan Riehl (Digby's link is to where Charles Johnson does the smackdown).

    ReplyDelete