In Racist America, a Self-Important Pussy with a Gun Is a Dangerous Thing — Regarding the Not Guilty Verdict in George Zimmerman’s Killing of Trayvon Martin

15 July 2013

Speaking as a former cop and attorney

The special prosecutor in the shooting of Trayvon Martin very arguably overcharged killer George Zimmerman.

She thereby muffed what should have been a workable manslaughter case.

The outcome confirmed what black America already knows — you don’t even need an animal hunting license to assassinate young black men.

All you need is whitish skin and the claim that your pudgy self was not able to defend itself against the black man’s balled-fist anger — at being followed and confronted without reasonable cause.

Former Republican politician, Joe Scarborough, put the morally offensive elements of this into perspective

He wrote:

I am angry that George Zimmerman could chase a teenager through his neighborhood, ignore a dispatcher’s pleas, make racially charged statements, provoke a confrontation with a young man armed only with Skittles, and pull the trigger that ended that teenager’s life, only to walk away without as much as a misdemeanor attached to his name.

I also know that it is a fool’s errand to second-guess the conclusions of a jury that sat through countless hours of testimony and evidence before reaching a verdict.

But that doesn’t mean I can’t draw my own personal conclusions, like my belief that George Zimmerman is a racist idiot who chased an unarmed teenager through a neighborhood for little reason more than he was a black man wearing a hoodie.

My police department used to have to weed guys like Zimmerman out of law enforcement’s applicant pool

We knew that there is nothing socially more dangerous than giving a badge-heavy busybody a gun and allowing him or her to lord it over other people.

Law enforcement confrontation requires the flip-side mentality, as well

One critical policing skill is the ability to spot legitimate suspicious activity, watch and intervene — and then swiftly deescalate the resulting confrontation, just as soon as you recognize that your perception was flawed.

Emotional self-control and the ability to read people are vital in making the deescalation process work.

Lacking these skills, wannabe cop George Zimmerman lacked the physical strength and martial arts ability — and probably the necessary mindset — to successfully ward off the angry attack that his own unreasonable actions had inspired.

The racial component

Black men are routinely harassed by cops in most American jurisdictions. Racism permeates all of America’s law enforcement and criminal justice system.

If you disagree, you are either (i) a bigot, (ii) have not been out there, or (iii) are too lame-brained to fairly evaluate the voluminous evidence.

A competent cop, approaching a black male, should understand that even a reasonable intervention is likely to met with initial resentment and, often, fiercely expressed hostility. If you are unprepared to skillfully defuse that legitimate reaction, you had better be sure that your intrusion was warranted by law and your conscience is immune to self-criticism.

In a bigoted society like ours, racial tension makes it even more important that the people, whom we charge with maintaining law and order, be properly trained and temperamentally suited to the task.

Enter the unprofessional and temperamentally unsuited George Zimmerman

George Zimmerman — a civilian carrying a gun to make himself feel better about his apparently self-perceived lack of worth and physical capacity — did not have the brain, the humility, or the psychological skill to pull the deescalation process off with Mr. Martin, whom he had predictably made angry by following him.

Mr. Zimmerman presumably shot Trayvon Martin because:

(a) he did not have the fortitude to take his deserved beating at the boy’s hands

(b) he was afraid that the youthful Martin would snatch the firearm that Zimmerman had unnecessarily brought to the confrontation that he himself had started.

Most people agree that interventional law enforcement should be left to professionals.

Yet, the intrusion of Second Amendment nonsense perverts the professionals only standard

The militia origin of the Second Amendment was certainly not aimed at turning ordinary citizens into armed interveners into their neighbors’ affairs.

And there is a sizeable skill and emotional self-control difference between hunting defenseless animals and bringing a firearm to a confrontation with human beings.

Mr. Zimmerman was not, at the outset, protecting his home, himself, or anyone else.

Flying on unreasonable suspicion’s wings, he was instead actively messing about in other people’s business — when, at most, his neighborhood watch function should have had him functioning as observer, rather than as armed pursuer and interrogator.

Self-defense?

Is it really self-defense (in the ethical sense) — if I unreasonably provoke you and then shoot you because I am too much of a wimp to fend off your fisticuffs?

Or is it something more malevolent and socially harmful?

Note

Like Joe Scarborough, I am not gain-saying the Zimmerman jury.

A murder conviction was never in the cards, given the lack evidence and the way Florida law is worded. Manslaughter might have worked, but only if the prosecution had made it the focus of their case.

When prosecutors overcharge, they often leave the jury with the impression that the lesser included offenses (like manslaughter in this instance) are maliciously brought add-ons — which bear no rational connection to the bulk of the evidence that was elicited under a different focus.

That is why civil litigators put so much thought into narrowly focusing the theme and evidence for their cases.

The insanity of concealed carry laws and the minimal training requirements that underlie them

Few people have the self-control and training to competently cope with armed civilian confrontations.

By more or less randomly arming people — and passing foolish laws that effectively encourage resort to gunfire — we guarantee that what used to be weaponless encounters will turn into slayings.

We also encourage probable bigots, like Mr. Zimmerman, to act out their hate impulses.

The moral? — Pussies and racists with guns are a bad thing

Common sense is less and less one of America’s strengths. Instead, we relish devilishly stoking a brew of unremitting violence and intentionally antisocial law-making.

Cowardice fuels this fulminating insanity.

Fear, combined with a lack of courage, motivates the excesses of American foreign policy, drone strikes, permanent war, and domestic gun policy.

In the lattermost regard, Francis Wilkinson, a member of the Bloomberg Editorial Review Board, wrote:

By Florida law, Zimmerman’s fear justified his gun and justified using it to kill an unarmed boy.

Florida puts a high value on fear, and a high value on the freedom to walk around with a loaded gun to help assuage it.

More broadly, Elie Mystal (a former litigator) wrote:

I can think of three groups of people who are really thrilled by the verdict in this case. And I find them all troubling:

1. Racists

2. Gun Nuts

3. Cowards

Racists are happy because: “blacks, hoodies, shoot first ask them why they’re in your neighborhood later.”

It’s also easy to see why gun nuts are happy.

[T]he average armed vigilantes who are the backbone of the NRA must be thrilled to see one of their own actually squeeze off a round.

But the third group I find more troubling because they are making it possible for injustices to happen all across our legal system.

I’m talking about the growing number of American citizens who seem to be afraid of everything, at all times, and are willing to give up nearly any amount of freedom to achieve just a little bit of perceived security.

The only message that the cultural context of Trayvon Martin’s unjustifiable death sends young black men is:

Arm yourselves, shoot first, and leave no witnesses.

Cowardice, institutionalized bigotry, and our national love affair with weaponized violence combine to breed the very counter-reaction that those traits fear.

PeteFree.com

In Racist America, a Self-Important Pussy with a Gun Is a Dangerous Thing — Regarding the Not Guilty Verdict in George Zimmerman’s Killing of Trayvon Martin