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defrogPossibly.
The US media circus being what it is, I’m sure by now most of you know the story about Trayvon Martin being gunned down by a Neighborhood Watch guy whose main defense strategy is based on FLA’s Stand Yr Ground (SYG) law, which says you can kill people in self-defense – even if you have to chase them down and shoot them in order to defend yrself, evidently.
The facts of the case as we know them (so far) speak for themselves, and Zimmerman has his work cut out for him in trying to convince a jury that the SYG law applies in his case. Similarly, the Sanford police dept has its work cut out in explaining why they ever thought the same thing to the point of not bothering to arrest Zimmerman until the story went viral.
As for the remaining dithering over the SYG laws – which exist in over 20 other states – all I can add is this:
SYG laws are, essentially, all about Fear. They exist primarily thanks to the paranoid fear-drenched Hollywood fantasy world that conservatives in general and the NRA in particular tend to live in, or at least claim to live in – a world where bad guys are EVERYWHERE and can attack you AT ANY TIME, and when (rather than if) that happens, the only thing that will save you and yr beloved family is yr gun, and you are going to want the legal right to shoot that fucker in the head IMMEDIATELY, not as some stupid liberal Last Resort.
I don’t know whether they really think that all the time, of course. But that’s typically how these bills are pitched and voted on, and how they generate support – fear that you will be killed by bad guys unless you can kill them first. That’s how we start wars now – why shouldn’t it apply to personal safety? Isn’t that what Harry Callahan would do?
So it’s nothing new. Indeed, we’ve been here many times before. And we’ll be here again as long as politicians in love with the NRA (or at least its lobbyist money) continue to insist that it’s a good and virtuous thing to live in a country where Americans get to carry guns anywhere they want – to include bars and churches and high-spirited political protests – and have the legal ability to shoot bad guys who come after them.
If that’s what you want, then fine. But when something like Trayvon Martin happens, you don’t get to act surprised. To paraphrase Bruce Schneier, when you put law enforcement in the hands of amateurs, you get amateur law enforcement. (Not that trained police officers would never, ever shoot unarmed people. But you see what I’m saying.)
And you sure as hell don't get to say, “Don’t blame us – that’s not what we intended.”
Sorry, no. When you actively push for a freely armed society living in fear for their safety and give them immunity from responsibility if they shoot someone, it doesn’t matter what yr intentions were. This kind of thing is going to happen anyway. And it will happen quite a bit.
(And sorry, but it will happen in part due to racial stereotypes and prejudices. I know many people – especially white people – don’t want to admit that there are still race problems in the US. But when you have fans of The Hunger Games going online and saying, “What are all these black people doing in this film? They’re ruining it!”, you live in a country with race problems.)
So if people are going to continue to defend SYG laws as a necessary crime-fighting tool in the wake of the Trayvon Martin case, my only request is that they ditch all the stupid deflections about Martin’s probable guilt for something or other, or arguing over who’s the bigger race-baiter, or what Obama said about it, and come out and admit right up front what they’re essentially saying:
Trayvon Martin’s death is a small price to pay for the legal right to defend yrself with deadly force against suspicious people.
I want to hear them acknowledge out loud that they recognize the tradeoff, and that they think it’s worth it – and that they’d still think so even if it was their own kid who ended up the way Martin did. Until they do, I'm going to find it difficult to take them seriously.
Just admit it,
This is dF
The US media circus being what it is, I’m sure by now most of you know the story about Trayvon Martin being gunned down by a Neighborhood Watch guy whose main defense strategy is based on FLA’s Stand Yr Ground (SYG) law, which says you can kill people in self-defense – even if you have to chase them down and shoot them in order to defend yrself, evidently.
The facts of the case as we know them (so far) speak for themselves, and Zimmerman has his work cut out for him in trying to convince a jury that the SYG law applies in his case. Similarly, the Sanford police dept has its work cut out in explaining why they ever thought the same thing to the point of not bothering to arrest Zimmerman until the story went viral.
As for the remaining dithering over the SYG laws – which exist in over 20 other states – all I can add is this:
SYG laws are, essentially, all about Fear. They exist primarily thanks to the paranoid fear-drenched Hollywood fantasy world that conservatives in general and the NRA in particular tend to live in, or at least claim to live in – a world where bad guys are EVERYWHERE and can attack you AT ANY TIME, and when (rather than if) that happens, the only thing that will save you and yr beloved family is yr gun, and you are going to want the legal right to shoot that fucker in the head IMMEDIATELY, not as some stupid liberal Last Resort.
I don’t know whether they really think that all the time, of course. But that’s typically how these bills are pitched and voted on, and how they generate support – fear that you will be killed by bad guys unless you can kill them first. That’s how we start wars now – why shouldn’t it apply to personal safety? Isn’t that what Harry Callahan would do?
So it’s nothing new. Indeed, we’ve been here many times before. And we’ll be here again as long as politicians in love with the NRA (or at least its lobbyist money) continue to insist that it’s a good and virtuous thing to live in a country where Americans get to carry guns anywhere they want – to include bars and churches and high-spirited political protests – and have the legal ability to shoot bad guys who come after them.
If that’s what you want, then fine. But when something like Trayvon Martin happens, you don’t get to act surprised. To paraphrase Bruce Schneier, when you put law enforcement in the hands of amateurs, you get amateur law enforcement. (Not that trained police officers would never, ever shoot unarmed people. But you see what I’m saying.)
And you sure as hell don't get to say, “Don’t blame us – that’s not what we intended.”
Sorry, no. When you actively push for a freely armed society living in fear for their safety and give them immunity from responsibility if they shoot someone, it doesn’t matter what yr intentions were. This kind of thing is going to happen anyway. And it will happen quite a bit.
(And sorry, but it will happen in part due to racial stereotypes and prejudices. I know many people – especially white people – don’t want to admit that there are still race problems in the US. But when you have fans of The Hunger Games going online and saying, “What are all these black people doing in this film? They’re ruining it!”, you live in a country with race problems.)
So if people are going to continue to defend SYG laws as a necessary crime-fighting tool in the wake of the Trayvon Martin case, my only request is that they ditch all the stupid deflections about Martin’s probable guilt for something or other, or arguing over who’s the bigger race-baiter, or what Obama said about it, and come out and admit right up front what they’re essentially saying:
Trayvon Martin’s death is a small price to pay for the legal right to defend yrself with deadly force against suspicious people.
I want to hear them acknowledge out loud that they recognize the tradeoff, and that they think it’s worth it – and that they’d still think so even if it was their own kid who ended up the way Martin did. Until they do, I'm going to find it difficult to take them seriously.
Just admit it,
This is dF
no subject
on 2012-03-27 04:54 pm (UTC)And yeah, I feel bad for the family too – their child is dead and politicians are out there trying to make excuses for the shooter (mainly in order to protect their 2nd Amendment rights) by saying their son wasn't exactly a saint, implying he was technically probably committing some kind of crime somehow, sooner or later, maybe. As if that justifies shooting him dead. Bill O'Reilly meanwhile has deployed the hoodie defense – the young black male equivalent of "the way she was dressed, she was asking to be raped". I'd like to see him say that to Martin's parents' faces on his show. What a jerk.
no subject
on 2012-03-27 04:58 pm (UTC)