Honestly, I haven’t known what to say aboutthe Trayvon Martin case because there’s just so much hurt there, but I can’t get this family out of my mind. We’ve got a young black kid going to 7-Eleven to get his little brother some Skittles and a trigger-happy wannabe hero with a history of seeing boogeymen behind every bush, plus a completely fucked up Florida state law that makes it nearly impossible to prosecute gun crimes, and a local police chief who mangled the case eight ways to Friday. It’s just a perfect storm of suckitude all the way around.
No, scratch that, it’s not a perfect storm, this was absolutely, 100% predictable. Because young black teenagers will walk to the store to get candy. And trigger-happy neighborhood watch captains with a hero complex will shoot innocent people. Stupid redneck cops will look the other way. Every piece of this story played out exactly as we all said it would. Somehow “told you so” just doesn’t feel adequate to the situation.
So now the Dept. of Justice and the FBI are getting involved. Finally, finallya grand jury is being convened.Finally I’m hearing calls for Sanford Police Chief Bill Lee to resign.
The Sanford PD doesn’t have a good track record, by the way; their last police chief resigned in 2011 after a police officer’s son with a history of violence was filmed attacking a homeless man. That police chief didn’t do anything either, until public outrcy demanded justice. Sanford, I think you have a cop problem. Just sayin’.
Predictably, the gun loons and Teanuts are circling the wagons. So far their best argument is that this can’t possibly be a hate crimebecause George Zimmerman was Hispanic. Right, of course, only white people are suspicious of male black teens, all of those other brown folk are just kinda lumped in together into one big happy chocolate soup, amiright people? /sarcasm.
I’m pretty much an open book regarding my strong dislike for guns. Every time I write a blog post expressing my intense dismay at another wingnutty piece of legislation putting ever more people into unsafe contact with guns, the gun loons troll my place en masse telling me I need to read my Constitution. Or else I’m misinformed, and here are these reams of data showing states or countries with really liberal gun laws, and see how they have fewer gun accidents? So I’m just wrong and hysterical, blahbedy blah.
And you know what? I don’t fucking care. Just shut up. You own a gun to kill things. Killing is wrong. Isn’t that the “pro-life” position? People arestupid andirresponsible and can’t be trusted with guns. Rednecks in particular are bad with guns. And also, you know what? Sometimes, shit just happens and innocent people die. This shit happens every single day in this country. And it seems logical that if there are fewer guns out there, fewer accidents like this will happen. But the gun loons live in a fear-based world, where everyone needs to be on high alert because some black kid might try to steal their laptop.
And really, is this the argument? I need a gun to protect my shit? I don’t get that. Take the fucking laptop. Unless you’re transporting gold bouillion and bearer bonds on a regular basis, you don’t need a gun to protect your shit.
I don’t buy the “I need to protect myself” argument, either. Unless you actually know someone who wants to kill you, and that has to be a very, very small number of people, then there are other ways of defending yourself. You know, if all you have is a gun then everything looks like a target.
And please don’t tell me we need an armed populace to protect against tyranny. Seriously? You think your collection of AK-47s is going to match the entire U.S. arsenal that we’ve spent billioins of dollars building? Hilarious. In this day and age, a piece of computer code will do more damage than all the militia nuts in Georgia and Montana combined.
Nothing was stupider than seeing the Teanuts assemble at their little rallies with their guns strapped to their hips, like they were such a threat. If you guys were anything remotely close to threatening you’d have been rounded up and hauled off to jail like the Occupy protesters were. The Tea Party threatens no one in power, they’re tools and half-wits recruited by the powerful to support the status quo. Hilarious. The fact that they were able to wave their guns out in the open unmolested is proof of how toothless they were.
And finally, this is a main reason why I won’t go to Florida. Ever. Most of my relatives think it’s because I’m still pissed about the 2000 election, but that’s not it. It’s this “shoot first, ask questions later it’s MAH RIGHT” attitude that completely permeates Amygdala America. I don’t want to be around it. Florida’s law is so nebulous, anyone can claim they felt “threatened” by anything — a cross-eyed look, a liberal bumper sticker, a Sikh wearing a dastar, two guys kissing, whatever. No one reads the statute before they decide it’s their right to blow some kid away. People are stupid, I’ve already said that. They’re fearful and reactionary and it takes cases like this one to wake some folks up.
