So George Zimmerman, the man who shot and killed Trayvon Martin (claiming “self-defense,” though Martin was carrying nothing more threatening than some candy and an iced tea!) will be tried for murder in Florida. It took this long to charge him, because they had to figure out how to deal with Florida's “stand your ground” law. Zimmerman should, I agree, be tried, and if the facts are as we have been told, convicted and sentenced (Florida law would not, it seems, give him the death penalty for this crime. Too bad). But just the fact that Florida law encouraged Zimmerman to “stand his ground” and permitted him (a known overreactor, who once called 911 because a neighbor left his garage door open!) to own and carry a gun, makes me feel that the true villain of the case is the State of Florida.
I still feel, even if this puts me at odds with every other person who generally shares my “conservative/libertarian” philosophy, that no person, other than the military and law-enforcement personnel, has a genuine need to carry a gun. If Zimmerman had no gun in his possession, Trayvon Martin would be alive today. And he is not the first person, regardless of the race of the shooter or the victim, to be shot by someone believing he was acting in “self-defense,” who in fact was not threatened. (And then, there are accidental shootings, where nobody was even trying to kill someone!)
But some will argue that we need to be able to defend ourselves from really threatening people carrying guns. My response is: if guns were only made in quantities necessary to supply the police and military, how would the bad guys get them? Right now, perhaps, an insignificant minority of the guns circulating around were lost by police or military warehouses. Most were manufactured for private sale, intended of course to be sold to people who can, under today's laws, own them legally. If nobody could buy a gun (except the police and military), these criminal-owned guns would never have been manufactured. So there simply would not be a need for “self-defense.”
I still feel, even if this puts me at odds with every other person who generally shares my “conservative/libertarian” philosophy, that no person, other than the military and law-enforcement personnel, has a genuine need to carry a gun. If Zimmerman had no gun in his possession, Trayvon Martin would be alive today. And he is not the first person, regardless of the race of the shooter or the victim, to be shot by someone believing he was acting in “self-defense,” who in fact was not threatened. (And then, there are accidental shootings, where nobody was even trying to kill someone!)
But some will argue that we need to be able to defend ourselves from really threatening people carrying guns. My response is: if guns were only made in quantities necessary to supply the police and military, how would the bad guys get them? Right now, perhaps, an insignificant minority of the guns circulating around were lost by police or military warehouses. Most were manufactured for private sale, intended of course to be sold to people who can, under today's laws, own them legally. If nobody could buy a gun (except the police and military), these criminal-owned guns would never have been manufactured. So there simply would not be a need for “self-defense.”
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