“A Double Standard For Gun Use”: The Culprit In Florida Is A Set Of Gun Laws That Are Far Too Murky
Two Floridians accused of misbehaving with a gun are out on bond. The similarities end there.
George Zimmerman, who famously shot and killed an unarmed teenager in a racially-charged case, was acquitted of the killing because jurors determined he acted in self-defense. No one can know exactly what transpired when Zimmerman and young Trayvon Martin tussled on the street in the twilight, but we do know that Zimmerman got out of his car to follow or confront Martin before the shooting.
And if Zimmerman (whose previous aggressive behavior was not disclosed to the jury) was trying to convince the world he is simply a gentle, law-abiding person who felt threatened and shot a dangerous teenager, he’s blown that strategy. Since the acquittal, Zimmerman has posed for pictures at a gun manufacturer, been arrested for speeding (seeming stunned when the officer didn’t recognize him) and gotten into a domestic dispute with his estranged wife. And recently, Zimmerman was at it again, charged with pointing a gun at his girlfriend, breaking a glass table, forcing her out of her home and barricading himself in the house. Perhaps more telling, Zimmerman then called 911 himself – even though police were already on the way – to, as he said, tell his side of the story. He called his girlfriend “crazy.”
That she may be, colloquially speaking, given her decision to get involved with someone with a violent past. But the event certainly indicates a pattern, one in which Zimmerman uses guns to get his way. He’s out on $9,000 bond as he awaits the adjudication of the domestic abuse case (and has asked for police to return his phones, flashlight and knife).
Another Floridian, Marissa Alexander, has not had it so easy.
Alexander, too, is now out on bond in a case involving alleged domestic violence. But she’d been in jail since last year waiting for it.
Alexander says she, too, was feeling threatened by her husband when she fired what she said was a “warning shot” to fend him off. The bullet hit a wall and no one was hurt, but Alexander was nonetheless sentenced to a mandatory 20 years behind bars for her behavior. The judge rejected her assertion of Florida’s “stand your ground” law, saying that Alexander could have simply run off instead of going to fetch her gun.
That sounds reasonable – except this: Why is it that Zimmerman, after calling police to report the allegedly suspect Martin, nonetheless got out of his car to follow the teenager? Zimmerman isn’t a police officer (though it’s clear he wanted to be one). He could have not just run away, but actually driven away, to avoid a confrontation. Nor was there any indication Martin had ever threatened Zimmerman before that time.
So why would Alexander get 20 years in prison while Zimmerman was let free to point his gun, again, at another person? Certainly, juries react differently to different people and circumstances (and race and gender, too). But in this case, the culprit is not the peculiarity of the juries. It’s a set of gun laws that are far too murky for anyone – be it the carrier of the gun or the jury judging him or her – to determine when it’s OK to defend yourself with a gun and when it is not.
Alexander was released on bond last week as she awaits a new trial on the gun charge. She’ll be under house arrest and electronic monitoring. Zimmerman, meanwhile, is readying for another episode of the Zimmerman Show – a storyline that is getting alarmingly predictable.
By: Susan Milligan, Washington Whispers, U. S. News and World Report, December 2, 2013
“Standing Our Ground”: Stand Your Ground Laws Are Not Making Us Safer, They’re Making Us More Barbaric
This is not the time for evanescent anger, which is America’s wont.
This is not the time for a few marches that soon dissipate as we drift back into the fog of faineance — watching fake reality television as our actual realities become ever more grim, gawking at the sexting life of Carlos Danger as our own lives become more dangerous, fawning over royal British babies as our own children are gunned down.
This is yet another moment when America should take stock of where the power structures are leading us, how they play on our fears — fan our fears — to feed their fortunes.
On no subject is this more clear than on the subject of guns.
While it is proper and necessary to analyze the case in which George Zimmerman shot and killed Trayvon Martin for what it says about profiling and police practices, it is possibly more important to analyze what it says about our increasingly vigilante-oriented gun culture.
The industry and its lobby have successfully pushed two fallacies: that the Second Amendment is under siege and so are law-abiding citizens.
They endlessly preach that more guns make us safer and any attempt at regulation is an injury to freedom. And while the rest of us have arguments about Constitutional intent and gun-use statistics, the streets run red with the blood of the slain, and the gun industry laughs all the way to the bank.
Gun sales have surged. And our laws are quickly being adjusted to allow people to carry those guns everywhere they go and to give legal cover to use lethal force when nonlethal options are available.
This is our America in a most frightful time.
When Illinois — which has experienced extraordinary carnage in its largest city — enacted legislation this month allowing the concealed carrying of firearms, it lost its place as the lone holdout. Now “concealed carry” is the law in all 50 states.
And as The Wall Street Journal reported this month, “concealed carry” permit applications are also surging while restrictions are being loosened. Do we really need to have our guns with us in church, or at the bar? More states are answering that question in the affirmative.
And now that more people are walking around with weapons dangling from their bodies, states have moved to make the use of those guns more justifiable.
Florida passed the first Stand Your Ground law (or “shoot first” law, as some have called it) in 2005. It allows a person to use deadly force if he or she is afraid of being killed or seriously injured. In Florida, that right to kill even extends to an initial aggressor.
After Florida’s law, other states quickly followed with the help and support of the N.R.A. and the American Legislative Exchange Council.
Ironically, the N.R.A. and other advocates pushed the laws in part as protection for women, those who were victims of domestic violence and those who might be victimized away from home.
The N.R.A.’s former president, Marion Hammer, argued in support of the bill in 2005 when she was an N.R.A. lobbyist: “You can’t expect a victim to wait and ask, ‘Excuse me, Mr. Criminal, are you going to rape me and kill me, or are you just going to beat me up and steal my television?’ ”
But, of course, the law is rarely used by women in those circumstances. The Tampa Bay Times looked at 235 cases in Florida, spanning 2005 to 2013, in which Stand Your Ground was invoked and found that only 33 of them were domestic disputes or arguments, and that in most of those cases men invoked the law, not women.
In fact, nearly as many people claimed Stand Your Ground in the “fight at bar/party” category as in domestic disputes.
And not only is the law rarely being invoked by battered women, it’s often invoked by hardened criminals. According to an article published last year by The Tampa Bay Times:
“All told, 119 people are known to have killed someone and invoked stand your ground. Those people have been arrested 327 times in incidents involving violence, property crimes, drugs, weapons or probation violations.”
And, as the paper pointed out, “more than a third of the defendants had previously been in trouble for threatening someone with a gun or illegally carrying a weapon.”
In fact, after Marissa Alexander, a battered Jacksonville wife, fired a warning shot at her abusive husband (to make him get out of the house, she said), her Stand Your Ground motion was denied. She is now facing a 20-year sentence.
Something is wrong here. We are not being made more secure, we are being made more barbaric. These laws are an abomination and an affront to morality and common sense. We can’t allow ourselves to be pawns in the gun industry’s profiteering. We are real people, and people have power.
Attorney General Eric Holder told the N.A.A.C.P. last week: “It’s time to question laws that senselessly expand the concept of self-defense and sow dangerous conflict in our neighborhoods. These laws try to fix something that was never broken.”
We must all stress this point, and fight and not get weary. We must stop thinking of politics as sport and spectacle and remember that it bends in response to pressure. These laws must be reviewed and adjusted. On this issue we, as Americans of good conscience, must stand our ground.
By: Charles M. Blow, Op-Ed Columnist, The New York Times, July 24, 2013
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