Posted on 03/24/2012 10:56:25 AM PDT by Baynative
PHILADELPHIA (AP) — I thought my son would be much older before I had to tell him about the Black Male Code. He's only 12, still sleeping with stuffed animals, still afraid of the dark. But after the Trayvon Martin tragedy, I needed to explain to my child that soon people might be afraid of him.
We were in the car on the way to school when a story about Martin came on the radio. "The guy who killed him should get arrested. The dead guy was unarmed!" my son said after hearing that neighborhood watch captain George Zimmerman had claimed self-defense in the shooting in Sanford, Fla.
We listened to the rest of the story, describing how Zimmerman had spotted Martin, who was 17, walking home from the store on a rainy night, the hood of his sweatshirt pulled over his head. When it was over, I turned off the radio and told my son about the rules he needs to follow to avoid becoming another Trayvon Martin — a black male who Zimmerman assumed was "suspicious" and "up to no good."
As I explained it, the Code goes like this:
(Excerpt) Read more at google.com ...
Unless you were there and are a witness you are wrong.
He seems like a good father giving sound advice to his son. However, the advice he gave applies to all young men. People make assumptions based on many factors - age, race, gender, manner of dress, walk, etc.
We still shouldn’t be involved in this, even if Zimmerman was technically in the bounds of the law.
I suspect most of the people supporting Zimmerman here don’t have CCW permits and don’t carry, or they would view him differently. If you carry, you avoid confrontations. The second anyone with a CCW hears about a guy who carries and interacts with others like this, the CCW holder will assume they had a screw loose. When you actually carry a gun, you will avoid any chance of any confrontation. Guy cuts you off in traffic, you ignore it. No arguments over parking spaces, no turning around to curse out the guy who bumped into you at the mall. You instinctively make yourself inconspicuous, and keep your weapon as hidden as possible at all times. And you don’t call the cops to you on a crime unless you see a crime.
You get taught to do this in a carry course, but when you carry, it is actually due more to a psychological/instinctual thing. The gun is a burden, and you really don’t want to have to risk removing it from the holster, for any reason. Deep down you know, if that gun comes out something bad is happening. It may be less bad than you getting shot by a thug, but it is still going to be a huge headache. Moreover, you don’t want to be dealing with cops, even if you’re in the right. Meeting a cop who has been called to a scene, and saying you’re carrying a gun can go badly, no matter how inconsequential the call. Maybe the cop is an NRA member, and cool with it. Maybe he’s a hotheaded antigun jackass who is now going to bust your balls over anything he can pin on you. You never know.
When you see a guy carrying and freely interacting with others for any reason, especially a confrontational reason, you automatically assume he’s got some sort of problem, and shouldn’t have been carrying in the first place.
And all of that ignores the politics of this. How many Americans want an untrained guy with a gun acting as “Captain” of a one man neighborhood watch, and then going around armed, following other citizens, so he can determine if they are going about their lives in comportment with his ideas of the law? Even worse, this dude shot some inncoent citizen he started out following, with a gun. There wasn’t some active crime spree to warrant suspicion, his victim wasn’t armed, wasn’t engaged in a crime when he was first spotted, and was walking legally to his own home right down the street in the gated community. I’m NRA, I support all forms of carry, but this creeps me out. If I look shady, am I going to have some guy following me around with his gun? Do I now have to be able to figure out if the guy following me, with a gun-shaped bulge under his shirt, is a neighborhood watch “Captain?”
Conservatives will aggressively side with Zimmerman at great risk to our cause - he may be a full fledged jackass, for all we know. Just because Jesse Jackson and his crew are on the other side doesn’t mean it’s right for us to go on the offensive here, with this case, and this guy. We are in a political war, and tying our movement to the fortunes of a cop-wannabe is not going to help our cause.
Let the law play out, and see how it goes. If Zimmerman doesn’t get hit with any charges, which seems likely, let this one go. If he does get charged, let him defend himself. Either way, we won’t affect the outcome, so what is the point of getting involved? A dude with a gun doing his own patrols of his neighborhood, following a neighbor’s kid for walking in the rain, who ends up shooting the kid, shouldn’t be the face of the carry movement, or the Conservative cause.
All this just elevates him to a position he shouldn’t be in.
I agree 100% with that statement, although I do question if some of these decisions are going to have nothing to do with the facts of the case, but more with the emotions of the case. But in the meantime, all of the political whores trying to make hay from this need to STFU.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/2863446/posts
Please see the City Manager's Report for a dispassionate "snapshot in time" that, if we lived in more civil, more reasonable times, would be the stance of any reasonable observer.
Wonder if the author told his son that the greatest threat to him by far is another black male with a gun? Probably not.
http://www.sanfordfl.gov/frames/home_frames.html
Agreed. Thanks for the link to the report.
To be clear, I don’t support crucifying this guy, as we don’t know what happened, but I don’t think we should support him either. I think 99.999% of CCW holders would never have come close to this kind of trouble.
Most likely, he comported with all laws and shouldn’t be arrested, but from what I’ve heard, a series of his reckless decisions were compounded by a big reckless decision by the kid to either fight with or even attack him. Combined, it produced this incident. We need to make clear to the non-gun owning public that we don’t all operate like this, and this is something none of us would let happen ourselves.
The alternative is we all support him, and let the public deduce that we all feel as if, “There but for the grace of God go I.”
Just poor media relations, to help this be painted across all gun owners by joining the fight, when most of us can’t even imagine how this guy got into this situation in the first place.
Zimmerman is going to get screwed. From what has come out, he may get off in Florida, but there is no way Holder isn’t bringing the civil charges to him to pacify the black community activists. Even if he is acquited of them, he will be making money just to pay his legal bills for some time. And all of that ignores the civil case, which will leave him like Bernie Goetz. Penniless, and unable to get ahead because whatever he makes will go straight to Martin’s family.
If you carry, you need to be careful. NRA would be wise to play up the penalites this guy suffers just to remind people, don’t let yourself get sucked into this type of situation if you can avoid it. Maintain situational awareness, and evade and escape long before the confrontation begins.
Bottom line is the worst threat to gun rights is this type of guy. The mass shooter motivates people to get guns, and argues for CCW. This guy, carrying a gun and following people, is exactly the type of creepiness which will motivate people against it.
Hopefully his case will do little damage, and still reign in any aggressive guys who think they can carry a gun, and then go about their day just like they used to.
Truth be told it’s a testament to the greatness of the gun-owning community that we have had CCW so long in so many palces, and never really had a CCW case the media could even try and use against us.
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