GUESSWORK

7.19.13

GUESSWORK

This will be less definitive than we would like. Still, for our foreign readers we’d like to try to explain what the Trayvon Martin case is all about, and whether or not George Zimmerman, Martin’s killer, had a case for exoneration.

To begin with, we’re in the state of Florida, or as people down there like to call it, “the Gunshine State.” This appellation comes from the number of guns laws the state has passed, making carrying concealed and unconcealed weapons and their use perfectly O.K.

In America, gun laws and their passage is a right given to the various and several states. Ideally, there could be one set of laws that govern the entire country, but that isnt what we have.

The confusion about guns and their uses comes directly from the various interpretations of the US Constitution, which some see as giving unlimited power to citizens to carry and use firearms for any purpose, and those who disagree.

Now to Sanford, Florida, where on a rainy night about a year and a half ago a seventeen year old black boy was walking home when he was stopped, accosted, and killed by a putative “public defender,” George Zimmerman. Whether or not Zimmerman was a member of his neighborhood’s watch — an organization that is supposed to be unarmed but on the lookout for incursions into a particular neighborhoods by trouble-makers — seems cloudy.