The Hidden Flaw of Stand Your Ground Laws

Even though it wasn't argued in the George Zimmerman case, apparently Florida's Stand Your Ground law influenced the jury's verdict.The idea that you can shoot first and have questions asked later, in a trial, is as American as an episode of Gunsmoke. But the problem is this: Trayvon Martin, if he had had a gun, would have been justified as well. After all, an armed private citizen was following him in a vehicle at night in the rain. Would Martin have gotten the same treatment in trial? Probably not, but that wouldn't be any comfort to the Zimmerman family.

And African-Americans now feel that they are in danger from armed white men. They could cite the very Stand Your Ground laws that protect innocent citizens from harm as they fire their stolen guns into the viscera of "threatening" white folk.

It's up to Richard Cohen to raise the obvious reason why Stand Your Ground cannot stand:

Where is the politician who will own up to the painful complexity of the problem and acknowledge the widespread fear of crime committed by young black males? This does not mean that raw racism has disappeared, and some judgments are not the product of invidious stereotyping. It does mean, though, that the public knows young black males commit a disproportionate amount of crime. In New York City, blacks make up a quarter of the population, yet they represent 78 percent of all shooting suspects — almost all of them young men. We know them from the nightly news.
Those statistics represent the justification for New York City’s controversial stop-and-frisk program, which amounts to racial profiling writ large. After all, if young black males are your shooters, then it ought to be young black males whom the police stop and frisk. Still, common sense and common decency, not to mention the law, insist on other variables such as suspicious behavior. Even still, race is a factor, without a doubt. It would be senseless for the police to be stopping Danish tourists in Times Square just to make the statistics look good.

Blacks are just criminals, people! You can scoff and say that they're arrested more often because of racial prejudice but the truth is that race is just predisposed to crime. IT'S ON THE NEWS.

In the coming election, it's vitally important that anyone who supports the Stand Your Ground laws also calls for, DEMANDS, that there be an exemption to keep black folk from citing it. Otherwise, they'll rise up and kill us all in our sleep. Insist that your Senatorial and Congressional candidates make this a big issue in 2014!

Also, maybe it's finally time to get those Jews out of financial services. We are a Christian Nation after all!