Zimmerman: A good example of a bad problem.

I don't believe that everyone in the NRA is jabbering about the breakdown of society.. but they sure don't seem to want to have any conversation or compromise about keeping guns away from the mentally ill of unstable and impulsive.

By Francis Wilkinson

George Zimmerman is a moral outlier, a public danger and more than a little creepy. He generated more grotesque attention this week when he sought to auction the gun with which he killed Trayvon Martin in 2012 as the black teenager was walking home.

In September, Zimmerman retweeted a photo of Martin's corpse.

This week, when he listed his Kel-Tec PF-9 handgun for sale, he said: "I am honored and humbled to announce the sale of an American Firearm Icon." Martin's parents, who have endured not only the senseless killing of their son and the bitter aftertaste of justice denied, but also Zimmerman's subsequent outrages, maintained a dignified silence.

Zimmerman's Wikipedia entry reads like a rap sheet -- court-sanctioned anger-management classes, restraining order, domestic violence claims, allegations of threatening, at different times, both his wife and girlfriend with a gun. All this, of course, in addition to shooting dead a teenager walking through a residential neighborhood armed with a package of Skittles.

But Zimmerman has never been convicted of a felony. He's free to buy an arsenal of guns. And he's free to sell his wares on the Internet, without a background check, to any criminal or loon who comes along.

Zimmerman is a fringe character, but his place in our national debate on gun violence should be central. He's a hinge on which the debate's conflicting narratives hang. Swing to one side, and you have an insecure, impulsive man who has shown himself to be reckless, violent and a threat to public safety. Swing to the other, you have a good guy with a gun.

"Good guy with a gun" has become an essential phrase in the gun movement lexicon. National Rifle Association an essential phrase in the gun movement lexicon. National Rifle Association leader Wayne LaPierre has used it repeatedly, most memorably when he said that having an armed law-abiding citizen on the scene was the key to preventing massacres like the one in Newtown. In a new documentary, "Under the Gun," gun-rights supporters repeat their leader's five-word mantra, confident that it is the cure to the next rash of gun violence.

The phrase derives its sturdy appeal from a Saturday matinee worldview, with room enough for only two kinds of guys. The bad guys are gang members, convicted criminals and anyone who is, at this exact moment, engaged in committing a violent crime. Good guys are everybody else.

I tried numerous times, in a lengthy interview, to push an intelligent, knowledgeable and passionate gun-rights supporter to acknowledge the existence of a third category, one that includes alcoholics, drug addicts, young men with powerful insecurities and weak self-control, the senile, the paranoid and the hair-trigger. He wouldn't bite. Good guys and bad guys is pretty much as far as we got.

The National Rifle Association is run by men who promote paranoid visions of social breakdown to sell their ideology and their patrons' merchandise.

They're cynical, but not stupid. They recognize that Zimmerman, yesterday's vigilante hero, is tomorrow's poster child for laws that restrict access to firearms by flagrantly dangerous non-felons.

After all, once you start acknowledging that the world is more complicated than just good guys and bad guys, that it includes a diverse class of men, and a few women, who have never served time in prison or a mental institution but should never be allowed anywhere near a gun, the game is up.

So the NRA won't want to talk about Zimmerman or the uncomfortable gray zone he embodies -- a man legally entitled, but characterologically unfit, to buy and sell guns at will. The rest of us, however, should talk about it a lot. Zimmerman is an awful citizen. But he's also an underutilized social asset.

For more columns from Bloomberg View, visit http://www.bloomberg.com/view.

http://www.oregonlive.com/opinion/index.ssf/2016/05/george_zimmerman_is_a_good_ide.html

 

Yes indeed Zimmerman should never had have a firearm not being a perfect man and Trayvon should had been free to pound his brain out on the sidewalk at his whim.

 

More anti gun garbage. No one wants mentally ill people to have weapons and the author knows this. Let's talk about the Beirut repeat going on in Chicago and what the current administration is doing about it. Every week a slaughterhouse and the liberals say and do NOTHING.

 

If only thugs had guns, Democrats would win more elections.

 

How would you keep guns from the mentally ill, unstable, immature and impulsive?

 

We more than likely encounter the mentally ill fairly often. When you see that woman shoving the grocery cart around town full of trash, do you believe she is mentally competent?

But does just the mentally ill shoot to kill. A good case can be made that to kill a human, one has to be mentally ill. This is not about abortion, but it strikes me that the more babies one can safely kill, the more it is easy to kill the older people. By the time a person reaches the age of 50, his days of killing others is near the end. I mean, those past 50 do not ordinarily start to do things the young punks do.

I am led to believe that the news, such as on PBS has programs defending the mentally ill.

We go crazy when we hear of a mass killing. But those are few and far between. Each is very tragic. But all in all, few and far between.

Does law enforcement see them as mentally ill? What about the psychiatrists?

An interesting idea comes up. Just as we don't disarm the cops, the least we could to to curtail mass killings is to have armed people at the venues. Schools that hire armed people are automatically safer. Did the school in Ct where the children died end up armed by now?

 

Oh let it go aalready. There are plenty of gun laws. Nobody wants mentally I'll folks with guns. Move to china! We have the second amendment.

 

What would justify the utter insensitivity and lack of empathy for the dead teen's parents? This only proves that Zimmerman is the social freak that many realized he was when he appointed himself the law and stalked an unarmed teen without having the gonads to introduce himself as the neighborhood watch person and asking the kid what he was doing there and where he was going. A rational clear thinking responsible adult would have done just that. No need to rehash this crap again, but maybe if Zimmerman the social reject can manage to keep his stupid mug out of the news for five minutes this will fade into the past, where it belongs.

 

Sound like you don't want any liberals to be armed.

 

ahh, so you wish to restrict firearms of people based on your opinion of them. Can I restrict your right to vote based on my opinion of how you voted so poorly for Obama?

 

It's funny how you lefties can say all that without adding that maybe, just maybe, Trayvon shouldn't have attacked Zimmerman.

Do you realize how disingenuous you look when you can't admit that both sides were wrong? Have you ever admitted that Trayvon was in the wrong? Do you have the ability to do that? Or are you too hung up on partisan agendas?

Like it or not, Trayvon attacked someone and he was NOT provoked. Don't try to argue that someone following you is reason for attacking them, try to be objective for once.

 

So Martin ran up to Little Georgie's window and dragged him out of the car?

No...I believe Georgie stalked Martin...

 

Exactly. Humans have always sought to protect themselves, and we will continue to do so. No one wants to give an alcoholic a drink, either, but we learned that lesson a century ago. Guns are no different. Tragedies occur, but I'm not giving my guns up to anyone, law or not. My safety comes first.

 

If Trayvon Martin had not attacked George "White Hispanic" Zimmerman he would be alive today. If Michael Brown had not attacked a police officer and tried to take his gun, he would be alive today.

Anyone see a pattern here?

 

George had called the police about a teen walking in the rain and talking on a cell phone.. I lived in a gated community with a bus stop just outside the gate.. and I walked wearing a hoodie and sometimes talking on the phone.. Many, many students who lived there used that public transportation and walked at all hours of the day and night, in all sorts of weather, wearing hoodies in the winter and talking on their cell phones.

George had NOTHING.. so he created a confrontation.

 

In my opinion, Zimmerman should have been charged with murder.

 

Brown had roughed up a clerk...

Trayvon was walking in the rain while black and talking on a cell phone.. and inspite of George's delusions he was NOT a law enforcement officer.

 

Funny how the progressives are arming up while they mouth off against guns. Just saw a bit on Rachel Maddow at the target range -- with an automatic assault rifle, no less!!

 

By taking their rights when they are adjudicated mentally unfit. You know. .... due process of law?

 

So Zimmerman force Trayvon to attacked him instead of just walking home or calling the police himself.

 

Being an (*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*)(*) is not illegal. I agree that this action is one in a string of trashy behavior from this trashy individual, but trashy ain't against the law nor should it be.

 

You lived in the martin/Zimmerman neighborhood?

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It's funny. He WAS charged with murder, murder 2. He SHOULD'VE been charged with manslaughter because THAT would've had a decent chance of sticking.

He was charged with murder 2 because of politics. Those politics obstructed a very possible conviction for a long shot on a harder conviction.

 

Strange that the local people who normally decided such matters was of the opinion that no charges was called for including homicide and it took the Florida governor intervening to get Zimmerman charge with any crime.

 

Manslaughter can stick on the facts of that case if you pick the right jury and play your cards right. Not 100% like it's a slam dunk, but it can be done. Murder 2 there is simply not enough evidence for.
Too much doubt in the facts for a jury to find murder 2

 

He was attacked with the wounds to proved it so you would need a stupid jury indeed to come up with any other verdict but innocent.

In fact by attacking Trayvon proved that Zimmerman was correct about him and he acted in a reasonable manner.