re: #692 ggt

Because gun laws in this country were created to control minorities. So, in their minds, Zimmerman was doing exactly what he was supossed to be doing as an upstanding patriot. Martin should not have been “walking while a young black man”

Florida has a particular history for this as cited and often used by the same 2nd Amendment Advocates who are standing up for Zimmerman. The hypocrisy is astounding.

“There are other examples of remarkable honesty from the state supreme courts on this subject, of which the finest is probably Florida Supreme Court Justice Buford’s concurring opinion in Watson v. Stone (1941), in which a conviction for carrying a handgun without a permit was overturned, because the handgun was in the glove compartment of a car:

I know something of the history of this legislation. The original Act of 1893 was passed when there was a great influx of negro laborers in this State drawn here for the purpose of working in turpentine and lumber camps. The same condition existed when the Act was amended in 1901 and the Act was passed for the purpose of disarming the negro laborers and to thereby reduce the unlawful homicides that were prevalent in turpentine and saw-mill camps and to give the white citizens in sparsely settled areas a better feeling of security. The statute was never intended to be applied to the white population and in practice has never been so applied. [35]”

I just checked Clayon Cramer’s blog and he doesn’t seem to be a Zimmerman groupie. So, I won’t include him in the sweeping hypocrisy statement.

GGT, let me make a point in the interests of fairness: The NRA opposed those Jim Crow era gun laws intended to disarm African-Americans, and denounced them as the oppressive tools of control they were. The NRA was founded in New York State, and its first 7 presidents were all former Union generals, including U.S. Grant himself. It was no friend of Southern racists. Whatever else is true, the National Rifle Association cannot justly be blamed for Segregation-era evils that it did not aid, and in fact openly opposed.