george zimmerman and self-defense

Es­ti­mated reading time is 1 minute.

I RARELY PAY AT­TEN­TION to the let­ters written into the local news­paper. Too many let­ters are from mis­in­formed in­di­vid­uals who al­most al­ways vote Rep*blican and ac­tu­ally be­lieve that Lim­baugh and Beck and O’Reilly are sources for ac­tual “news.”

I am as­tounded by the people willing to put their name in print and claim credit for some­thing that would take them five min­utes of re­search on the in­ternet to dis­cover was not so. Still, I do look.

In Tues­day’s edi­tion (July 16) of the Seattle Times, a letter ap­peared that ac­tu­ally made sense. It was written by a Mr. William Wheeler of Bellevue, Wash­ington and I quote the second half of the letter:

“Close your eyes and imagine the exact same set of facts. But this time, imagine that George Zim­merman was black, and Trayvon Martin was a white teenager, wearing a hoodie, and walking from the store.

Imagine this black Zim­merman was car­rying a gun, had been told by the po­lice not to con­tinue fol­lowing white Trayvon, and con­tinued to follow him anyway. Then imagine this white Trayvon con­fronted black Zim­merman and was ul­ti­mately shot to death by Zimmerman.

If, under those cir­cum­stances, Zim­merman was found ‘not guilty,’ you [white people] would prob­ably be more out­raged about his ac­quittal than you were about O.J. Simp­son’s. You would have a right to be outraged . . .”

As a man who was a “bully-target” in my youth, who only learned to de­fend my­self in my twen­ties, who be­came a bouncer and a bar­tender that placed in some pretty tough sit­u­a­tions, I can only say this: the mo­ment that George Zim­merman left his car, with a gun, and stalked Trayvon Martin, then ANY­THING that Martin did was jus­ti­fi­able self-defense.

So, the case WAS in­deed about George Zim­merman and self-defense, they just got it wrong as to who was in fear of losing his life.

 

 

3 thoughts on “george zimmerman and self-defense”

  1. My high school stu­dents (I am a teacher) oc­ca­sion­ally ask me for ad­vice about their “re­la­tion­ship” prob­lems. That ad­vice fre­quently in­cludes my telling them to “walk in the other per­son’s shoes” - try to view mat­ters from the sig­nif­i­cant oth­er’s per­spec­tive (some­thing I wish someone had told me when I was a high school stu­dent many moons ago). I ap­plaud Mr. Wheel­er’s comments.

    Reply
    • Make a copy of Joe South’d won­derful single, WALK A MILE IN MY SHOES. Then play it for your stu­dents and have a dis­cus­sion. Ain’t I just fulla good suggestions . . .

      Reply
    • SUNNY27 Apolo­gies for the delay in re­sponding here: I just re­al­ized that I have sev­eral “pending” com­ments! Seeing ANY­THING though the eyes of ANYONE other than my­self usu­ally takes hard work (or lotsa acid). Thanks for the input! NEAL

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