Flaylo
Handsome Devil
Dennis A. Henigan: Why the NRA Wants the Trayvon Martin Case to Go Away
In the end its all about money too, the NRA are puppets and prostitutes for the gun and wealons industry.
When the National Rifle Association's Wayne LaPierre finally spoke out about the Trayvon Martin shooting, it was to decry the media's coverage of the tragedy as "sensational reporting from Florida." It's understandable that the NRA would be uncomfortable with the intense media attention to this particular shooting tragedy.
For one thing, the shooting has thrown a spotlight on the real-world impact of the "Shoot First, Ask Questions Later" (aka "Stand Your Ground") laws the NRA has pushed in Florida and other states across the country that are allowing dangerous individuals to literally "get away with murder." But the NRA's discomfort has even deeper roots. In a real sense, Trayvon Martin's death at the hands of George Zimmerman exposes the mythology of the NRA's core narrative about guns and self-defense.
The NRA has a wonderfully simple story to tell. In the NRA's world, people are neatly divided into two readily identifiable groups: good guys and bad guys. In this imaginary world, we know that legal carriers of guns must be good guys and that good guys use their guns only in legitimate self-defense -- that's what makes them good guys in the first place. The Trayvon Martin tragedy reveals the real world to be far more complicated.
The gun lobby often cites surveys purporting to establish that good guys defend themselves with guns millions of times every year. One survey repeatedly cited by the NRA asked "have you yourself, or another member of your household used a gun, even if it was not fired, for self-protection"? Of course, after he shot Trayvon Martin, George Zimmerman, a legal concealed carrier under Florida's weak gun laws, would have answered this question, "Yes".
The survey would not have revealed that Zimmerman could have avoided any risk of confrontation with Trayvon Martin had he followed the suggestion of a police dispatcher to stop following Martin and instead left it to the police to investigate Zimmerman's report of a "suspicious" person. It would not have revealed that Zimmerman armed himself for his neighborhood watch duties in violation of the neighborhood watch guidelines that members "shall not carry weapons." Nor would it have revealed that Trayvon Martin was armed only with a bag of Skittles and a can of iced tea at the time Zimmerman shot him dead. The Trayvon Martin shooting demonstrates that relying on a person's claim of self-defense is folly, in part because the person's own aggressive behavior may have caused the confrontation in the first place. Indeed, in prison surveys, over 60 percent of convicted felons who have fired a gun claim to have done so in self-defense.
In the end its all about money too, the NRA are puppets and prostitutes for the gun and wealons industry.