One of the things I don’t think I’ll ever get used to is the shameless tendency of the Left to try and exploit a tragedy. Timothy McVeigh? Oh, he was an extreme right-winger — Rush Limbaugh must’ve driven him to it! Paul Wellstone dies? For Paul Wellstone — let’s take the fight to the GOP, and take back Congress! 9/11? Bush should’ve seen it coming! No — scratch that — he was the one who did it: that’s right, 9/11 was an inside job! Katrina? It’s Bush’s fault — Dick Cheney blew up the levees, and “George Bush doesn’t care about black people!”
Last year, it was Gabrielle Giffords. Paul Krugman had the nerve to assume — before anything about the nutcase shooter was discovered — that he was a right-winger who shot the congresswoman for political reasons. The rest of the Leftist media jumped on the bandwagon, accusing talk radio and the Tea Party of creating a “climate of hate” — leading President Obama to give a beautiful speech about the need for civility in politics which, as it turns out, he had no intention of applying to his own side.
Of course, it turned out that the shooter had never listened to talk radio—and that practically his only political knowledge consisted of Mein Kampf and the Communist Manifesto. Naturally…the Left shrugged this off as an unimportant technicality.
Give a Leftist a chance, and he/she will invariably try to find some way to politicize a tragedy. This week, we have a new example.
Let me take you (figuratively) to my home state, Florida. For readers who aren’t up on gun laws, Florida has a policy called the “Stand Your Ground” law. Basically, it’s an important application of the 2nd Amendment, allowing law-abiding citizens to defend themselves with a gun, without having to try and run, first. (It’s related to the “Make My Day” law, which affirms the right to defend your private property with a gun — just more general.)
Now … this law specifically states that the citizen has to have been threatened in order to be protected by the self-defense claim. However, despite that, the Left is now attempting to shrug that common-sense clause off, and smear the law in total as evil. And surprise…they have a tragedy to go with it.
I’m referring, of course, to the shooting of Trayvon Martin, the 17-year-old kid who was gunned down by a self-appointed guardian of the community named George Zimmerman. From what the 9-1-1 calls made by Zimmerman indicate, he had it in for Martin just because the latter “looked” suspicious. He ignored the dispatcher’s instructions to stand down — and apparently just went after the kid.
I say “apparently”, because there’s a lot we don’t know about the case. The shooter claims that Martin did threaten him. The cops weren’t sure what to make of it, so now the state police and even the feds are involved. (Somehow, U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder just can’t resist sticking his nose in issues he claims are race-related — and precious little else, to be blunt. In this case, Zimmerman apparently invoked a racial slur….)
What we do know is: 1) Martin was unarmed when his dead body was searched; 2) Zimmerman has a record of being overly aggressive — to the point of resisting arrest with assault and battery (translation: he attacked a cop); and 3) the activist Left, predictably, has reared its ugly head.
Amid the more … interesting explanations for the incident (including Geraldo Rivera claiming Martin’s hooded jacket could’ve made him look suspicious), there is the growing chorus that “Stand Your Ground” was the cause. “See? See? This is why we need gun control! This is why people can’t be allowed to have guns!”
Okay. Once again, in order to make their argument, the Left has to conveniently ignore/downplay certain facts of the case. In this case, as former governor Jeb Bush noted, “Stand Your Ground” allows you to…stand your ground. If Zimmerman really was standing his ground as he claimed — unlikely — then I don’t care what the sob-story is: he was in the right. But … if, as the known facts imply, he just went after the kid—then Zimmerman was the provoker, and therefore “Stand Your Ground” does not apply.
Either way, the problem is not the law. The problem is not the guns. The problem—as always—is the people.
Until next week…