The Real Blame in Florida Teen Shooting

As much as I understand the greif for the young man who was killed by a loose-cannon vigilante in Florida recently, I think the protesting is aimed at the wrong target. The shooter is easy. We can frame him up as a gun-totin' racist redneck looking for a black kid to kill and finding one.

What we're not sufficiently enraged about, however, is the Republican law that allowed--even encouraged--this to happen. It's the testosterone-soaked Stand Your Ground law formulated by men whose manhood is such a question to them that they have to continually expand gun laws. We have reached the point now in Florida and other states with similar laws and easy availability of guns that the only people with a defense is the criminal who's shooting.

How did we get here? We let the NRA buy legislators who gave that ignoble organization (headed by Roanoker Wayne LaPierre to our city's everlasting shame) everything it wanted without question. At least the Repubs and the conservative chicken-shit Democrats did.

These legislators are as responsible for the teenager's death as the shooter is. They killed him; they've killed a lot of others and they will kill more. And we'll stand and watch, some of us applauding.


(Graphic: tucsoncitizen.com)