Much of the left wing blogosphere is abuzz about Florida's "Stand Your Ground" law, as it relates to the Trayvon Martin case, and are now rallying to demand Stand Your Ground be repealed. Unfortunately, this is a misuse of their efforts, and they need to make of the Trayvon Martin case what it is, not what it isn't.
The Stand Your Ground law simply establishes that when someone is threatened they do not have a "duty to retreat", and if they feel their life is in danger then they may respond with deadly force. That's what the Stand Your Ground law is, and nothing more. There is, however, nothing in Stand Your Ground which would allow a person to pursue someone, confront them, start a fight with them, and shoot them even though they are unarmed. Unfortunately, this is exactly what George Zimmerman did when he killed Trayvon Martin.
What happened in the Trayvon Martin case is not a proper use of the Stand Your Ground law, but rather a misuse of the law. Why? Because George Zimmerman is a well connected white man, and Trayvon Martin was a poor black teenager in a rural Florida town infamous for its race problems. George Zimmerman's father is a Magistrate from the Virginia Supreme Court, and his mother is a Deputy Clerk of the Court. As far as the Sanford Police Department is concerned, Zimmerman is made of Teflon. The Sanford Police Department says that according to testimony they had they were prohibited from arresting Zimmerman. If that's their excuse then they didn't investigate the case well enough, and they took Zimmerman at his word without corroboration.
The Trayvon Martin case isn't about the proper application of Stand Your Ground, but the _improper_ application of it. It is about the racially motivated killing of a young black man by a well connected white man. It is about a racially biased police department letting a well connected white man get away with murder. To say it is anything else does a disservice both to Trayvon Martin and to Stand Your Ground.
Again I say, protesters, of every stripe, in the Trayvon Martin case should make of it what it is, not what it isn't.
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