As the racialist wing of our body politic suffers through the Kubler-Ross seven stages of grief at the “Not Guilty” verdict in the Zimmerman trial, we find that they are currently transitioning from the “Anger” to “Bargaining” stage. How do we know? Because all they want, they now tell us, is to “reform” the Stand-Your-Ground laws that currently exist in thirty-three states.

What’s Stand-Your-Ground Have to Do With It?

You may, like any normal thinking person, be wondering how the heck the conversation turned to Stand-Your-Ground in the first place. After all, the Zimmerman case had nothing whatever to do with Stand-Your-Ground (as discussed in detail here: The Marissa Alexander Case Wasn’t About “Stand-Your-Ground” Either).

Black People Benefit Disproportionately From Stand-Your-Ground

In addition, all the evidence suggests that Stand-Your-Ground is being used properly by law-abiding people defending themselves against criminal predation–and, further, that a vastly disproportionate number of those doing so are minorities living in high crime neighborhoods. In other words, black people are availing themselves of the protective benefits of Stand-Your-Ground with much greater frequency than their percentage of the population would suggest.

This, of course, follows naturally from the fact that the high rate of violent crime in poor neighborhoods is directed primarily at the other residents of those neighborhoods, resulting in the horrifyingly high rate of black-on-black crime reflected in today’s FBI crime statistics.

Stand-Your-Ground The Law In Large Majority of States

In addition, Stand-Your-Ground is hardly some aberration of Florida law. Only a minority of states–17 as of this writing–impose a mandatory generalized duty to retreat before using deadly force in self-defense, and many of the Stand-Your-Ground states have been such for decades before Florida adopted its own Stand-Your-Ground statute in 2005.

So, if Stand-Your-Ground is neither new nor unusual, if it disproportionately helps minorities protect themselves from the violent predation of (mostly) other minorities, and if there is nothing in either of the recent high-profile “self-defense” cases involving members of the black community, what’s the deal?

The Grief and Anger in the Black Community is Real

First, it must be acknowledged that the grief and anger in the black community is real and genuine. I’m not, of course, talking about the ring leaders who are fostering this grief and anger for their own personal benefit. I’m talking about the average black person on the streets who obtains most if not all of their information about these matters from those ring leaders and their willing enablers in the mainstream media.

The Disinformation War Waged on the Black Community

From the first days following the shooting of Trayvon Martin the black community, and the American public in general, was fed a pack of lies and disinformation about the events in question. A few that immediately come to mind off the top of my head include:

• Zimmerman “stalked” Martin. (There is no evidence that Zimmerman ever sought to close with Martin or sought to do anything but observe from a distance.)
• Zimmerman volunteered Martin’s race to police. (No, NBC doctored the 911 recording to make that appear to be the case, the police asked and Zimmerman answered.)
• Zimmerman disobeyed police instructions to stay in his truck. (No such instruction was ever given.)
• Zimmerman disobeyed police instructions to not follow Martin. (No such instruction was ever given; when it was suggested that he not follow, he complied immediately.)
• Zimmerman has a history of convictions for acts of violence. (Simply, no.)
• Zimmerman was high on pills at the time. (No evidence of this whatever.)
• Zimmerman appointed himself head of the neighborhood watch. (No, HOA offered him that role, he accepted.)
• Zimmerman had called the police about suspicious characters dozens of times in the weeks preceding the events with Martin. (No, it was perhaps a half-dozen calls in similar number of months)
• Zimmerman used a racial slur in reference to Martin while on the phone to police. (Never happened.)
• Zimmerman was a racist seething with anger against young black men. (No evidence of this whatever, despite thorough FBI investigation.)
• Zimmerman injuries prove he was never in danger of death or grave bodily harm. (First, no injury need be suffered before self-defense; second, blows to the head always carry a danger of hemotoma and death.)
• Zimmerman used a gun against an unarmed child. (Had the events not happened nobody would have referred to 6-foot-plus 17-year-old Martin as a child; in any event, Martin armed himself with his fists and the sidewalk.)

Anybody fully armed with the actual facts of the case understands that all of the above claims are untrue, and remain untrue no matter how many times they are propagated by racial activists, the mainstream media, the justice department, and even President Obama.

If The Lies Are Believed, Anger and Outrage Are Understandable, Inevitable

But imagine, for a moment, how you might feel if you were not armed with the actual facts of the case, and believed those lies to be true. Imagine that you believe that Zimmerman stalked Martin, that he was a seething racist, that he disobeyed police instructions, that he was a “wannabe cop” whose overzealous actions resulted in the death of an unarmed child.

Without question, you would be outraged at Zimmerman’s not guilty verdict, as would I.

The fault with this misplaced outrage of Zimmerman’s perfectly appropriate acquittal lies not with the typical black person in the community, but rather with their racial leaders who, despite themselves being armed with the actual facts of the case, prefer to continue to lie to their supporters to foster and sustain their pain and grief. It’s despicable, really.

So How Does All This Tie Into Stand-Your-Ground Protests?

Still, even that doesn’t get us closer to understanding the Stand-Your-Ground protests. All of the above could be happening without Stand-Your-Ground ever being an issue. (For example, we see no similar protests around the self-defense principles of imminence or proportionality.) What then is driving these misled members of the black community to focus their grief and anger on Stand-Your-Ground?

Radical Gun Control Zombies Remain Mindlessly Persistent

To those of us who have spent decades in the trenches of the gun control wars, the answer is blazingly obvious–we’ve seen these tactics before. The simple truth is that the black community’s grief over their misconceived notions of Trayvon Martin’s death is being exploited by the zombie wing of the gun-control movement. This is the faction that believes that ANY means justify their goal of removing all firearms from private hands, and that each individual’s safety should be secured solely by the state. Fortunately, their track record to date is gratifyingly bad.

First, they tried to ban guns entirely. They failed at that–today there are more guns in the hands of private American citizens than at any prior time in our history.

Then, they tried to ban certain types of guns. Major fail–their primary target for elimination, so-called “assault weapons”, have never been more popular or more widely owned.

Next, they tried to keep us from being able to carry our guns for personal protection. They catastrophically failed at that, too–twenty years ago perhaps half the states had a provision for concealed carry, today all of them do (pending IL adopting the necessary procedures).

Indeed, the most recent massive gun control campaign waged in the first half of this year succeeded in achieving . . . absolutely nothing, despite a major commitment of political capital at the highest levels of government.

Radical Gun Control Zombies’ Message Crystal Clear–Aaaargh!

So, if you’re a gun control zombie, what are you to do with yourself? These Stand-Your-Ground protests, properly interpreted, reveal the newest iteration of the gun control scheme with perfect clarity:

Well, I couldn’t take your guns away. And I couldn’t keep you from carrying for personal protection. I couldn’t even exploit the grief over a mass killing of school children to fool the country into taking guns away from the law-abiding. Fine.

But now I’m going to do my best to ensure that if you ever DO use that gun to defend yourself or your family, you’ll spend the rest of your life in prison. I’ll make you so afraid to even touch that gun on your hip that you may as well not even be carrying it.  When we drag you into court, with a jury sitting in a safe environment secured by armed bailiffs, we’ll point out a thousand different ways you theoretically could have “safely retreated” from the vicious attack launched upon you.

Even if we don’t get you convicted and sentenced to decades in prison–and we hope we do–we’ll cost you everything in mounting your legal defense.

Aaaaarrrrrgh!

That’s what this is all about. The gun control zombies tried the frontal assault (banning guns outright, or at least certain types), and they failed. They tried a flanking maneuver (ban the carrying of concealed firearms), and they failed. So now they’ve transitioned into asymmetrical political warfare by exploiting the genuine (if mistaken) anger and grief of the black community to advance their gun control fantasies.

And now you know the rest of the story.

–Andrew

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NOTICE: “Law of Self Defense” Seminars are now being scheduled for the fall.

Andrew F. Branca is an MA lawyer and author of the seminal book “The Law of Self Defense, 2nd Edition” now available at www.lawofselfdefense.com and also at Amazon.com as either a hardcopy or in Kindle version, and at Barnes & Noble as hardcopy or (soon!) in Nook version.

You can follow Andrew on Twitter on @LawSelfDefense and using #LOSD2, on Facebook, and at his blog, The Law of Self Defense.