Staying Out of the Line of Fire, and Not Making Messes

Yesterday afternoon, we had a Crime Watch "meeting."  It was a gathering at the corner of 118th Street and 11th Place.  About 22 people attended, including our Police Chief, Mitch Glansberg, and two of our Reserve Officers.  Not only was the meeting well-attended, but those who were there were interested and had things to say.  We talked about a number of crime-related topics.  One thing we talked about was how to stay safe, as "crime watchers," and a related topic was guns.

In the news, there have been three very recent stories about guns.  One is about the soldier who went on a killing spree in Afghanistan, murdering Afghan civilians.  He seems to have "cracked."  Another was about a French man who also went on a killing spree, this time against Jews.  The last I heard, this morning, he was holed up in his apartment, had killed some policemen as well, and was reportedly still well-armed.  It isn't much of a mystery where this is going.

The last very recent story comes from Florida.  A man named George Zimmerman, who lives in Sanford, confronted a kid named Trayvon Martin, who was visiting family and was from Miami Gardens, and shot him dead.  Although Zimmerman claims "self-defense," or some variation on the theme of protecting his property or turf, it appears quite clear Martin was in no way armed, nor was he in any way threatening or a threat to Zimmerman.  Or anyone else.  What he had in his hands at the moment he was murdered by Zimmerman was a bag of potato chips and a soft drink.

The easy conclusion to draw is that people + guns = nothing good.  And my personal opinion is that that is patently and unassailably true.  If you have a gun, get rid of it.  Statistics show that the most likely things that will come of your gun ownership are 1) nothing, 2) the gun will be stolen by someone robbing your house, or 3) some innocent person, maybe a kid, will mistakenly be killed or maimed by it.  The thing that almost never ever happens is that you will use the gun successfully to protect yourself.  But as I say, that's the easy conclusion.  And of course, I neglected to mention that a result of your gun ownership might be that you will amuse yourself at a shooting range, but you don't need a gun in your house for that.

What's much harder is what is happening, and will happen, with George Zimmerman.  The soldier will be tried and either executed or imprisoned for life.  He'll say he has PTSD and a head injury, and maybe he does.  The French guy will not get out of the standoff with police alive.  But George Zimmerman has a real problem, and he is a real problem.

I feel confident to say that we will never know what Zimmerman is thinking and feeling.  We won't know if he feels badly about what happened, and about what he did.  Right now, he is very much under the gun, and it will get worse for him, as the whole country, and soon enough the State of Florida, agitate for him to be arrested and arraigned.  He will get very caught up trying to defend himself, for real this time, and he will try to convince anyone he can that Martin really was threatening.  He'll tell himself and everyone else stories until he, himself, believes them.  He has no viable choice.  He's a 20-something kid, who seems to think he's some kind of cowboy or vigilante, and he walks around with a concealed pistol, which use he deliberately anticipated and wanted to legitimize by getting a permit for it.  This was a disaster waiting to happen, and it happened to Trayvon Martin.  It couldn't really have gone any other way.  And if this story was about George Zimmerman, it wouldn't much be worth telling.  But there are lots of George Zimmermans in the world.  And for who knows what reasons (Michael Moore couldn't ultimately explain it in Bowling for Columbine), they seem to be concentrated in this country.  George Zimmerman got himself, and Trayvon Martin, into this mess with a certain mindset, and he'll have it throughout.  In a sense, he can't get out of this alive either.  Part of his mind is undeveloped or paralyzed, and in that way, he is not salvageable.  And circumstances are not on his side.  Everything happening to him now, and everything that will happen to him, push him further still out on the limb he already occupies.  If somehow he should get acquitted, or not indicted, he will tell himself he was right, and everyone agrees with him, and the world is as dangerous a place as he knew it was, and black people are as ill-meaning as he thought.  If he is tried and convicted, he will decide the world is a worse place than he thought, that the country is made up of politically correct idiots, and that he has been made a sacrifice by them.  Scheming and fighting against black convicts in prison?  Um, I think so.

So Mitch Glansberg had a piece of advice for us yesterday.  Look around, see what's going on, and take note of anything that doesn't look right to you.  If you see something you don't like, or that you're not sure about, call 911.  And don't worry, you're doing the right thing.  People who are perfectly innocent will be treated very respectfully and wished a good day.  Others will be addressed as you would want them addressed.  But don't get cocky.  Don't be a cowboy or cowgirl.  Don't directly confront people or follow them.  Take a surreptitious photograph, especially of a license plate, or write down what you see.  AND CALL 911!!  But leave policing to the police.  They know how, they're very good at it, and it's what we pay them for.  That's what Mitch says.