Strong opinions about Trayvon Martin's murder

[Tommy_Carcetti]

25. Both. It's a combination of a) the gun culture and b) 21st century racism (profiling)

It's not a simple case in any respect.

You have a prime example of someone desperately wanting to be a "good guy with a gun", but without the proper training and discipline, he creates the problem, not solves it. And all these wannabe "good guys" out there are a very real problem, not just something imagined in the heads of gun control advocates as gun enthusiasts want you to believe.

And then you have the racial angle. It's not a simple matter of blatant, hard core bigotry like a lynching. But the race issue is most definitely there and not to be ignored or dismissed. The victim's downfall was that he was a young black man, walking alone in a hooded sweatshirt in an unfamiliar neighborhood. The "good guy with a gun" focused on him not because he believed him to be a specific suspect in a crime, but simply based on his stereotypical view (spoken or unspoken) on young black males. And that view was that in his mind, Trayvon was "up to no good."

It's not an either-or situation.

It's a case about the gun culture.

And it's a case about race.