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High Noon in Florida

By on March 30, 2012

it has been impossible to ignore the case of Trayvon Martin, the 17-year old African-American youth, who was shot to death February 26 while crossing through a neighborhood on his way home. As the father of three young men who were all 17 not so long ago, I know the feelings I would have had as a parent if any of my sons had died in this way. As they were not African-American, the risk was far less, let’s be honest here. But there is risk involved. Two of them were mugged as teens. The task at hand for any parent as I have learned is to get your kids through those difficult years alive and unscathed.

These years when hormones flow and brains mature are like a stretch of rough sea with hidden rocks, submerged icebergs and violent storms that any small craft must navigate to reach the vast ocean of adulthood. Young navigators, myself included, make impulsive and unwise decisions during this passage. It is by nature a time of trial-and-error. A parent’s role is important. Much learning by example goes on.

I do not know what happened that night of February 26. I was not there. I have seen the videos. I have heard the audio tapes. I have heard the voices of reason calling for due process and they are right. I have heard the screamers on the right and left and they are a nuisance. I know without prompting a lot of questions require answers. It is not clear Mr. Zimmerman the perpetrator was merely defending himself. I have read the history of these stand your ground laws and realize how they would advantage the paranoid and unstable and the ill-intended. They need to be rethought without undue pressure.

It is my hope that an arrest will be made, an investigation will be concluded and that justice and the rule of law will prevail, whatever that turns out to be. If the local police were guilty of incompetence, they should also have their moment of truth. I am very concerned when I see large masses of people milling around and holding rallies because the last thing we need is more violence and more deaths. This sort of activity often leads to just that. We know what mobs can do. We know what demagogues can do. We know what can happen in the heat of anger.

Death by gun is abnormally high in this country, far above other ‘civilized countries.’ The gun laws here are ridiculous. I do not believe the founding fathers meant for the US to become an armed encampment. I believe the rights of hunters can be protected without putting semi-automatic weapons and machine guns in the hands of the mentally disturbed. The NRA, which represents weapon-making industry, has far too much power lobbying across the country. What’s good for Smith and Wesson may not be good for the rest of the country.

We have an ultra-conservative and rather political Supreme Court that has hampered efforts to clean up cities and tighten gun-ownership laws. This is a big problem. Modern problems need modern thinking, not an attempt to guess what James Madison would have thought of uzis. The War of 1812 ended almost 200 years ago and times have changed. This situation calls for more than a law review exercise.

The health of this country will be improved if, as in classic western movies, the ‘sheriff’ is allowed to get the townsfolk to surrender their guns and go about their business without them. Emergency rooms will be far more efficient if their beds are not being taken up by the victims of gunshots and other weapons. It has been difficult to get this message through to the public. The merchants of fear are always at work, thwarting this truth.

The Trayvon Martin Case is a matter that concerns us all. It is High Noon once again in this country. Emotions are running high. Guns are everywhere. We need the forces of wisdom and courage and our better selves to prevail.

 

Tom Godfrey

About Tom Godfrey

2 comments on “High Noon in Florida”

  1. dt.barton on said:

    I read with interest your article on the killing of Treyvon Martin. While I agree with much of what you write, I disagree in some areas. I am glad that you, as a father, feel a sense of six-degrees-of-separation tragic loss of an innocent youth. I would hope that all fathers, all mothers, all unwed aunts and uncles, cousins, nephews and nieces would feel the same. But I fear that such wrongful deaths will likely continue unabated into the future and throughout our lives. It is true, as you suggest, that the NRA is perhaps the most powerful lobby in America today, and as we know, it stuffs the pockets of government officials with bundles of available cash. No doubt, the NRA has real blood on its hands as it fuels the proliferation of firearms in communities where they result in mindless death. But we should not fool ourselves into believing that the NRA is entirely at fault. No, it is really our government itself who is to blame. We all know that the government does what it wants, when it wants. It wages war without an act of congress. It executes prisoners, and then turns on a dime and grants pardons when it suits the political aspirations of elected officials. It denies the right to marriage amongst a certain class of its citizens. It taxes without representation, and then jails those who refuse to pay the tax. And so too, if the government wanted for its citizens to be rid of the scourge of guns it could likely see to it that all guns were off the streets in five years time. But no, the government has its reasons for wanting to keep guns in the hands of its citizens. It may want for those citizens to be armed in the event of an invasion by a foreign army, (absurd, perhaps) or it may want for the citizens themselves to help to protect themselves against crime in light of constantly shrinking police protection (a less absurd notion.) Too bad, society reasons, if the occasional Treyvon Martin falls prey to this deadly societal trap. So, lets not fool ourselves that the government is not supremely complicit in the death of Treyvon Martin. The lives of black youths are cheap and expendable, and society moves on quickly, stamping on their graves, as they fall left and right. Yes, the ‘shoot first’ laws appear to grease the happy trigger fingers of unenlightened security guards and others, but they are underwritten by America’s continued perception of itself as a Wild West town. And until that perception changes, countless lives such as those of Treyvon Martin are certain to be lost. You fret at ‘large masses of people milling around and holding rallies’ yet this is exactly the prescription for a solution to this problem. Remember the American Revolution? Large masses of people milled all over the land in an effort to combat a wrong that was unacceptable. When has anything worth doing ever come easily? No, not until American citizens are prepared to protest round the clock and lay their lives on the line will the situation change. And why is this true? Firstly, because the issue of gun ownership is so deeply ingrained in our society, and secondly because the subject is such a lethal one. This is, after all , the most lethal cancer that infects our society. It is more toxic than the issues of abortion and gay marriage combined, and as such will require major, and deep surgery to remove.
    DT.Barton

    Reply ↓
    • TGodfrey on said:

      You make good points. I cannot disagree except to say that we elect the government we got. We may deserve the government we elect. The other commenter today also talks about a nation of cowboys as a contemporary problem. We need to keep tightening up our form of government. New challenges, new abuses come along that the brightest of the colonialists could not have imagined. E.g. internet phishing schemes. We need to keep addressing them and plugging the holes to the best of our ability. We need to send people to the state capital or Washington committed to doing that. We need to cap the temptations of running for public office and holding it. It costs too much to campaign and it goes on too long. The voter is not demanding this. Yes, the NRA is not entirely at fault. The government is not entirely at fault either. We need to shoulder some of that responsibility. It seems much harder these days for the truth to win out. And it takes longer. Too long.

      Reply ↓

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