The Nation Magazine

“It wasn’t just the gun in Zimmerman’s hand that shot Trayvon. It was a historic rendering of black men as enemies of the state, menaces to society, threats to the American way of life, that caused Trayvon to lose his life that day. How do you legislate against that?”

Mychal Denzel Smith on why getting rid of “Stand Your Ground” laws won’t be enough to prevent another Trayvon Martin

Trayvon Martin was senselessly murdered this year, a victim of gun violence and the widely criticized “Stand Your Ground” laws that likely emboldened the teenager’s killer. In the wake of her tragedy, Martin’s mother is standing up in hopes of preventing what happened to her child from ever happening again. 

“If a survivor of domestic violence uses a gun to warn an attacker, not kill him, and that survivor now faces a prison term of twenty years, then what purpose does Stand Your Ground serve?”

—Melissa Harris-Perry on the case of Marissa Alexander, a mother of three who fired a warning shot into her kitchen ceiling trying to keep her abusive husband away. No one was hurt, but she now faces up to twenty years in prison.