President Obama: 'Trayvon Martin could have been me, 35 years ago;' urges reforms

[NoOneMan]

24. Maybe? Maybe I didn't. In any case, I asked to start a conversation and see what people thought

A lot of people most certainly take what he said in many different ways. I don't think its absurd to suggest one message is: "don't kill some people because they could potentially become the president/ceo/professor".

One of the reason SYG laws don't work is because they make the law subjective and vulnerable to prejudice. Those people who are deemed as non-valuable to society are permissable to kill to juries. We know these people to be former convicts, prostitutes, the mentally ill, minorities and most certainly the homeless. Anyone that society (or communities) judge to have no value most certainly do not get a fair shake as a defendant, and people cannot properly empathize with them as victims (thereby letting their killers go free). This is a social sickness that needs to be addressed, and not necessarily reinforced by suggesting we just eliminate what groups we devalue. Value should not be part of the way we treat each other. Our perceptions of value (or potential value) should not be part of how we apply laws. It does not matter who and what a victim is, or who and what an offender is. Are we a civil society or not?

At the end of the day, if what the president says makes one less person get profiled, stalked and killed, thats a positive. Its beyond ludicrous though if a human would only do that because they think their potential victim might have potential value.