"Notice that conservatives aren't arguing that Trayvon should've been packing? I wonder why..."

[TeamsterDem]

17. Because Trayvon was 17 and thus ineligible to own a gun

Before you argue that his age didn't prevent him from being killed by one, that's an appeal to emotion as opposed to a logical argument. We have laws in this country regarding who can and can't possess firearms, and through his age Trayvon was too young to carry one. Much in the same way that sometimes children who are too young to drink alcohol themselves are killed by drunken drivers, this case involves a man - Zimmerman - who needs to be prosecuted for his crimes. But outlawing all forms of guns simply won't get all guns off the street, and arguably it won't even reduce the murder rates since murder rates in other countries with stricter gun laws don't necessarily seem to bear that out.

The straw man presented by this blog post is incredibly disingenuous and hardly rational. No responsible individual would ever advocate for a 17 year old to carry a gun, and that we aren't calling for that doesn't show our insensitivity to Trayvon Martin, but instead to the generally-accepted societal rule that 17 year olds aren't yet eligible to do certain things, such as vote or drink alcohol. Anyone of any age who murders another individual using whatever means needs to stand trial and, if convicted, serve time in prison. But just as we don't outlaw alcohol because on it some people do horrific things such as driving drunk, we don't then ban guns simply because a distinct statistical minority commits a crime using one.