Where's the Trayvon Martin petition about gun control? [View all]

[ellisonz]

Protesters back a petition to prosecute George Zimmerman for fatally shooting unarmed Trayvon Martin. We need to ask whether 'Stand Your Ground' measures make people trigger-happy. And we need to think about the most common victims of lax gun laws: African Americans.

Christian Science Monitor By Jonathan Zimmerman | Christian Science Monitor – Fri, Mar 23, 2012
Jonathan Zimmerman teaches history and education at New York University. He is the author of "Small Wonder: The Little Red Schoolhouse in History and Memory."

Excerpt:

Nationwide, blacks are far more likely to die from firearms than are white people. Not surprisingly, then, African Americans also favor gun control more than
whites do. In a 2010 poll by the Pew Research Center, asking people whether it was more important to “protect gun rights” or “control gun ownership,” 53 percent of whites chose gun rights and 39 percent selected gun control.

Among African Americans, by contrast, just 27 percent deemed gun ownership rights more important; meanwhile, a whopping 64 percent called gun control the more important goal.

These numbers don’t sit well with the gun lobby, which has often suggested that strict gun control actually discriminates against racial minorities. Its evidence? Some of our earliest restrictions on guns barred African Americans from owning them.

That’s true. And it’s also irrelevant. Especially in the years right after the Civil War, racist whites strove to keep guns out of black hands. But it hardly follows that today’s gun-control laws are racist, or that African Americans would be safer if they armed themselves.

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More: http://news.yahoo.com/wheres-trayvon-martin-petition-gun-control-164202878.html

Thank you Jonathan Zimmerman for pointing out the glaring social truth in this debacle.