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George Zimmerman often went out hunting and finally bagged himself a young black buck.

Had there been no public outcry, he could have done like more than 500 fellow killers in the 22 states with "Stand Your Ground" laws: Just say he felt threatened, then walk away to wash off the blood.

And maybe look for a good taxidermist to mount the trophy.

Zimmerman pales in comparison to an angry white guy named Michael David Dunn.

Nine months after Trayvon Martin was murdered, Dunn pulled up to a Jacksonville, Florida convenience store.

A Dodge Durango with four black teens occupied the adjoining parking place, loud music playing.

"I hate that thug music," Dunn told his girlfriend.

Dunn ordered the teens to turn it down.

The driver did.

Jordan Davis, a passenger in the back seat, turned it back up.

An argument escalated.

"You're not gonna talk to me like that," Dunn shouted and pulled a gun.

The Durango driver yelled "duck" and sped a short distance under a hail of bullets, nine of which hit the vehicle, three of which hit and killed Jordan Davis.

Dunn left the scene but bystanders got his license number.

"No!" Ron Davis sobbed when informed. "My son's dead because his music was too loud?"

Ron Davis told Rolling Stone writer Paul Solotaroff that when Dunn was arrested, he said "They defied my orders. What was I supposed to do if they wouldn't listen?"

Dunn is currently being held without bail and may well become the next George Zimmerman.

Everywhere but Ohio, prosecutors must be able to prove a defendant was not acting in self defense.

The accused need only assert that he/she felt threatened.

Looks like a bull market for mind readers.

"I don't have to prove the threat, just that Mike Dunn believed it," Dunn's lawyer says.

The Zimmerman jury was instructed to follow Gunshine State law.

"Stand Your Ground" is the latest in a long line of masterful National Rifle Association handgun marketing ploys.

"In the eight years since the passage of Stand Your Ground, self-defense killings have more than tripled in Florida, and prosecutors sometimes have little choice but to accept the shooter's story: The only other witness is in the morgue," Solotaroff wrote. [Read the entire story.]

"It's been a godsend for violent ex-cons who're adept at gaming the system."

Led by former NRA President Marion [irony alert!] Hammer, Florida has loosened its gun laws every year for the past 19 or so. Here's Solotaroff's synopsis:

"So loud and bullying was the pressure from pro-gun zealots that, by 1987, Florida's legislators buckled, overhauling the law. It became a shall-issue state, meaning that authorities must grant permits to carry concealed, loaded weapons to anyone who doesn't fall into a narrow category of exceptions, including convicted felons or those with prior commitment to mental institutions.

"This meant, for instance, that men arrested for stalking their girlfriends were free to show up on their doorsteps with enough stopping power to drop an ox. Women pulled over for a DUI? Approved. Psychotic college students who were symptomatic but not committed? Approved.

"For the crazed and criminal-minded, it was spring break meets jailbreak.

"Y'all come down and see us – we're one-stop shopping!

"Several things happened next in quick succession. State residents applied for permits in droves (at last count, Florida was granting 15,000 a month) and flooded Walmart for stylish Sig Sauers to slip into their purses or blazers. Gunmakers, bereft about the rifle business, which had tanked with the decline of deer hunting, saw a huge upside in pistol sales and avidly began funding NRA efforts to rewrite the carry laws in other states. Working under the noses of the mainstream media, which, to their disgrace, did little reporting on this putsch, gun lobbyists fanned out across the nation racking up triumph after triumph.

"Today, you can carry a loaded semiauto in 37 states in America.

"But gutted gun laws are only useful to shooters if they know they won't be charged for opening fire. In Florida, where gun activists were toasting 18 years of wins and would soon add others to their column (the right to bring loaded weapons to work, so long as you kept them in your car; the right to bar doctors from asking their patients if they had loaded guns around the house; the right to buy rifles used by Army snipers to kill people at a distance of a mile), the state's prolific gun lobbyist, Marion Hammer, rammed home legislation in 2005 that limited the ability of law enforcement to prosecute shooters who had evidence of provocation, no matter how slight.

"Hammer, an ex-president of the NRA and a musket-toting grandma who proudly enrolled her grandkids in the NRA at birth, is a single-issue force field whose mission in life has been the expansion of Second Amendment rights. (Quoth author and gun lobbyist Richard Feldman: 'There is no single individual responsible for enacting more pro-gun legislation in the states than Marion Hammer.')

"Her Stand Your Ground bill, which passed with ease despite being built on a convenient tale – Hammer claimed to have been stalked in a parking garage by six men, one of whom wielded a "long-necked beer bottle" before she pulled out her .38 and aimed – gave anyone who deemed himself under attack the right to fire first and explain later.

"Yes, you'd have to tell your side to the authorities, but it'd be on prosecutors to prove you weren't acting in self-defense, and once covered you couldn't be charged for your part in the shooting or be sued for damages by the victim's family."

Homicides are up in all the SYG states and down almost everywhere else, Solotaroff noted.

The law has provided drug gangs with get-out-of-jail-free cards.

An SYG bill passed in Nevada's 2011 legislative session.

What do you get when you cross SYG with well-funded defense teams adept at jury selection?

An entire generation of well-armed OJ's like George Zimmerman.

Be well. Raise hell. / Esté bien. Haga infierno.

WEB EXTRAS...

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Be well. Raise hell. / Esté bien. Haga infierno. (Pardon my Spanglish.)

____________

Andrew Barbano is a 44-year Nevadan, chair of the Nevada César Chávez Committee, producer of Nevada's annual César Chávez Day celebration, first vice-president and political action chair of the Reno-Sparks NAACP, labor/consumer/civil rights advocate, member of Communications Workers of America Local 9413/AFL-CIO and editor of NevadaLabor.com and JoeNeal.org. As always, his opinions are strictly his own. Check local listings for other Nevada cable systems. E-mail barbano@frontpage.reno.nv.us. Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Daily Sparks Tribune since 1988.

Smoking Guns... The presence of all colors gives you black Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 7-25-2013 Sparks Tribune Justice for Trayvon rallies scheduled for July 20 in Reno, Las Vegas and nationwide A Most American Way to Die If you're an unarmed black teen in Florida, someone can gun you down – and they might get away with it Paul Solotaroff / Rolling Stone / 4-25-2013 Irony Alert: In one of author Mickey Spillane's best-selling 1950's mystery novels, hard-boiled New York private eye Mike Hammer informs a bad guy whom he is about to execute in cold blood that "I've got it all figured out, right down to the self-defense plea." Could Marion Hammer be a long-lost relative? Life imitates art. Death panels hard at work right here in River City Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 7-4-2013 Sparks Tribune Clarence Thomas, Little Anthony & the Imperials Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 6-27-2013 Sparks Tribune Rosy the poll dancer's destructive seduction Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 6-20-2013 Sparks Tribune ...and more ammo... We Don't Need No Education The continuing Barbwire series The Post-Dated Recession: Pay me now or pay me later Barbwire by Barbano / Expanded from the 9-6-2012 Daily Sparks Tribune The Post-dated Recession By Joshua H. Silavent / Daily Sparks Tribune / 5-3-2011 Union decline and rising inequality in two charts by Colin Gordon Economic Policy Institute / 6-5-2012 Used in journalist Mark Robison's extensive Hard Labor: Nevada unions tout role in helping workers, firms, economy (Sunday 2 Sept. 2012 Reno Gazette-Journal, page one, Reno Rebirth section of the print edition). Union men Jim Burrell, Paul McKenzie and Guy Louis Rocha did the movement proud. Not included in the RGJ online edition. WOMEN AND UNIONS — ORPHAN MAJORITIES The Barbwire Labor Day column Reno Gazette-Journal / 9-3-2012 Nevada Press Assn. Better Newspaper Contest HAT TRICK: Barbwire takes first place three years in a row. The winning entries Suing for Schools: The 20-year shuck Expanded from the 2-21-2010 Daily Sparks Tribune Click here to view the show on your desktop RED flags flying low over Sparks Expanded from the 1-10-2010 Daily Sparks Tribune The wrath of self-righteous racism Expanded from the 11-8-2009 Daily Sparks Tribune Government contacts Nev. congressional delegation Nevada Legislature State of Nevada Secretary of State Carson City Clark County City of Las Vegas Douglas County Reno City Council Sparks City Council Washoe County Commission Washoe Registrar of Voters The campaign against forcibly-paid newspaper obituaries And they wonder why the newspaper business is dying?   The Dean's List    The Dean of Reno Bloggers could very well be Andrew Barbano, self-described "fighter of public demons," who started putting his "Barbwire" columns online in 1996 and now runs 10 sites. RENO NEWS & REVIEW, 11-9-2006 The 2009 first-place Nevada Press Association award winners Tony the Tiger & the flaky NFL Barbwire / 11-30-2008 Deregulation is never having to say you're sorry Barbwire / 8-3-2008 Nevada: A good place to visit, but do you want to live here? Barbwire / 6-15-2008 The 2008 first-place Nevada Press Association award winners The price of a piece / 6-17-2007 Boxing Pandora /9-23-2007 The Lady in the Red Dress 10-28-2007 1997 Pulitzer Prize entries ...and more ammo yet The life and times of Travus T. Hipp The best who ever was

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Copyright © 1982-2013 Andrew Barbano

Andrew Barbano is a 44-year Nevadan, editor of NevadaLabor.com and JoeNeal.org; and former chair of the City of Reno's Citizens Cable Compliance Committee, He is producer of Nevada's annual César Chávez Day celebration and serves as first vice-president, political action chair and webmaster of the Reno-Sparks NAACP. As always, his opinions are strictly his own. E-mail barbano@frontpage.reno.nv.us.

Barbwire by Barbano moved to Nevada's Daily Sparks Tribune on Aug. 12, 1988, and has originated in them parts ever since.
Whom to blame: How a hall-of-famer's hunch birthed the Barbwire in August of 1987
Tempus fugit.

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