First, it was George Zimmerman and more recently, Michael Dunn. Zimmerman was acquitted of manslaughter and murder charges by a Florida jury in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin. Dunn also was tried by a Florida jury and was found guilty of attempted second-degree murder, but the jury deadlocked on the murder charge in the shooting death of Jordan Davis. Both Martin and Davis were unarmed at the time of their deaths. Florida, along with 21 other states, is home to a "Stand Your Ground" law that gives individuals the right to use deadly force to defend themselves without any requirement to evade or retreat from a dangerous situation. These laws were based, or inspired by, a model law crafted and disseminated by ALEC (the American Legislative Exchange Council). Since the trial of George Zimmerman, ALEC has quietly moved away from the "Stand Your Ground" issue. If this is (fair & balanced) proof that if you can't stand the heat on the firing range, stay away from the targets.
PS: RIP, Trayvon Martin and Jordan Davis — both victims of senseless gun-violence.
[x This Modern World]
The Gun
By Tom Tomorrow (Dan Perkins)
[Dan Perkins is an editorial cartoonist better known by the pen name "Tom Tomorrow". His weekly comic strip, "This Modern World," which comments on current events from a strong liberal perspective, appears regularly in approximately 150 papers across the U.S., as well as on Daily Kos. The strip debuted in 1990 in SF Weekly. Perkins, a long time resident of Brooklyn, New York, currently lives in Connecticut. He received the Robert F. Kennedy Award for Excellence in Journalism in both 1998 and 2002. When he is not working on projects related to his comic strip, Perkins writes a daily political weblog, also entitled "This Modern World," which he began in December 2001. Earlier this year, Dan Perkins, pen name Tom Tomorrow, was named the winner of the 2013 Herblock Prize for editorial cartooning.]
Copyright © 2014 Tom Tomorrow (Dan Perkins)
Sapper's (Fair & Balanced) Rants & Raves by Neil Sapper is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License. Based on a work at sapper.blogspot.com. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available here.
Copyright © 2014 Sapper's (Fair & Balanced) Rants & Raves
