BACKlikeWEneverLEFT

As my co-blogger just wrote about the image of young black males in his most recent post, as I’m writing this blog today, I express my frustration with these supposed laws in Florida made to protect the everyday American, but has become something to shackle Americans. The Stand Your Ground law and the gun laws created in Florida are just now receiving national attention due to the cases of Trayvon Martin and Marissa Alexander. In case Marissa Alexander doesn’t ring a bell to you, she is a 32 year old mother of 2 who fired a warning shot in her home to keep her abusive husband away from her. Based on the current gun laws of Florida, if you fire a gun with the intent to harm a person, you automatically get 20 years in prison. So right now, Marissa Alexander is currently serving a 20 year sentence in prison without the possibility of parole.

So in the literal sense of the law it did its job right? Now take into account the fact that she is a registered gun holder, practices shooting regularly and has had the gun for years. Do you really think at point blank range if she wanted to shoot her husband, she couldn’t? Let’s also take into account the fact that at the time of the incident, he was abusing her that day and she feared for her life, this the reason that she went for her weapon. Now could she have just left out battered and beaten, yeah probably. Maybe she just wanted to prove a point that she did not fear him anymore and that the abuse was no longer going to take place, who knows? As to why she grabbed the weapon, that’s a question only she can answer. I’m actually curious about a point I brought up before about her fearing for her life.

Now according to Florida law, if you fear for your life, the Stand Your Ground law allows you to use excessive force to protect yourself. Basically you can kill a person if you feel like the person is trying to kill you. Now in Trayvon Martin’s case, a man by the name of George Zimmerman was acquitted in the court of law because the jury felt as though the Stand Your Ground law was in affect. A grown man profiled a young man in his area, followed him for no reason, created an altercation with the young man and got into a fight with the young man and amidst the scuffle the young man got shot. Now I don’t care if you believe that the Stand Your Ground law applies in that situation, you are entitled to your opinion. But my thing is if it applied to that situation, why wouldn’t it apply to the Marissa Alexander situation?

Now she was given the chance for a plea bargain, which would have given her only a 3 year prison sentence, but she denied it and chose to court. She went to court with the notion that the Stand Your Ground law would apply to her and the jury felt it didn’t. But how doesn’t it apply, when it applied to the previous stated situation? She didn’t follow him when told not to, he was already in her home. She went for her weapon after she was getting abused, the same way Zimmerman went for his weapon when he was losing a fight with Trayvon Martin. Shoot, Zimmerman was losing a fight to a teenager that he was bigger than, Alexander was getting abused by a male bigger than her.

Points are that these are not one and the same. 2 different situations, 2 different outcomes. Yet it feels like the outcomes are mixed up in my opinion. It has been a couple of months since these events have occurred, but I write this blog to remind people that let’s not forget what we are fighting for then and what we should still be fighting for now. Injustice is happening all over the world and let’s not go back to sleep because we felt like we have done enough. So what we had a March on Washington?! What good does that do if tomorrow we go back to being under the same blindfolds we are currently under? Trayvon is gone, Zimmerman is still on the streets with the right to carry a weapon and Alexander is still in prison without the option of parole. This shows me that more work needs to be done and we need to clock in and get started. Until next blog, be safe, be positive and always be real.