Trayvon Martin Gun Control Laws Attacking Stand Your Ground In South Carolina

So-called Trayvon Martin gun control laws are still being supported by family lawyer Benjamin Crump, who has been traveling the nation campaigning against the expansion of Stand Your Ground laws in various states. At the same time, Trayvon’s parents, Sybrina Fulton and Tracy martin, have been active in helping with the Trayvon Martin Foundation.

In a related report by The Inquisitr, a Trayvon Martin monument was created by an artist who is attempting to say that social changes have not yet advanced far enough since the Civil War. George Zimmerman’s lawsuit against NBC claims the company’s employees purposefully edited audio recordings to make Zimmerman sound like he was purposefully racially profiling Trayvon.

Now the family and the lawyer have long been using the tragedy of Trayvon’s death as a way to gain support for further gun control laws throughout the United States. This past fall the NAACP listed what they would like to see in a list of Trayvon Martin gun control laws:

• Ending racial profiling;
• Repealing stand your ground type laws;
• Creating law enforcement accountability through effective police oversight;
• Improving training and best practices for community watch groups; and
• Mandating law enforcement data collection on homicide cases involving people of color.

This has created much controversy because, while they are specifically targeting the Stand Your Ground laws, George Zimmerman’s trial invoked standard self defense laws without needing to resort to using Stand Your Ground. Regardless, Tracy Martin has called his son a civil rights icon while attacking Stand Your Ground in public speeches. Even Mr. Crump, who should know better based upon being a lawyer, has also regularly attacking Stand Your Ground:

“When you think about these verdicts, when you kill an unarmed black child, you don’t go to jail. But when you shoot and you miss — attempted murder on the other occupants on the car — you get held accountable. Marissa Alexander, a black female in Jacksonville, Florida, she shot a warning shot on the ceiling. She says ‘Stand Your Ground,’ and she was convicted for 20 years. What message are we sending someone? Don’t miss? Is that what the ‘Stand Your Ground’ law means? Don’t miss? If you miss, you get off. If you kill a young black man, you go home. That’s just troubling.”

Recently, Mr. Crump took his message to South Carolina and Georgia in order to gain support from lawyers in the National Bar Association. Crump claims minorities need better representation and opposes the Protection of Persons and Property section of the South Carolina Code of Laws, which “allows a person to meet force with force including deadly force if that person is attacked in a public place and feels it necessary to use such force to prevent death or great bodily injury.” Crump has been working with the Trayvon Martin Foundation to win support for gun control laws:

“We just can’t kill everybody and say that it’s legal. At what point does it stop. … The problem is, we’ve got to do something about encouraging people to settle differences with guns. Until we started making a strong push, he was not even going to have to answer to killing this unarmed child. We’re making a push to get a more visible presence in the community, to get minorities in the profession.”

The Trayvon Martin Foundation just recently set up its permanent headquarters in the historically black Florida Memorial University in Miami Gardens. In addition to politicial efforts, the Foundation provides services to help at-risk black males and works with parents who have lost children to violence, including the mother of Tupac Shakur. The university hosted a ceremony where Trayvon’s parents gave speeches where they said the Foundation was not just for African Americans.

What do you think about the so-called Trayvon Martin gun control laws?