The Consequences of Bearing Arms

An armed and white-skinned adult vigilante shoots Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black youth, to death in the dark of night. Not until nationwide protests does the justice system bring charges against the shooter. Zimmerman is eventually acquitted of murder charges. The jury — which did not include any African American members — determined that the shooting was done in self-defense.

What a Scandalous Verdict!

Really? There were no eyewitnesses to the shooting and therefore the court — as well as the jury — had no option but to believe the testimony of the shooter himself. His version of events couldn’t be disputed. We must concede that in this tragic case, we’re relying on natural reflexes that may not pass every test. Starting with the jury: Why do we instinctively mistrust the jury because there were no African American jury members? Why should their decision be wrong if an armed white adult male shoots an unarmed black youth and isn’t arraigned immediately?

There are reasons for doubt. First and foremost, the entire history of the American justice system is replete with racially motivated wrongful convictions, with wrongful acquittals of guilty whites and wrongful convictions of innocent blacks, because the vast majority of death penalties are handed down to blacks, and because the search for mitigating circumstances — something statistically demonstrable — is less likely to be accorded to a black suspect than to a white one. But these generalities still do not entitle us to sit in judgment.

The Deadly Consequences of the Right to Keep and Bear Arms

But the deed itself has elements that we can judge. They again shine the spotlight on the deadly consequences of an armed citizenry, such as exists in the U.S.A., with the backing of a powerful gun lobby. It shows the fatal outcomes possible whenever a nation abandons its duty to protect its own citizens and decides to share that obligation with volunteer “policemen.” We have volunteer police helpers here in Germany as well, but the difference is that in the United States they’re legally allowed to carry and use firearms. That shows the weakness of a federal system of government where some states have gun laws that are straight out of the Wild West. That leads to absurdities such as some states forbidding the drinking of beer in public but not the open brandishing of guns.

Of course, gun ownership doesn’t make one a murderer, but the relatively easy access to firearms in America makes violence all the more unpredictable and the results more deadly. Naturally, the social structure — that is to say poverty, lack of opportunity, marginalization, and unemployment — plays an important role as well. The gun lobby points eagerly to the low murder rate in heavily armed Switzerland as confirmation that gun ownership and crime don’t necessarily go hand in hand. But those people need to understand the difference between vacationing on the shores of Lake Geneva and walking through a neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side.

There were 506 people murdered in Chicago during 2012 and the majority of the victims were black. The chief of police there enjoyed a significant reduction in the murder rate this spring because there were “only” 40 killings—among them a 15-year-old girl who just prior to her death had participated in a celebration of Obama’s inauguration. Hadiya Pendleton was shot in the back by an 18-year-old who mistook her for a member of a rival gang. In March, six-month-old Jonylah Watkins died when a killer shot her father twice but also hit little Jonylah with five bullets. Chicago police confiscated 3,100 guns in the first 10 weeks of the current year, making the police chief optimistic that the number of murder victims in Chicago would stay below 500 in 2013.

The Social Divide and lax Gun Laws

Chicago is an example of the fact that lax gun laws are not problematic unless they are combined with poor social conditions. Thirty three percent of Chicago residents classify themselves as African Americans but they comprise 78 percent of homicide victims. It goes without saying that the South Side of Chicago in no way resembles Switzerland.

So what does that have to do with George Zimmerman and his victim, Trayvon Martin? It’s apparent that social divisions in combination with lax gun laws result in terrible criminality. It’s apparent that an armed citizenry is also no solution to these social and legal problems. So the bottom line is that the United States has to recognize that its chosen historical path of arming its citizens should be abandoned.

We can’t think of anything to add to the jury’s decision in the Zimmerman case. Perhaps it was a scandalous verdict. Then again, perhaps it wasn’t.