There’s a reason why some people
fantasized about living in Pandora. Although I’m really not at all a fan of
James Cameron’s Avatar, I can see why people would find it appealing: threats
are clear and present, the planet (actually a moon) is pristine and habitable
and you don’t get shot at if you’re a young person walking through a
neighborhood.
Although it’s fairly clear we’re
just getting started with the Trayvon Martin case (even if it has finished for
now), the facts remain: a man, with a gun, for some reason, shot and killed a
17 year old and was found innocent of all charges brought forth to him.
You see, you can tell me all you
want that it was self defense, or that he felt threatened, or that there’s some
justification… that’s all fine and dandy and bless you for trying to defend a
lost cause, but a kid is dead… not a man, not a big black man who looks
threatening, but a kid on the cusp of becoming a man, was shot and killed by
some guy with a gun… In the last year we’ve been exposed to tragedies in so
many states that I’m not going to bother listing them off by name, I’m just
going to say that in recent memory, if you went to see the Dark Knight Rises,
if you were a six year old child going to class or if you were walking to get a
snack, you could have died because of a gun.
I am not a fan of guns… I really
hate guns… even more than I hate hard drugs (no, POT is not a hard drug). They
only serve to kill or mimic the act of killing. Sure, they may protect and
serve, they may be tools of peace, but it is always at the prospect and
potential for causing and inflicting death.
I may not be black, but I am a
minority and the fact that if I go surfing, get a tan, leave my beard on and
look Arab means someone might shoot me because they might feel threatened by me
definitely means that I’d rather live in Pandora than the state of Florida.
Martin Luther King Jr. had a
dream of equality, of peace, of taking down color barriers… that’s one hell of
a dream. I’m much simpler, I dream of a world without guns as a start. When we
manage that miracle, maybe we’ll see if we can finally come to the 21st
century and at least find a man guilty of manslaughter for responding to fear
with a gun.
