Trayvon Martin’s Killer Has a Financial Grievance
George Zimmerman’s lawsuit is part of a much broader pattern: Gun-rights advocates have recast perpetrators of violence as the real victims.
In the latest turn in a long, ugly saga, George Zimmerman, the volunteer neighborhood watchman who was acquitted of second-degree murder after shooting Trayvon Martin in Florida in 2012, in which he presents himself as the victim of injustice and seeks recompense for his losses. The killing of Trayvon, who was 17, led to a national outpouring of anger—over Florida’s “stand your ground” law, which offers legal protections to those who use lethal force instead of retreating from confrontations, and over a broader pattern in which African Americans die at the hands of shooters who claim to have feared for
