Time to buy a gun

Another lynching in Florida, this time with a gun

Trayvon Martin's biggest mistake, other than being a young, black man wearing a hoodie, was that he was unarmed. That is, he had no assault weapon.

At 17, he was too young to buy a gun.

I'm sure, in light of this not-guilty verdict, the NRA will work hard to ensure anyone of any age can buy a gun. Uh, not really.

If Martin had been packing a Glock and managed to kill George Zimmerman before Martin himself could be shot, Martin would have been convicted because he was a young, black man wearing a hoodie, who was too young to own a gun.

The "stand your ground" laws across the country, including Oregon, allow for a gun-toting Americans to kill someone if he feels threatened. Zimmerman's lawyer's prudently decided to use the far less exacting standard of "self defense."

Nevermind that Martin was the one being threatened in the Florida case. He didn't have a gun, so he couldn't defend himself very well against someone who was armed and dangerous.

According to justice in Florida, any black man can now kill Zimmerman because he is obviously a threat to any black man.

The point is that we all must have guns. We must all be willing to kill someone if we feel threatened.

It's the American way.

Unfortunately, the ridiculous amount of media (read that TV) coverage of the Zimmerman trial meant that far more important stories were left uncovered.

Namely, why is it that young black men are far more likely to be unemployed than young white men.

Or, why are corporations sitting on more than one trillion dollars rather than investing in American workers, be they black or white?

Or, why are we obsessed with a terrible crime story rather than what really ails this country?

The reason is that it's easy to report on a story with ready-made images and racial conflict at its core.

It's far more difficult to report on stories that can really change this country. It's hard to investigate the powers that be and their destructive effect on the vast majority of Americans.

As we've seen with the Martin-Zimmerman case, TV is incapable of informing Americans about current events so that they're enlightened about what's going on.

Freedom.