Quote of the Day

By now, you've likely read the story about how George Zimmerman was arrested and charged with aggravated assault with a weapon, battery and criminal mischief.  He allegedly pointed a shotgun at his girlfriend, and then pushed her out of the apartment they were sharing and locked the door.

"It's kind of frightening," said a neighbor, Sarah Tyler. 

Yes, it is.  She's right.  It's kind of frightening.

Imagine how frightened Trayvon Martin was.

And he didn't have a luxury of just getting pushed outside and having a door locked behind him.  Or just having a gun merely pointed at him and it not actually going off.

And yet, as Sarah Tyler rightly noted, simply having a shotgun pointed at you, "It's kind of frightening."

Of course, not only is George Zimmerman's girlfriend really lucky that he didn't pull the trigger, George Zimmerman is a lucky guy, too.  He's lucky that his girlfriend didn't have a gun and feel threatened enough to stand her ground and shoot him. 

George Zimmerman is lucky in another way, too.  He's lucky that the events happened in this order.  Because if he'd been arrested for assault with a weapon before stalking Trayvon Martin and killing him, it seems reasonable to think that jurors might not have been all that forgiving to him being so willfully reckless with a gun a second time.

On the other hand, you could also say that George Zimmerman is unlucky with the order of things in a different way.  Because if this arrest had happened before, then it seem probable that the Neighborhood Watch would never have allowed him with his arrest for assault with a weapon to carry a weapon while on patrol.  And he never would have shot Trayvon Martin and been been arrested for murder, though he was found guilty.

Of course, all that makes Trayvon Martin the unluckiest one of all.  But then we already knew that.