Travon Martin is your child and mine. His death is not about race or religion or suspicion of criminal activity. It is America, depicted to the world as a nation trapped in its Wild West mentality, where every man is the sheriff, gun at the ready, to protect the freedom of our land - from each other.
I took a trip to Target yesterday to buy a new toaster oven. My morning bread was suddenly a warm brown on one side and Wonder white on the other, so I figured it was time. I didn't pack a weapon or hollow point bullets to protect myself from the other families buying food or a new toaster of their own. I was not accosted in the parking lot and made it to the store and home without having to kill a child or any other citizen who looked the least bit shady. My belief in the Constitution of the United States remained intact, despite the fact that it was not necessary to exercise my Second Amendment rights.
The world has gone completely insane when the watchman becomes the hunter.
I have two sons who have luckily grown to manhood without having to see the barrel of a gun pointed in their direction. This is not to say that seventeen was a time where they exercised great prudence; where their decision making was flawless or even intelligent. Seventeen is the time for stupidity. The time when you think you can put up your dukes and fight out a problem or a stalker. Where you walk in the rain to get a bag of Skittles. It's the time when curse words color your thoughts, where you think you are immortal, where you fight the boogeyman and get him before he gets you.
It is not the time to die in the dark; in the rain. At the hands of a stranger.
Watching the George Zimmerman trial, as the mother of sons, I gave thanks to God every day that it wasn't my children in the dark Florida night. Not because I live in a better neighborhood, or because my children are white. I gave thanks for the coincidence that my children never fought with someone armed. I have no doubts that, like all boys of a certain age, there were times when my children had a little too much testosterone and not enough good sense. But through the grace of God, they never met a man who vowed to protect and care for his neighbors as long as they weren't walking slowly through the raindrops.
I gave thanks for those who spoke to them, without the use of violence, when they were someplace where they shouldn't have been. Have we become so disconnected, so fearful of each other, that George Zimmerman could not have identified himself? Couldn't he have said: "Son, do you live in this neighborhood?" Might he have informed Travon that he was indeed the neighborhood watch ? In its most simple form, the touch of a button to lower a car window, to speak as one human being to another, and Travon Martin is home with his mom, or visiting his father or talking to Rachel Jentel on his cell phone.
We think we have achieved justice because we conducted a trial. We applaud ourselves for the process of having our peers decide whether taking a life with a semi-automatic weapon was justified. The pundits discuss the rules of law and as always those seeking to further divide us make it an issue of race.
Something at my own core wants to shout: "It's the guns stupid!" "It's all about the guns."
