The primary argument of the folks who support the Zimmerman verdict is that Zimmerman had no choice; he had a gun but he was apparently confronted by Trayvon Martin, battered, and acted in self- defense. I am not arguing here. I just want to tell the story (although I did tell it before).
My dad who died recently as a distinguished scientist (some people called him a genius) was a troubled and unstable teenager in 1946 when his family returned from the Siberian evacuation to their native city in western Russia which had been liberated in 1943 from the two years of German occupation. My dad started attending the all-boys school (they had those at the times). Food was scarce and the kids at school received rolls of bread from the government. Some kids did not eat their rolls but tried to take those home because they had younger siblings who were hungry too. But the school was surrounded by gangs of homeless kids, teenagers mostly, who received nothing and practically starved. Those gangs regularly mugged the younger schoolboys and tool the rolls.
The older boys at school were the children of the war- tough, cruel, difficult and very handy. They decided to confront the gangs and on one day a huge fight broke out between the parties. It involved hundreds of teenagers, many armed, (firearms were not used but knives and pipes were common) and lasted for many hours. The teachers and local militia (the police equivalent) could not take control. The city authorities addressed the military commandant and he dispatched a regular regiment with an order to RESTORE ORDER BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY.
The soldiers of the regiment were coming home. They had just survived the most deadly war of all and many of them were wounded before. They were returning back to the country destroyed, to hunger and famine and to the news that most of their families had perished. We cannot even talk PTSD here; it was black rage which possessed them and that rage was fully justified. They were fully armed and had heavy weapons.
If those soldiers had used a deadly force, my dad could be killed. I then would not be born. My son would not be born.
My dad, when he told me that story, mused that maybe those soldiers behaved that way because for them those kids were their children- all of them. They did not come back alive to shoot at their own kids.
This is to those who consider the usage of the deadly force against our own kids. Some people say I am a child of a miracle. I don't think so.
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