Quote:Bidding in an online auction for the pistol that George Zimmerman used to kill Trayvon Martin appears to have been hijacked by fake accounts posting astronomically high bids. At one point early on Friday, the bidding surpassed $65m with the leading bidder using the screen name “Racist McShootFace”. The site later showed that account had been deleted. The website for United Gun Group began hosting the auction on Thursday after another website, GunBroker.com, took down the auction saying it wanted “no part in the listing on our website or in any of the publicity it is receiving”. Hours later, United Gun Group tweeted that it would post Zimmerman’s ad. The new link was posted, along with a statement from Zimmerman. The site calls itself a “social market place for the firearms community”. Bidding on the 9mm Kel-Tec PF-9 pistol began at $5,000. Critics called the auction an insensitive move to profit from the killing. Zimmerman had told Orlando TV station WOFL that the pistol was returned to him by the US justice department, which took it after he was acquitted in 2013 of the second-degree murder of Trayvon. Zimmerman’s listing said a portion of the proceeds would go toward fighting what he calls violence by the Black Lives Matter movement against law enforcement officers, combating anti-gun rhetoric of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and ending the career of state attorney Angela Corey, who led Zimmerman’s prosecution.

Quote:Less than 30 years ago, the country was gripped by a startlingly similar story, when Bernhard Goetz, known in the media as "the subway vigilante", walked onto a New York City train with a concealed weapon, and ended up shooting four black teenagers at point blank range. For those who don't remember, Goetz was a mid-30s, white, electronics store employee, with oversized glasses, who, in 1984, decided he would fear no longer, choosing instead to take the law into his own hands.

After being denied a firearm permit in New York, he purchased a .38 caliber Smith & Wesson on a trip to Florida and illegally brought it back into the city. On the night of the shooting, Goetz, by his own admission, did not sit on the side of the subway car where professionals were gathered for their commute, but instead, on the far side, where the four teenagers were being generally loud and unruly. Like Zimmerman, Goetz was emboldened by his weapon, and, like Zimmerman, Goetz justified his actions by claiming self-defense.

In his depositions, he claimed he felt threatened when the boys approached and one allegedly said, "give me five dollars." His response? "Oh I'll give you five dollars," immediately unloading five bullets even as the boys tried to flee. One of the victims, my former client, remains paralyzed and sustains brain injuries to this day. Yet, Goetz's justification worked, as he was cleared on all attempted murder charges. In total, he would serve just eight months in prison for the only charge to stick: possession of an illegal firearm.