Rather than addressing the crucial issue of reducing its own monstrous size before it crushes our society, the federal government held a hearing Tuesday as part of an attack on Stand Your Ground laws — an explicitly state matter. Fortunately Ted Cruz (R-TX) was at hand to lay utter waste to the liberal control freaks who have theatrically played the race card in their attempt to exploit the Trayvon Martin shooting as a means to undermine states’ rights and our individual right of self-defense.
Cruz began by offering his condolences for [Trayvon Martin’s mother Sybrina] Fulton’s loss, but quickly moved on to defend the trial by jury process that found Zimmerman not guilty of murder. He also noted, correctly, that the “subject of this hearing, the Stand Your Ground laws, was not a defense that Mr. Zimmerman raised. So this entire hearing—the topic of this hearing—is not the issue on which that trial turned.” …
“We know that some in our political process have a desire to exploit that tragic, violent incident for agendas that have nothing to do with that young man who lost his life,” Cruz continued. “We have seen efforts to undermine the verdict of the jury and, more broadly, to inflame racial tensions that I think are sad and irresponsible.”
A politician has to put it nicely.
Then, Cruz got to one of his primary points, which concerned that effect of Stand Your Ground laws on African-American communities. He rejected the notion, put forward earlier in the hearing that “no one could reasonably believe that Stand Your Ground laws protect those in the African-American communities who are victims of violent crimes.” He found that idea particularly remarkable since “a great many African-Americans find themselves victims of violent crime and have asserted this defense to defend themselves, defend their families, defend their children.”
Cruz also cited the fact that “in 2004 a state senator in Illinois by the name of Barack Obama co-sponsored an expansion of Illinois’ law providing civil immunity for those who use justifiable force to defend themselves” as evidence that similar laws could not possibly be racially biased.