DN Editorial: Half-cocked

THE JURY followed the law in the George Zimmerman trial, so the defendant is now free to pick up his gun and invisible badge and start following more kids around the neighborhood on dark and rainy nights.

The Trayvon Martin case, and Saturday's verdict, sticks in the craw of many Americans - many for reasons of race.

(In fact, Attorney General Eric Holder may be pursuing separate federal civil-rights charges.)

Zimmerman still hasn't provided a reasonable explanation for why he regarded Martin as a threat. Defense witnesses testified that Zimmerman sometimes helped black people. So, yes, when he wasn't shooting unarmed black teens, it seems he was a pretty good guy.

It's useful to remember that Zimmerman wouldn't have been in a position to kill anybody, for any reason, had he not been running around with a loaded gun - a gun with no safety, and a round already in the chamber, which should tell you something about his state of mind and his competence as a self-appointed town watchman.

Yes, the Second Amendment guarantees the right to bear arms. But the Second Amendment isn't the only amendment. And a gun is not a magic wand that, when brandished, deprives other people of their rights. Martin, minding his own business in front of his father's house, had a right to life and liberty, and gun-slingin' Zimmerman took those things from Martin.

During the trial, Zimmerman sat dumbly and watched as his attorneys further savaged Martin by attacking the dead young man's character. Often ludicrously. Martin, we learned, smoked dope.

Which made us wonder: If everyone in America exchanged his gun for an ounce of marijuana, would we be a more dangerous country, or a less dangerous country?

Zimmerman's loaded, ready-to-fire gun didn't make him safer. It emboldened him, fed his law-enforcement fantasies, led him to pursue a blameless boy even after police dispatchers told him not to.

And allowed him to kill the only other witness to the incident. And so a message is sent:

You can arm yourself, follow whom you please, kill them if things get out of hand, and, so long as there are no witnesses, you can provide your own self-exonerating version of events.

There's a folksy admonition in America that's been around as long as guns: Don't go off half-cocked. Yet, that's what Zimmerman did, running into the night after a teenager, his safetyless 9 mm fully loaded and ready to fire.

The words of the dispatcher linger: "Are you following him? We don't need you to do that."

Zimmerman did anyway, and when things didn't go his way, when life exposed the gap between his Steven Seagal fantasies and reality, when he realized that he was a "soft" fat little busybody on the wrong end of a beat-down, he pulled a gun.

The law says he's not guilty. The law stinks.

Because everybody knows, or should know, that getting your ass kicked in a confrontation that you initiate is not a good enough reason for killing someone.