USA Today reported that the birthday of 'Stand your Ground' law victim Trayvon Martin has been marked with a similar case. On Wednesday, Michael Dunn has been charged with first-degree murder for shooting minor Jordan Davis due to a November 2012 dispute over loud music. Martin sustained gunshot wounds when neighbor George Zimmerman shot him two years ago, claiming that the then 17 year-victim was an intruder. Martin would have been 19 today, said USA Today.
The news outlet said the Davis case is another reminder about the potential flaws in the self-defense law of the state of Florida, of which both Zimmerman and Dunn had used to justify their shootings of the unarmed minors.
Davis could be a much-needed catalyst for advocates who are lobbying for the amendments to the self-defense law. Among the advocates is Martin's mother, Sybrina Fulton. She said, "We need to do something about this law when our kids cannot feel safe in their own community."
According to USA Today, Dunn cited self-defense as his reasons why he fired into an SUV which contained Davis and three other minors in Jacksonville. One could not help seeing a parallelism in both cases in terms of the race of both victims and the accused, aside from the use of the self-defense argument to justify the shooting and the cause of the death of the victims. Zimmerman and Dunn are both white, while Martin and Davis are both black.
Zimmerman, who was found not guilty in his shooting of Martin, seemed to have enjoyed his celebrity status. A Wednesday announcement revealed his plans to box rapper DMX in March on Celebrity Boxing. Celebrity Boxing Damon Feldman said his company made the boxing match happened as around 15,000 inquiries were received by the company to see Zimmerman lose.
Twitter was tense when news broke about Zimmerman's upcoming boxing match, with some saying that the match was mocking the death of an innocent underaged boy.
Petitions to the White House and Change.org were created to stop the proposed celebrity match.
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