On the night of February 26, 2012, a 17 year old teenage boy was shot by a neighborhood watch coordinator. Four years later, and a majority of Americans remember both of their names, Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman. While one of them got to live on, unharmed and un-acquitted, the other was dead, buried, but not forgotten.
Americans have a history of loving their guns and the second amendment. In 2015 there were 372 mass shootings in America. 475 people were killed, and 1,870 were wounded, according to the Mass Shooting Tracker. 17 percent of these shootings were school shootings. That is 64 school shootings in one year.
This history of Americans obsessing with their second amendment right to bear arms does not only extend to last year, it extends back in time, to the past, present and future. Most recently, with the auctioning off of the gun, a Kel-Tec Pf-9 pistol, that killed Martin, with a bidding that began at $100,000.
Zimmerman, the shooter of the firearm, says about the gun that, "this is a piece of American History." His reason for this statement? "It has been featured in several publications and in current University text books."
The funds acquired from this auction are not going to any "worthy causes" as Zimmerman claims, but rather will be used in an attempt to "ensure the demise of Angela Correy's persecution career." Correy was the prosecutor who initially investigated the Martin case.
This was not Zimmerman's first attempt at selling the pistol at an auction, he had several other attempts either that were taken down by the host site that had not authorized the auction or shut down due to fake bids that amounted to more than 6 million dollars.
The question that this whole event has brought up in a lot of cases, is how long have Americans been so obsessed with their guns? Is it just America? Other countries have been questioning this very thing for a long time now, but it seems now Americans are questioning themselves with Zimmerman's recent actions.
Even on popular TV shows like "Glee", the show creator, Ryan Murphy wrote an entire episode around a school shooting, trying to show the danger and absurdity that it even needs to be talked about.
These are only three of the most prominent examples of how people are reacting to American's obsession with guns. Zimmerman is one of the many Americans heavily invested in defending the second amendment, but more than money, this auction has created a stir of conversation that is not likely to end in the coming weeks.
