Michael Dunn has been convicted on three counts of attempted second-degree murder. The conviction follows an altercation in which he fired into a car following an argument over loud music with the occupants. While the trial didn’t generate the same media coverage as the Zimmerman case, it’s still national news. It’s also still a problem for us.
There are three parallels to the Zimmerman case. The first is race. We don’t know that it was a factor in Dunn’s decision to open fire, but it’s going to come up anyway.
The second is the media focus on Florida’s “stand your ground” law, despite the fact that it’s not relevant. Neither Dunn or Zimmerman ever requested a pretrial hearing in accordance with the law. Both men allowed their legal counsel to run the case in front of a jury. Nonetheless, there’s a groundswell of activism to repeal those laws, and Shannon Watts (now funded by Michael Bloomberg) is taking point on the initiative. Continued...