"The simple fact is, we are not safe. Not in our homes, not anywhere ? People now cannot walk on their streets without fear ?"
Interestingly, these are not the words of those around the nation protesting the verdict in the trial of George Zimmerman who was found not guilty of murdering Florida teen Trayvon Martin.
Instead, this fearful warning came from Jeb Bush during his gubernatorial campaign in the early 1990s. Once in office, Bush made good, pushing through two laws that now stand at the heart of the Zimmerman controversy.
The first, "stand your ground," extends the Castle Doctrine of no duty to retreat beyond the home and into public space. The second, which has received less media attention, is the 10-20-Life mandatory minimum for gun crimes. The implementation of these two cornerstone Bush-era statutes has not only left Floridians less safe but also demonstrates disturbing racial disparities.
The 1999 10-20-Life law set mandatory-minimum sentences for any convicted felon who carried, displayed or used a gun during the course of a crime. Designed to serve as sentence enhancements, not even a judge's discretion can lessen the sentence.
In cases of simple possession, those convicted receive a mandatory-minimum sentence of three years; those who use a gun receive 10 years; those who fire a gun receive 20 years; and if a victim was injured or killed by a gun during a crime, 25 years to life in prison. By receiving a not-guilty verdict, Zimmerman also escaped the mandatory-minimum requirement.
This surprised few familiar with the criminal-justice system in Florida, however. The Florida Department of Corrections found in a study from 1999-2007 that blacks made up the largest percentage, 64 percent, convicted under the law. Whites, by contrast, accounted for only 33 percent of the convictions.
The second cornerstone law was "stand your ground." Although the Zimmerman defense team elected not to pursue a "stand your ground" hearing, the law did play a pivotal role as the instructions read to the jury clearly stipulated that Zimmerman had "no duty to retreat."
We should place Trayvon's shooting within the statistical context that homicide rates are higher in "stand your ground" states. Texas A&M researchers found the rates of murder and non-negligent manslaughter increased by 8 percent in more than 20 "stand your ground" states ? which has meant 600 more homicides annually.
Following Florida's passage of "stand your ground" in 2005, "justifiable" homicides tripled from an average of 12 a year from 2000-2004 to an average of 35 a year from 2005-10.
Moreover, in a nationwide study of "justified" homicides from 2005-10, John Roman of the Urban Institute's Justice Policy Center found that where the victim and shooter are strangers and not law enforcement, fewer than 3 percent of black-on-white homicides were deemed justified. When the shooter is white, however, and the victim is black, the rate leaps to 36 percent in "stand your ground" states.
As the historian Yohuru Williams, of Fairfield University, has observed, today's rates of racially disproportionate, "justified" homicides are falsely clothed in the language of legal color blindness, when instead they should serve as a sobering historical reminder that many in the Jim Crow generation also considered the lynching of African-Americans as "justified."
The story of Jacksonville resident Marissa Alexander casts more doubt on the "color-blind" nature of these gun laws. In 2010, Alexander fired a warning shot in the air after she claimed her husband threatened her. In 2012, however, a judge rejected her plea to be immune from prosecution under "stand your ground."
Instead, Alexander received a 20-year sentence under the mandatory minimum. Her story and Trayvon's killing are sobering reminders that the "we" Bush spoke of during his political campaigns was far from inclusive. The fate of two shooters, one white Hispanic and one black, illustrate the problematic nature of such laws in a state where gun violence is "justified" self-protection for whites, and yet imbued with a deep fear of armed blacks.
As long as these Bush-era gun laws continue to criminalize and endanger the lives of black people, these cases should remind the nation that African-Americans in Florida and in other "stand your ground" states are "not safe, not in our homes, not anywhere."
Robert Chase is an assistant professor in the Department of History at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, N.Y.
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