Michael Matthew Bloomer, November 19, 2013
Yesterday afternoon, the George Zimmerman 2013 Wild West Tour made a stop in Apopka, Florida to the usual fanfare that led to an invitation to relax in investigative detention. The allegation was domestic violence visited upon his girlfriend, Samantha Schiebe, who maintains he threatened with a shotgun, and then pushed her summarily out the front door of her own residence. The now customary 911 calls were made, by Schiebe to seek assistance, by Zimmerman to use the 911 call center for publicity and pre-emptive legal purposes. He was also charged with criminal mischief, destruction of property for allegedly breaking a glass-topped table and sunglasses with the butt of his shotgun. [Complete coverage here]
Zim denied everything, and blamed Schiebe for the fracas, telling a 911 dispatcher, "I have a girlfriend, who for lack of a better word, has gone crazy on me," apparently assuming that we all would know what that is like.
Sometimes a single answer is not enough. Is George Zimmerman among the unluckier men alive, having been wrongfully accused of serious felonies a few times or so since 2005? On the other hand, is he instead a cagey sociopath who knows how to game a system where, as in Florida, gun laws inspire violence permission more than violence prevention? Or is he simply off his nut? Florida made the answer more difficult with guns being deployed and often used with the same serenity as a fly swatter, and most often free of those old-fashioned legal hassles. Zim has a really bad relationship with flies.
In any event, the Zim ought to take his show on the road. So apparently immune from prosecution is he and so numerous is the gun-toting, gun-loving, and antisocial corner of the gun-owning public that surely a market exists for showcasing his talents big time. Giddyap!
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Michael Matthew Bloomer spent the 24 years between Reagan and Bush II on Capitol Hill as a legislative research and policy wanker at the nonpartisan
Congressional Research Service, an agency in the belly of Congress's across-the-street library, the aptly named
Library of Congress. Now retired, I'm freed from CRS nonpartisanship, and "came out" as an aggressive progressive and am a contributing writer for
Nation of Change.