2月末，一名叫特雷万马丁的少年在佛罗里达州被枪杀。一个月后，这场枪击案已经迅速发酵，演变成一场意料之中的政治闹剧。巴拉克奥巴马已经对此事表明态度，而共和党人也希望藉由此事在11月的大选中将奥巴马从总统宝座上拉下来。 一名言辞犀利的右翼电台主持鲁什林堡加入论战。另一名同样易激动且思想上与林堡相反的人权领袖阿尔?夏普顿也加入战团。夏普顿称除非正义得到伸张，他将"占领"枪击案发生地点三福城。

　　An online petition calling for the arrest of the gunman, George Zimmerman, who is 28, has attracted over 2m signatures. The New Black Panther Party, a confrontational protest group, has offered $10,000 in exchange for a “citizen’s arrest” of Mr Zimmerman. LeBron James, a basketball star, wrote “RIP Trayvon Martin” on his shoe before a game on March 23rd. He and other members of his team, the Miami Heat, also posed in hooded sweatshirts like the one Mr Martin was wearing when Mr Zimmerman decided to follow him, convinced he was “up to no good”.

　　一场呼吁逮捕28岁的枪手齐默曼的网上请愿活动已经征集了超过200万份签名。一个激进抗议组织新黑豹党愿意提供1万美元悬赏，奖给逮捕齐默曼的人。篮球明星勒布朗詹姆斯在3月23日的比赛前，在自己的鞋子上写上“愿特雷万马丁安息”的字样。他和迈阿密热火队的队友穿着帽衫拍了合影。那身穿着恰恰马丁当晚的穿着，就在那天晚上，齐默曼认为他"行为不轨"，决定跟踪。

　　The shooting took place in the gated community where Mr Zimmerman lives. He had recently started a neighbourhood-watch scheme and he frequently called the police to report everything from potholes to people he

　　thought might be involved in a spate of burglaries. When he spotted Mr Martin while out driving on a rainy evening, he called the police from his car. The operator told him there was no need to follow Mr Martin, but Mr Zimmerman did so anyway. From that point, details are scant: the two men somehow got into a fight, during which Mr Zimmerman says his nose was broken, before he shot the unarmed 17-year-old. Mr Martin, it turns out, had been walking back to the house of his father’s girlfriend in the gated community, having bought some sweets and iced tea at a nearby corner store.

　　枪击案发生在齐默曼所居住的封闭式小区。齐默曼最近刚刚加入邻里守望计划，他时常向警方报告附近发生的一切事情，报告内容从路面的新出的大坑一直到他认为可能参与盗窃案的嫌疑人。当他在雨夜驾车外出时发现了马丁，并在自己的车里报了警。警方接线员告诉他没有必要追踪马丁，但齐默曼不听劝告。从那时开始，后面发生具体情节语焉不详。两人不知何故打了起来，打斗中，齐默曼的鼻子被打折，然后他向这名手无寸铁的17岁少年开了枪。后来才知道，马丁刚刚从街角商店买完甜食和冰茶后，正赶回位于该小区的父亲的女友家里。

　　The local police did not arrest Mr Zimmerman, saying they had no evidence to dispute his claim that he had acted in self-defence. That decision prompted a cascade of protest, from other branches of government as well as the public. Sanford’s city council passed a motion of no confidence in the city’s chief of police, who is now suspended. The Justice Department announced it would conduct an investigation into the killing. Local prosecutors said they would convene a grand jury to consider the incident on April 10th.

　　齐默曼称自己的行为是正当防卫，当地警方认为并没有证据能够推翻这一点，于是没有逮捕齐默曼。这一决定引发了一连串的抗议活动，有的抗议来自公众，有的来自政府其他分支机构。三福市议会通过了对该市警察局长的不信任案，警察局长现已停职。司法部宣布将对此次枪击案展开调查。当地检察官们表示将要在4月10日召开大陪审团会议讨论此事。

　　Florida is one of 20-odd states to have adopted a “stand your ground” law, which exempts those with reason to believe their lives are in jeopardy from any legal obligation to attempt to retreat before resorting to deadly force. Many have speculated that the police thought that the existence of the law would impede Mr Zimmerman’s prosecution. Findings of justifiable homicide have tripled since the law took force in 2005. But Mr Zimmerman’s lawyer says he does not intend to invoke the law if his client is arrested, while one of the law’s authors says it would not apply in this case, anyway, as Mr Zimmerman seems to have gone out of his way to confront Mr Martin.

　　佛罗里达州是采用“无限防卫权”法律的20多个州的一员。这项法律规定若行为人有理由认为自己的生命面对威胁，可以在诉诸致命暴力前免除首先尝试逃跑的法律义务。很多人推测警方可能认为这项法律是阻碍起诉齐默曼的绊脚石。自2005年，这项法律生效以来，正当杀人的案件增长了两倍。但是齐默曼的律师表示如果他的当事人被捕，自己并不打算援引这项法律。同时这项法律的一名起草人表示不管怎样，这项法律并不适合这一案件。因为齐默曼本可以避免遇到马丁。

　　Others have focused on the role of race in the killing. The National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People, for instance, has complained that the authorities neglected the case because Mr Martin was black. Many assume that Mr Zimmerman, whose father is white and whose mother is Hispanic, decided that Mr Martin looked suspicious simply because of the colour of his skin. Mr Obama seemed to allude to such a view when he said, “If I had a son, he would look like Trayvon.”

　　而其他人把注意力放在本案的种族因素上。例如，全国有色人种进步联合会对此案颇有微词，认为当局之所以忽视此案是因为马丁是名黑人。很多人假设，齐默曼之所以认为马丁形迹可疑理由仅仅是马丁的肤色，而齐默曼的父亲是名白人，母亲是拉丁裔。奥巴马似乎暗示自己赞同这种假设，因为他说，“如果我有个儿子，他长得会跟特雷万一样”。

　　Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich, two of the four remaining Republican presidential candidates, saw that as an opening, as did Mr Limbaugh. They declared themselves appalled that the president would view the

　　shooting through the lens of race. From the left, Mr Obama has been criticised for not speaking loudly enough about the racial aspect of the killing. No incident is too tragic, it seems, for political point-scoring.

　　在四名尚未退出共和党初选的总统候选人中，只有里克桑托勒姆和纽特金里奇这两位跟林堡一样，将此事看做一个契机。他们都发表声明称总统竟然从种族的视角看待此案，令人震惊。而从左派的角度出发，奥巴马因未能充分强调这场枪击案的种族因素而备受指责。看来，对政治较量来看，任何事件都可利用，因而都不能算是悲剧。