This is likely to be a story that gets people’s blood boiling. Apparently, George Zimmerman, the man who killed unarmed black teen Trayvon Martin in 2012, attempted to auction off the gun he used to kill Martin. The gun has now been removed from the auction website, according to CNN.
Zimmerman was acquitted of second-degree murder and manslaughter in his 2013 trail, a jury decision that had much of the public up in arms. The 2012 shooting opened a dialogue about race and gun control in the United States, and helped spark the Black Lives Matter movement.
The gun was listed on the site gunbroker.com with a description presumably written by Zimmerman himself. It read, “This is a piece of American History,” according to NBC News. The bidding was set to begin at $5,000.
The page said that part of the profits would go towards, “fight(ing) BLM (Black Lives Matter) violence against Law Enforcement officers” as well as “ensure(ing) the demise of … Hillary Clinton’s anti-firearm rhetoric.”
Regardless of your position on the trial, it certainly seems like selling a gun that was used to kill someone is, at the very least, bad form. Zimmerman may have realized that and taken the gun off the auction site. When CNN tried to reach him, he picked up the phone but said he wasn’t speaking to the media and hung up.