OPINION:
Attorney General Eric Holder has confiscated George Zimmerman’s gun. Even though Mr. Zimmerman was acquitted by a jury in the death of Trayvon Martin, the Justice Department on Thursday ordered the Sanford police to put a hold on the evidence from the trial, which includes the Kel Tek 9mm handgun.
It is not clear what federal law or legal procedure allows Mr. Holder to stop a police chief in Florida from returning a firearm to an innocent man.
The federal government has the power to infringe on Second Amendment rights only when a person falls into the categories of prohibited people, which includes felons, dangerously mentally ill and domestic abusers.
There is no reasonable cause for the Justice Department to hold the evidence, since it has already been examined, given a DNA test and used in trial. What more can the federal government find out from holding Mr. Zimmerman’s gun?
And the investigation that Mr. Holder is pursuing — whether this was a racially-based civil rights case — has nothing to do with the weapon used.
The attorney general’s insistence on finding some link to race is also unrelated to facts. The FBI, prosecutor, police and jury have all said that race played no role in the events of the night that Mr. Martin was killed.
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Mr. Zimmerman’s attorney, Mark O’Mara, told ABC News that his client wears a protective vest in public and needs a gun to defend himself in aftermath of the controversial trial.
Asked about Mr. Zimmerman getting a weapon, the lawyer said, that there is “more reason now, isn’t there? There are a lot of people out there who actually hate him, though they shouldn’t.”
There is nothing stopping Mr. Zimmerman from passing a FBI background check to buy a new firearm — and perhaps he has done so already.
But Mr. Holder’s stunt is a violation of Mr. Zimmerman’s Fourth Amendment right to be free of unreasonable seizures as well as his Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.
In his transparent effort to fan the flames of racial divide, Mr. Holder is stomping all over the Constitution.
The chief law enforcement officer in the nation should stop pursuing the Obama administration’s political agenda at the expense of an innocent man who was forced to take a life in self defense.
SEE ALSO: Zimmerman’s handgun held by police on Justice Department orders
Mr. Holder, return Mr. Zimmerman’s gun to him immediately.
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