What The Heck Does The NBA Have To Do With Gun Violence, Except With Their Own Players. Will This Backfire, We Sure Do Hope So!

NBA Joins With Michael Bloomberg Group to Oppose Gun Violence

Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg (Wire Services Photo) 

By Todd Beamon   |   Wednesday, 23 Dec 2015 08:41 PM

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The National Basketball Association has joined with former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's anti-gun group in a partnership negotiated by the filmmaker Spike Lee to push for an end to gun violence.

"We know far too many people who have been caught up in gun violence in this country," Kathleen Behrens, the NBA's president of social responsibility and player programs, told The New York Times. "And we can do something about it."

The 30-second spots, to run during high-profile NBA games on Christmas Day, are being paid for by Bloomberg's group, Everytown for Gun Safety. They will feature league players focusing on shooting victims, while containing no policy recommendations.

The words "gun control" are never mentioned in the ads, the Times reports.

For instance, Stephen Curry of the Golden State Warriors describes hearing of a 3-year-old's shooting: "My daughter Riley's that age," he said in one of the ads.

In another spot, Chris Paul of the Los Angeles Clippers recalls the advice he learned as a child: "My parents used to say, 'A bullet doesn't have a name on it.'"

Bloomberg's established his group last year to counter the National Rifle Association and to push for expanded gun background checks, as well as for stronger penalties for gun trafficking and for bans on gun sales to individuals convicted of domestic abuse, the Times reports.

The NRA has strongly attacked the Bloomberg group for its vigorous assault on the Second Amendment.

The arrangement comes during a year of heavy gun violence and mass shootings throughout the nation, including in Chicago — where 487 lives have been lost to gun violence so far this year.

Lee's latest film, "Chi-Raq," directly addresses gun violence and is set in the city's South Side. He is a member of Everytown's creative council.

"Because of the NRA, politicians and the gun manufacturers, we're dying under that tyranny," Lee told the Times in explaining why he brokered the deal between the NBA and Bloomberg's group.

He said that the time had come for "common sense anti-gun laws."

President Barack Obama praised the effort Wednesday on Twitter:

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Roseanne Barr Tweets Trayvon Hate

Roseanne Barr is the second of the Hollyweird numb skulls to tweet about Trayvon Martin. She said: "the smearing of Trayvon Martin reminds me of Krystallnacht-aftr attacking Jewish businesses, Hitler charged the victims, not the attackers"

To use Nazi era references on a yet-to-be-determined case, is despicable.  It does not add anything to the case, minimizes the losses Jewish people lost on Kristallnacht and afterward, and adds fuel to an already  smoldering fire.  Jews lost millions on that one night, it was not an isolated event and it was a government orchestrated pogrom, for lack of a better word.  The Martin-Zimmerman case is completely different.  Shame on Ms. Barr for equating the two.

There seems to be a knee jerk reaction to use Nazi references anytime there is something distasteful. A month does not seem to pass when another person uses these words.  Nazis represented the worst mankind has seen. The desire was to wipe out the Jewish people from the face of the earth. Six million Jews were killed and millions of others were exterminated by this regime.  To say that one person killing another is equal to this terror, is to show the speaker's stupidity, insensitivity, and complete lack of understanding of what being a Jew in 1940 Europe meant.

Each time these references are made to historically insignificant events such as the murder of Trayvon, it makes the Holocaust less significant and less of a lesson for mankind to remember. For if one murder is equal to 12 million, how bad could have the latter been?

Hollywood Stars (Barr) and producers (Spike Lee) should do what they do best, produce movies.  They should leave the political commentary to those who are better schooled in that subject.

Conservative Tom

American Justice--Mob Style

If you want to be disgusted, view the twitter account @killzimmerman and what you will find is a sickening display of humanity pretending to be rational. The tweeters want the same justice given black men in the old South before the Civil Rights Movement. Unless and until someone in moral authority (who must be on the left as they will disregard anyone from the conservative viewpoint) speaks against this rush to mob-rule judgement, this situation is only going to get worse.


Spike Lee, Reverend Sharpton, Jesse Jackson and the other race baiters who would not wait for the body to be buried  before they were demanding that Zimmerman be arrested (or killed as in the twitter account) even though the states attorney had ruled there was not enough evidence for a conviction.


Additionally, the media and the Zimmerman-haters are using the angelic photo of Trayvon Martin. We find out he was far from a good kid as he had multiple suspensions from school,  was over 6 foot and had gold capped teeth and lots of tattoos. Now none of this proves that he was victim or instigator. However, it is interesting that the use of the youthful picture in the media and by those who want "justice" for him, is far different from reality. Is there a reason? We think so.


We also wonder why Zimmerman is being called a  "white hispanic!"  A what?  We never have seen this race category on any form we have ever completed. The Census used hispanic, non-white, black, Asian or Caucasion but never white hispanic.  It has been reported that Mr. Zimmerman is part white and part hispanic, so is that where they are coming up with this category?  So if an Asian marries a hispanic are we now to call them Asian-hispanic? Can you imagine the confusion that will result when a child is the product of multiple racial marriages?  We could see Asian-black-Hispanic-Haitian-white! Or will the public only hear white?


Lastly, their son is not even buried and the parents copyright slogans that can be used on t-shirts.  Why are they so fast to jump on the gravy train?


None of this adds up and it feels unreal. Is this situation being manipulated by someone or some group, for some reason. Obviously, we do not know what that reason is, however, we assume that by November it will be abundantly clear.

Spike Lee Makes A Big Mistake--Tweets Wrong Address in Martin Case

Should Spike Lee get charged with endangering the lives of innocent people due to the fact that he tweeted what turns out to be an incorrect address of the murderer of Trayvon Martin? We believe so. If they are harmed in any way, it could turn into a felony.  This is no different than hollering "fire" in a theater. With the tinderbox tension that this case has caused there are significant chances that someone will act on this wrong address and do these people harm. Spike should have foreseen that he was throwing gasoline on an already smoldering fire.

 A message should be sent that your freedom to tweet, email or talk, ends when someone acts on the incorrect information you sent out into the world and does damage to an innocent party. Spike should have double or triple checked that the address was of the "murderer" of Trayvon. He did not and therefore he is responsible.

 Conservative Tom

Elderly Couple In Fear Over Spike Lee Tweet

Star erroneously linked Floridians to man who killed Trayvon Martin

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Marcus Higgins Tweets

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MARCH 27--With Twitter and Facebook continuing to explode with posts purporting to contain the address of George Zimmerman, property records and interviews reveal that the home is actually the longtime residence of a married Florida couple, both in their 70s, who have no connection to the man who killed Trayvon Martin and are now living in fear due to erroneous reports about their connection to the shooter.

The mass dissemination of the address on Edgewater Circle in Sanford--the Florida city where Martin was shot to death last month--took flight last Friday when director Spike Lee retweeted a tweet containing Zimmerman’s purported address to his 240,000 followers.

The original tweet was sent to Lee (and numerous other celebrities like Will Smith, 50 Cent, and LeBron James) last Friday afternoon by Marcus Davonne Higgins, a 33-year-old Los Angeles man who uses the online handle “maccapone.” Higgins included the direction, “EVERYBODY REPOST THIS.”

Higgins, pictured at right, first began disseminating the Sanford address to his Twitter followers last Wednesday, including the claim that Zimmerman “Like the fat punk he is, he still lives at home with mommie & daddy.” In asimultaneous post to his Facebook wall, Higgins told his 4000 friends, “FEEL FREE TO REACH OUT & TOUCH HIM.” He also claimed in another post that, “REAL TALK MY PEOPLE OUT THERE IN FLORIDA JUST TOLD ME GEORGE ZIMMERMAN IS NOT AT HIS HOUSE THEY OUT THERE RIGHT NOW.”

Higgins’s dissemination of Zimmerman’s purported Edgewater Circle address was not, however, limited to cyberspace. At a protest rally last Thursday in an L.A. park near his Crenshaw home, Higgins held a sign containing Zimmerman’s name, address, and phone number.

Except, of course, none were accurate.

The man who shot Martin is George Michael Zimmerman. Higgins has repeatedly identified him as “George W. Zimmerman.”

The residence on Edgewater Circle is actually the home of David McClain, 72, and his wife Elaine, 70. The McClains, both of whom work for the Seminole County school system, have lived in the 1310-square-foot lakefront home for about a decade, records show.

In an interview tonight, Elaine McClain told TSG that she and her husband were “afraid” due to the online linking of her address to Zimmerman. “We're keeping everything locked,” she said. McClain added that the couple was particularly unnerved by a letter mailed to them at their home. On the envelope, she said, were printed the words “Taste The Rainbow,” the slogan for Skittles. Martin was carrying a pack of Skittles and a can of ice tea when he was gunned down by Zimmerman.

McClain said her husband returned the envelope unopened to the post office.

The McClains (pictured below) only became aware that their address was being widely circulated online two days ago, when a TV reporter arrived at their home asking for “George.” Bewildered by their sudden--and erroneous--connection to Martin’s killer, the elderly couple’s distress can only be heightened by posts made by Twitter and Facebook users who threaten to visit their residence in search of Zimmerman. Or other posts that goad followers to vigilante action.

Higgins has not responded to numerous TSG messages, so it is unknown where he came up with the information tying Zimmerman to the McClains's home. A check of Zimmerman’s residential history shows no connection to the Edgewater Circle property, which is about four miles from his actual home in Sanford.

So how did Higgins screw things up?

Besides overlooking the different middle initial, perhaps that answer is connected to an old voter record for a “William George Zimmerman” at the Edgewater Circle property. That registration, which dates back to 1995, is for a 41-year-old man. The Zimmerman who shot Martin is 28.

Elaine McClain identified William George Zimmerman as her son, noting that he has not lived at the Edgewater Circle residence for seven years. “He is six-foot-five and thin as a rail,” McClain said of her son, who now lives elsewhere in Seminole County. McClain said she was previously married to a man named Zimmerman, but that he was not related in any fashion to the Zimmerman who shot Martin.

When told that Twitter posts containing her address continued to pour in this evening, an exasperated Elaine McClain remarked, “Maybe we should get a lawyer and send a cease and desist letter to Spike Lee.” (6 pages)