'Racist McShootface' Bids $65 Million In Auction For George Zimmerman's Gun
MIAMI (CBSNewYork/AP) — Bidding in an online auction for the pistol former neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman used to kill Trayvon Martin had gone well into the millions of dollars by Friday morning, though it was unclear if they were serious bids.
The website for United Gun Group began hosting the auction Thursday after another website, GunBroker.com, took down the auction. The new link was then posted, along with a statement from Zimmerman. The site calls itself a "social market place for the firearms community."
Bidding on the 9 mm Kel-Tec PF-9 pistol began at $5,000. By Friday morning, the site showed bidding had surpassed $36 million with the leading bidder using the screen name "Racist McShootface."
The bidder was eventually suspended from the site after driving the auction price up to around $65 million dollars, Gawker reported.
Zimmerman's listing said a portion of the proceeds would go toward fighting what Zimmerman calls violence by the Black Lives Matter movement against law enforcement officers, combatting anti-gun rhetoric of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and ending the career of state attorney Angela Corey, who led Zimmerman's prosecution.
The listing ended with a Latin phrase that translates as "if you want peace, prepare for war."
Zimmerman, now 32, has said he was defending himself when he killed Martin, 17, in a gated community near Orlando. Martin, who lived in Miami with his mother, was visiting his father at the time.
Zimmerman, who identifies as Hispanic, was acquitted in Martin's February 2012 shooting death. The case sparked protests and a national debate about race relations. The Justice Department later decided not to prosecute Zimmerman on civil rights charges
Lucy McBath, the mother of another black teenager shot by a white man during an argument at a Jacksonville convenience store in 2012, said the auction reflected a "deplorable lack of value for human life."
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