I'm not offended gnu- I really want to know people's thought processes in a society that is so like my own, yet in some ways so different. We certainly have racism in the UK, and would-be vigilantes too (if you follow UK stuff, you might have heard of the English Defence League). But most people don't have guns. There have been some high profile cases over the years- a farmer shot and killed a burglar, and was jailed for murder, more recently a shopkeeper stabbed a robber and was not proceeded against. But this latter was after investigation, during which he was held in custody. In another similar case a burglar was stabbed with a breadknife after a gang broke into an occupied house. Similarly, the householder was arrested while investigations took place.

The shock of the Florida case to me is that the sole grounds for suspicion seems to have been that the young man was black.