Demonstrators gathered in Union Square on March 21 to protest Trayvon Martin’s shooting death in Sanford, Fla. creative commons photo

Mayor Michael Bloomberg, back from a tour of Asia, was asked at a recent press conference for his thoughts on the killing of Trayvon Martin on Feb. 26, a story that enveloped the national news over the past week.

The killing of the unarmed teen has become a flashpoint for gun control advocates and critics of racial profiling across the country, following the Justice Department’s decision to investigate the teen’s death, which some observers said may have been legal under a Florida law that allows a bystander in threat of imminent danger to use deadly force. The man who shot Martin, George Zimmerman, has not been arrested.

“Your heart just has to go out to the parents,” Bloomberg said at the press conference in Brooklyn. “I guess you pray for the deceased, but this really struck a nerve with a lot of people across the country. I think what you see here and we should be perfectly clear about this: The gun lobby is writing our nation’s gun laws.”

“It’s a disgrace,” Bloomberg added. “They write them in Washington, they write them in state capitals. And the result is that our children are being killed, our police officers are being killed, you and I and our families are in danger, in greater danger than we should be.”

On Wednesday, Brooklyn Councilman Jumaane Williams, an outspoken critic of the city’s stop-and-frisk policy, joined demonstrators in Union Square wearing hoodies like the one Martin was wearing when he died. Williams said racial stereotyping is to blame for Martin’s killing.

“It’s Trayvon Martin in Florida. It’s Ramarley Graham in the Bronx. The darker your skin, the more you look like a criminal,” he said at the rally, Gothamist reported.

But Bloomberg stuck to the topic of gun control and did not bring up New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly’s stop-and-frisk policy, which Williams and other detractors argue disproportionately targets young men of color.

“I mean this is just the craziest thing, only in America,” Bloomberg said. “We have more guns than people, and the rest of the world is looking at us incredulously, that we’re letting people kill our citizens.”

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Unlike Goetz, who was hailed as both a folk hero and demonized a reckless vigilante, Zimmerman has mostly been vilified by the public and media. Zimmerman’s defense team has an uphill battle to win the sympathy of a jury and get an acquittal.

Bernhard Goetz lived in Ed Koch’sNew York City, which was a far cry from theGothamof today. A crime ridden metropolis with sky rocketing crime rates,New York Citywas ranked as one of the most dangerous in the world. The subway itself was an icon of lawlessness and the inability of city law enforcement to protect its citizens. This setting made it easy for the jury to believe that Goetz needed an illegal handgun to feel safer. Sanford FL., where Martin met his end, is nearly the exact opposite.Floridais famous as a destination for retirees, a place where they would spend the remainder of their days in relative comfort and safety. Crime is localized and offenses are normally drug related or white collar. Zimmerman’s neighborhood however, of which he was the watch captain, suffered eight burglaries, nine thefts, and one shooting in the year before the entire country knew who Trayvon Martin was.

According to Goetz’s prosecutors, Goetz entered the subway with a handgun as an attempt to use force. While on trial in 1986, Goetz testified that the four teens whom he had shot had given each other a signal before approaching him for money. Under self defense laws, the defendants have to prove that they are a reasonable person experiencing reasonable fear.

In 1981, three years before gunfire erupted on a No. 2 train, Bernhard Goetz was mugged by three black youths. The police caught one of the thieves, but he was shortly released from custody. Goetz often complained that he spent more time in the police station that night than the perpetrator. Flash forward to 2012, Zimmerman is speaking to 911 operators and on record saying “these *** holes always get away.”

“A jury acquitted [Goetz] because they believed that a reasonable person in that situation would be fearful of those black youth,” said Jody David Armour, a law professor as theUniversityofSouth Carolinain a televised interview. Zimmerman might have indeed been fearful, and reported that Martin “got his hand in his waist-band.”

But fear affects people in different ways. While both men committed crimes and went to court, Goetz’s actions can be considered germane and, although morally shaky, could also be seen as somewhat heroic by giving people hope that criminals wouldn’t always runAmerica’s cities. Zimmerman, on the other hand, merely looks like a shaky, paranoid, neighborhood watch captain.

As in Goetz’s case, the defense team will likely push the appearance of Trayvon as a motivating cause for self defense in proving that Zimmerman was a reasonable person who feared black youths.  “[The defense teem will say] Look at the person who was approaching me, look at the hood over his head. Where have you seen hoods like that before? [You have seen them] in grainy films where people are holding up stores and the like,” continued Armour in the interview.

If Zimmerman wins this case, it could set a dangerous precedent where ordinary people should feel reasonable if they fear a black teenager.