"I'm waiting for the NRA to say 'if Trayvon Martin had a gun, he would still be alive today.'" - Tavis Smiley
"[None of] this isn't to say the American community is naive about the fact that African-American young men are disproportionately involved in the criminal justice system. It's not to make excuses for that fact, although black folks do interpret the reasons for that in a historical context, [one] born out of a very violent past in this country. And the poverty, and the dysfunction, can be traced to a very difficult history. The fact that that's sometimes unacknowledged adds to the frustration. The fact that a lot of African American boys are painted with a broad brush…and these statistics out there [about violence]…[and people] using that as an excuse to see sons treated differently causes pain." - Barack Obama