While Florida certainly has plenty of room to improve on issues of equality, the truth is that "equality" is a constantly moving target. Racial equality is probably a list-topper, but it is not alone. We need to do better on plenty of other issues of equality - gender, economic, and education come quickly to mind.

What we don't need is manufactured inequality. And that seems to be what's happening in Tallahassee, as Al Sharpton leads a march over the issue of the state's stand your ground law.

Whether or not you agree with it, it is a law. And by the simple nature of deadly force being a key component of it, it is and will continue to be controversial.

But the march in Tallahassee is misleading in its message, and likely its intent. The family of Trayvon Martin is center stage there and we certainly feel for their loss.

But neither Trayvon Martin's nor Jordan Davis' deaths were caused by stand your ground. They were caused by a couple of idiots with or without racial prejudices.

The stand your ground defense wasn't used in either high-profile case. Both were tried on simple self-defense. Agree with the verdict or not, but the outcome had nothing to do with the stand your ground law.

The Tampa Bay Times did a study two years ago of 200 stand your ground cases. The numbers are a little dated, but interesting. And it's unlikely the trends noted have changed much in the interim. But, in a nutshell, the study found that:

� People who killed a black person walked free 73 percent of the time and those who killed a white person went free 59 percent of the time.

� Whites who invoked the stand your ground law were charged at the same rate as blacks.

� Whites who went to trial were convicted at the same rates as blacks.

� In mixed-race cases involving fatalities, the outcomes were similar. Four of the five blacks who killed a white went free. Five of the six whites who killed a black went free.

� Overall, black defendants went free 66 percent of the time in fatal cases compared to 61 percent for white defendants.

Of note here is that the researchers believed that the number of walks were higher for blacks because they were more likely to kill another black person.

And they cautioned against drawing hard conclusions from the data because the cases were complicated and had some overlap.

But what the study does seem to show is that stand your ground benefits defendants a majority of the time and it matters little, if any, what color the shooter or the victim was.

Society may not yet be colorblind, but stand your ground seems to be.

It should not be a rallying point for racial grandstanding.