Black teens commit a lot of crime. The reflex assumption is that a Neighborhood Watch guy won't go out of his way to look for trouble - after all, any given perp can find out very easily where he lives, given that he's a neighborhood guy, and wait around to bushwhack him.
I'm not a neighborhood watch guy, but I would go out of my way. There comes a certain time when you just refuse to take it anymore. When I moved in to my neighborhood 12 years ago, vandalism was rampant... kids driving through lawns, over shrubbery... destroying anything they could.
After repairing my lawn 1/2 dozen times and replacing broken windows, etc.. I had absorbed all I was going to, the police didn't consider it important enough so...
I went on the offensive. I waited in my car... for hours on end until one of the little bastards would come through tearing up all hell. I chased them down, one by one over a period of months. I had a faster car and conviction, they never got away from me. And like Zimmerman, I always carry. Not for scaring stupid teenagers, but who knows what you will encounter even on a normal day.
After chasing them down one by one... and building more than a few snowmen near the road laced with concrete blocks, they came to the realization that the a-hole on the corner was just a little bit more crazy than they were and the BS stopped.
I guess the point is, I could have easily ended up in the same position as Zimmerman as would just about anyone here... I don't think anyone reading this would consider what I did as outrageous, and would most likely do the same. It's hard to blame Zimmerman for having the stones and the conviction to try to make his neighborhood a better place and that is the very thing the frenzy is trying to use against him. In their opinion, he should have just looked the other way and left the area. By not doing so, they want him hung for doing what he considered right and his duty as a resident in the neighborhood.