They’ve placed a hold on evidence from the state trial while they figure out whether there’s any federal charge they can bring to appease the left — something the DOJ’s had nearly a year and a half to decide.

Riddle me this: What’s the evidentiary value of the gun at this point? The feds aren’t charging him with murder. They might charge him either with a “hate crime” or some sort of civil-rights violation, but neither of those charges depends on ballistics. Zimmerman admits that he shot and killed Martin so they’ve got all the proof they need of the underlying act. The federal trial, if there is one, will revolve around his intent. What does the gun have to do with it?

George Zimmerman, who was acquitted of murder by a Florida court last week, will not immediately get back the gun he used to shoot unarmed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, because the U.S. Justice Department requested a hold on evidence from his trial, a law enforcement official said on Thursday.

The hold is standard procedure and does not reveal whether the Justice Department plans to pursue a new prosecution of Zimmerman, 29, said the official, who would speak only on condition of anonymity…

Expectations that Zimmerman would get his 9mm pistol back helped to fuel anger among those Americans who thought had profiled Martin and should be punished for the teenager’s death last year. Zimmerman’s lawyers said he acted in self-defense during neighborhood watch duty when Martin attacked him.

It’s standard procedure to place a hold on evidence but it’s not standard procedure for that hold to generate news stories across multiple agencies. Was the DOJ responding to reporters’ inquiries in revealing this or did they announce it on their own initiative, as a complement to their new Zimmerman tip line, to reassure the left that they remain verrrry suspicious of Zimmerman no matter what a jury and their own federal police force say about his motives? Look at it this way: It’s not like he really needs a gun right now, right?

Via Breitbart, here’s Jesse Jackson playing racial-grievance mad libs on Tapper’s show yesterday, comparing Florida to an “apartheid state” because … I don’t know why. Per one analysis, Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law actually benefits black defendants disproportionately. “Apartheid” is being tossed out here, I think, just to fill in the blank of “Florida justice is worse than ______.” (I wrote “the Holocaust” on my own mad libs sheet.) As a rejoinder, read this Heather MacDonald piece at the Corner on the comparative frequency of intraracial versus interracial violence; if Jackson’s desperate to make an apartheid argument, you’d think he’d zero in on Chicago, where whites are relatively safe and blacks are under siege. Read this new Gallup poll too, which doesn’t speak to violence but rather to perceptions of social discrimination more broadly in hiring and housing. Twenty years ago, blacks were nearly evenly split on whether racial disparities in those areas were due to racism or “something else.” Today, the split is 37/60. Among young black adults, it’s 30/68. Doesn’t matter what the numbers say, though, or how steadily race relations are improving, “progress” requires that there be zero progress so that it retains its motive force. That’s how you get “apartheid” mad libs here.