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Within 24 hours of Seminole County, Fla., Judge Kenneth Lester issuing a stern order allowing George Zimmerman, the defendant in the Trayvon Martin murder case, to post a $1 million bond, the volunteer neighborhood watchman received over $25,000 in donations, bringing his defense war chest to nearly a quarter of a million dollars.

Mark O’Mara, Mr. Zimmerman’s attorney, suggested on Friday that many Americans have given because they feel “this case is an affront to their constitutional rights,” namely the 2nd Amendment right to bear arms."

To be sure, many commentators say the case has mainly to do with Zimmerman violating Martin’s equal protection rights by profiling him and then illegally depriving the boy of his basic constitutional right of life.

But judging by the speed and size of donations to the defense fund, it’s clear the case continues to provoke a separate debate about America’s shifting stance on gun rights and the constitutional case for self-defense.

“People … are definitely thinking and talking about it,” Terrence Mayfield, 61, a Florida gun permit holder, told the New York Times a few weeks before the latest bond hearing. “This whole thing rests on who threw the first punch. Either the gun saved Zimmerman’s life or we had a cowboy, someone who thought because he had a gun things could escalate.”

To Trayvon supporters, the fact that a half-white, half-Hispanic man went free after profiling Trayvon, an innocent black boy, as a criminal, chasing after him, and then shooting the unarmed boy reeked of racial inequality and even institutional racism. Others say Martin is the only one who had a legitimate self-defense claim as he lashed out against a combative stranger following him on a dark street.

While even Judge Lester this week called Zimmerman manipulative, evidence shows he did pass a non-admissible “stress test” that suggested he was telling the truth when he said he feared for his life.

While self-defense isn’t expressly written into the Constitution, legal scholars have long argued that the constitutional precept of “liberty” implicitly means “the right of self-defense against unlawful violence,” according to Thomas Cooley, a 19th century constitutional scholar.

But 40 US states, meanwhile, include in their constitutions both the right to bear arms and to use them in self-defense – concepts that states like Florida and 23 others have built on in recent years with so-called “castle doctrine” and “stand your ground” laws that expressly state that lawful citizens have “no duty to retreat” in the face of an attack, even in public.

Zimmerman’s main defense will likely be to seek immunity under the state’s stand your ground law.

Critics point to a recent study suggesting that such laws have significantly increased the rate of gun-related killings in states that have adopted them, as the number of what the FBI calls “justified killings” has risen in concord. That study, by Texas A&M researchers, moreover suggests that the laws have not had a significant deterrent effect on criminals.

Yet as concerns about Constitutional gun rights swirl around Zimmerman’s defense, the case itself may have sparked more than debate, and may have inspired more Americans to actually use guns to protect themselves and their property, suggests University of Georgia emeritus law professor Ron Carlson.

“The existence of this sort of statute places an atmosphere or climate over various forms of human combat,” he said. “It helps to create a mindset that is conducive to resistance when one is placed in a conflict situation.”

Such readings of America’s fundamental laws, especially as spurred on by the Trayvon Martin case, trouble some commentators, including Walter Rodgers, a former Monitor columnist, who wrote recently that “Mexico, Colombia, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Gaza and the West are awash in guns. Their societies are not ones that Americans should emulate.”

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