The acquittal of George Zimmerman for killing Trayvon Martin in Sanford, Fla., has aroused strong emotions across the country.

Whether or not you think the shooting was justified or the trial produced a fair result, the events themselves raise important questions that can affect any community in America.

Zimmerman was a neighborhood watch volunteer, assisting the police by patrolling an area on the lookout for potential lawbreakers. He was not a police officer.

In many communities, neighborhood watches provide extra eyes to the police, intended to enhance their ability to anticipate crime or capture criminals quickly. A watch may consist of a reliable person keeping an eye out the window for unusual events.

Neighborhood watch volunteers are not subject to discipline or control by the police, any more than any other person under the law.

Zimmerman was not looking out the window. He was engaged in street patrol, much like a police officer. Like a sworn officer, he was legally armed with a handgun.

But, as a volunteer and unlike a law enforcement officer, he was not bound by formal rules governing policing. In fact, he was not authorized to enforce the law at all.

He had not undergone training in law enforcement and the use of firearms in carrying it out.

His role raises the question whether armed volunteers, not strictly subject to official control, should be used to patrol the streets.

If they are, the line between police and volunteers may be blurred. The possible lack of clarity about the role of the volunteer may endanger the public.

In the Martin-Zimmerman case, the shooting was not considered part of police work, but an act of self-defense. While Florida’s “Stand Your Ground” law was not used in the decision, it is relevant. People there who are threatened or attacked are encouraged to fight back rather than flee.

Zimmerman was under some form of attack by Martin, after he had decided to follow the young man. The jury decided he had killed Martin in self-defense, although Martin himself may have thought he was acting in self-defense.

When two people engage in a fight, and only one of them survives, his or her version of events, claiming self-defense against the dead person, has a distinct advantage.

As the old saying goes, “It’s the winners who write history.”

That’s a defect of a system that puts a premium on fighting an attack rather than avoiding a fight, especially when only one person has a firearm.

So a “Stand Your Ground” philosophy may promote violence and the use of firearms by allowing pride in not running away from a fight to prevail over the survival of both parties.

And such a final outcome not only leaves to the survivor the monopoly of facts about an unwitnessed event, but it neatly resolves doubt and eliminates the need to consider the situation leading up to the confrontation.

The jury could not consider Zimmerman’s having followed Martin against police direction, because it could not know what exactly happened before the physical confrontation. In the current Florida view of acceptable self-defense, such testimony might have been irrelevant.

Then, there is the question of race. Did Zimmerman, a Hispanic, follow Martin and initiate the situation because Martin was an African-American?

Zimmerman said nothing that explicitly established a racist motive. Jurors and the general public had no way of knowing what he was thinking.

But polls report that most blacks and many whites believe that his following Martin and reporting him as being suspicious were racially motivated.

No matter what Zimmerman was thinking, no matter what drove his actions, his confrontation with Martin was thought to be racially motivated by many of his fellow citizens.

Racism may become an issue not only if the shooter was driven by it, but also if the larger community can find reasonable grounds to believe that race was involved and may react based on that belief.

In police training, officers can be taught about being sensitive to how the community sees their actions and the care they need to take. Their intentions, however honorable, may only be part of the determination if an incident will be seen as racially motivated.

In this light of these considerations, the Zimmerman-Martin case raises some still-unanswered questions.

Should we use untrained, armed volunteers to patrol the streets or leave that task to professionals?

Does “Stand Your Ground” promote unnecessary violence?

When it comes to matters that may involve race, should we care as much about how things appear as we do about intent?

GORDON L. WEIL, of Harpswell, is an author, publisher, consultant and former public official.