ORLANDO, Fla. — George Zimmerman’s second attempt at selling the 9mm pistol used to kill Trayvon Martin doesn’t seem to be going as planned.
It appears internet trolls have taken over the auction and raised the bidding to more than $65 million.
Zimmerman first listed the Kel-Tec PF-9 pistol for sale Wednesday night on GunBroker.com.
After an overwhelming amount of attention, GunBroker.com pulled the post just minutes before the auction was set to start at 11 a.m. on Thursday.
Hours later, though, Zimmerman confirmed to the Orlando Sentinel that he started a new auction on UnitedGunGroup.com.
The post looked almost exactly the same with a starting bid of $5,000 and references to the gun being a piece of “American history.”
The company quickly released a statement saying as “long as Mr. Zimmerman (or any other UGG member) is obeying the letter of the law, his person firearm sale will be permitted on our network.”
But soon after word got out, the website crashed and was down most of Thursday evening.
It was back up Friday morning with more than 1,000 bids, made by just 10 people. One person made seven bids in a row and less than a minute apart, each time outbidding himself and upping the price a total of more than $25,000.
As of about 5:30 a.m., the highest bid of $65 million came from a since-deleted user.
Thursday evening, United Gun Group posted a statement to Twitter saying they were terminating Zimmerman’s post because they didn’t feel it was “in the best interest of the organization to continue to host this sale on our platform.”
The tweet was deleted shortly after it posted. It was unclear Friday if United Gun Group plans to take down Zimmerman’s auction.
In the auction listing, which includes photos of the gun from his second-degree murder trial in 2013, Zimmerman says the gun was recently returned to him from the U.S. Department of Justice. He says it’s fully functional and “currently has the case number written on it in silver permanent marker.”
The former Neighborhood Watch volunteer was acquitted of shooting and killing Martin, an unarmed black 17-year-old, during a struggle in 2012. Zimmerman said he was defending himself when he shot the teen.
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