My guess is Zimmerman is a giant pussy and never would have followed Martin if he didn't have a gun. It works both ways. Obviously none of that is relevant because he did have a gun and whatever the reason he shot and killed Martin. It doesn't mean he is guilty of a crime because the law in Florida appears to have protected him in this instance but because of the vagueness of that law he at the very least was able to get away with manslaughter.
no, that isn't vagueness in the law, it is an extension of existing assault and battery laws; your position has no legal or logical merit. Assault can be as simple as telling someone "fuck you asshole!" Battery is any physical altercation. but just because I assault you, it doesn't mean you can respond, legally, by battery, if I am not also showing you that I am actively intent on following through with a perceived threat. if I say Fuck you and don't make any motion to hit you, and you hit me, you are the instigator of the battery. if you don't have the emotional stability not to escalate an assault into a battery, that is your problem and your guilt of the act. same thing in this case. following Trayvon was not an assault or battery, and Trayvon had no right to respond by attacking him, as you admit is possible. Trayvon escalated the situation into a battery, and had no legal justification to do so, making him 100% at fault for the incident. he did not have the emotional maturity to walk away, and he paid with his life because of his own decision.
Can you say railroad.... then the prosecutor asks to have, and the judge agrees...to strike from the record said detective saying he found Zimmermans statement credible.
This case was over-charged. If the prosecution was trying Zimmerman for Manslaughter they get a conviction. I don't think the jury is going to convict at this point on anything that requires any kind of intent or forethought about the consequences. Given the nature of the evidence the notion that Zimmerman could have concluded that his actions would lead to the death of Trayvon Martin is really hard to prove and that's reasonable doubt.
And therein lies the problem, Zimmerman was able to instigate an altercaction that led to a young boy being shot dead in cold blood because Zimmerman was too big of a pussy to fight back with his fists. If you're willing to follow the kid you should be able to protect yourself without deadly force. He put himself in danger because he followed Martin without any valid reason. While that might not be illegal he brought on whatever ensued because he followed Martin.
Instead of reporting (or finding) the address number at which he spotted Martin, Zimmerman continued his pursuit by looking for an address number in the direction in which he saw Martin go. He clearly did not remain a safe distance away from the man in question. While the law has increasingly favored Zimmerman as the details of the trail have emerged, Zimmerman has proven himself to be incompetent and an atrocious role model (per se) for gun owners. Then we're discussing completely different things to one another. Exactly. Zimm used his gun as a license to put himself in a stupid situation as opposed to using it for actual personal self-defense. No responsible gun owner ever justifies a decision by possession of a gun. Instead, responsible gun owners use guns to carry on their regular daily lives with protection.
I haven't followed the case closely, but just reading your language it reeks of bias toward Martin. Age doesn't necessarily dictate innocent or weakness. When I lived in Hawaii, a friend of mine's wife was a paralegal and handled a case where three "young kids" were driving recklessly in traffic, cut somebody in a silver Honda off and were subsequently flipped off, lost the guy in traffic, found a similar car and ran him off the road. Wasn't the same guy. He was an Army enlisted man in uniform. They beat him so badly that he ended up in a coma and died a week later from brain injury. The GI was about 5'8" and 150lbs soaking wet. The three "young kids" were Samoan, and the smallest one I remember to be 13 years old, 6'2" and around 280lbs , while the oldest was 16 and 6'5", 320 or so. Those three kids could probably combine to beat down any three adults that post on this forum. And all three were younger than this "young kid." Not saying that Trayvon Martin was some kind of cage fighter, but in this day and age, 17 years old doesn't really qualify as "young kid" in many situations.
you're right, Zimmerman put himself in danger, but that doesn't mean that absolves his right to defend himself. and you are right, he did bring on himself what has subsequently followed, and his life is forever changed because of it, regardless if he is found guilty or not. the question is whether what he did makes him guilty of murder? the evidence doesn't seem so. the problem with your position is that you aren't holding Trayvon up to the same criteria. if the evidence is true, than Trayvon instigated a physical confrontation because he thought himself a tough guy and he was going to let Zimmerman know that with his fists for following him. if you're willing to start a fight with someone just because you don't like the fact that they are suspicious of you, than you put yourself in danger of being shot if the person you attack defends themselves by violent means by allowance of the law. so Trayvon behaved illegally by attacking Zimmerman and brought on whatever ensued because he attacked Zimmerman, which is being dead. to claim your position on Zimmerman you have to also support that same position for Trayvon. are you seriously going to defend attacking Zimmerman, even if it cost him his life, was worth it for Trayvon?
I agree that it seems like a conviction is going to be extremely hard to come by. I'm not claiming that Martin is a saint but I don't think he deserved to die because Zimmerman was a chump who thought he was a tough guy. I'll stand by my claim that if you eliminate the gun from the equation and Zimmerman never follows Martin. He choose to play god because he had a gun. Based on the wording of the law Zimmerman was "within his rights" to kill Martin but it brings into question why should he be allowed to stalk Martin and then get off because he couldn't handle his business when Martin came after him? It leads to impossible situations like this one. I'm much older now but in my younger years I can't honestly say I wouldn't have thought of the consequences if I was in a similar situation. To be honest I wouldn't have gone right home either because I would be afraid that this nut job following me now knows where I live. Now I probably wouldn't have confronted him either but when you are scared you do some strange things. If Martin was afraid of Zimmerman knowing where he lived I could see him thinking kicking Zimmerman's ass is the only way you're going to get him to leave you alone.
What I'm getting out of all of this is that it's really bad business letting anybody carry a gun around with them on the street. When you have that situation people are going to get shot by other people who believe they have a right to shoot whenever they feel threatened, and maybe sometimes when they don't. If everybody was a saint who would never abuse the privilege of carrying a gun around things might be different. But this is the real world and many of the people carryng a gun around are going to be like George Zimmerman or worse. They're going to be self-entitled vigilantes with Dirty Harry fantasies and when you're in that mode almost everybody else can look like a bad guy if they get a bit loud and you're in squinty-eyed tough guy mode.
That's really what you are getting from this? I carry a gun around with me most of the day. I have only drawn it twice, and only in my vehicle, to deter road rage incidents. I live in a city where there are a lot of break-ins, and a shitload of road rage incidents, and while many of them are successful break-ins and unfortunate road rage fights that leave residents incapacitated, there are also many where the criminals are dealt with by fire, lawfully and warranted. I don't walk around with a sense of invulnerability, I walk around knowing that if some asshole tries to beat myself and my woman up for ten bucks, that I can protect my life and those that mean the most to me. I challenge you to find any statistic supporting your claim that concealed carry states have a rash of vigilante-style killings. Even a weak statistic. Because otherwise, you are using a highly publicized court trial to make a stupid political point.
I'm not worried about you. I'm worried about George Zimmerman and the people who are even less stable and more likely to cause problems. I'm worried about 20 6 year olds getting blown away in a class room because your right to a gun means that we can't keep guns out of the hands of psychotic madmen. I'm worried about literally thousands of deaths that occur every year because guns are in the wrong hands, and in this society of permissive gun rights there is no way to prevent that. We couldn't even get simple background checks approved last year after all those kids died. I'm perfectly safe with a nuclear weapon. I could carry one around forever and never set it off unless the martians were invading in force and there was no other choice. That doesn't mean that nuclear weapons should be legal. There would be thousands of detonations every year if they were because we couldn't keep them out of the hands of madmen and used car salesmen having a bad day, let alone the criminals who would stockpile them on the black market once a clear line of supply was established. We probably couldn't even get background checks approved.
undoubtedly Zimmerman likely takes a different course of action had he not had a gun, but that doesn't make him a pussy. if Zimmerman was 6'4" 240lbs, Trayvon likely sees him and runs home. but Trayvon saw that little pudgy Zimmerman, sized him up, and felt he could take him. that makes Trayvon a pussy as well for only confronting Zimmerman because he though Zimmerman was a weakling. point is calling either one a pussy serves zero purpose and is irrelevant to the actual situation -- who instigated the physical confrontation that led to the shooting. as far as your scenario, Zimmerman had no idea where he lived, and from all evidence Trayvon had lost him, so Zimmerman was not on course to track him down. Trayvon circled back to him when he had a clear path home. hardly the behavior of someone that is scared.
but that George Zimmerman wannabe is only a problem if someone decides to start a conflict. outside of mass murders, normal gun owners aren't walking around just capping people for shits and giggles. perhaps we would all be nicer to each other if we were worried that person may have a gun and could end my life if I think I am a tough guy. maybe we wouldn't get aggravated at nonsense like being cut off in traffic or simply being followed.
You take those guns away in many states, especially the southwest ones, and you will still have close to as many deaths. Except the wrong people will die. I asked you for a stat and you give me a bleeding heart argument. Why aren't we talking about 1000 George Zimmermans right now instead of one highly publicized one? You bring up a guy shooting kids. Yeah, a guy shot a bunch of kids in Newport. It was one of the worst tragedies in this country. Maybe we should be taking about the gun checks in Rhode Island. Not take away guns from every citizen in the country. This does not need to be a national issue. States can handle their business if problems happen. Instead, this is being turned into an issue where the entire country should be disarmed. Why don't you compare the number of guns crimes in states that do not allow guns to the ones that do? Put the partisan politics aside. I seem to remember you claiming that you got your info from something other than a predictable and partisan source.
That's a pipe dream. The reason we have the number of gun homicides that we have in the US each year is that a percentage of the population just cannot handle having a gun. We don't even try to figure out who can and who cannot carry a gun safely. The closest we come is preventing convicted felons from owning a gun legally. However that's a pipe dream also, because any convicted felon who wants a gun can easily obtain one. They can even obtain one in an open sale over the counter, because there are no background checks to prevent that. <insert name here> the convicted felon can buy a gun at a gun show and take it home with him. All he needs is a stall owner who is looking to make money and not caring too much about where he gets it. <insert name here> the law-abiding citizen (in theory) can buy a bunch of guns every month legally and then put them in his trunk and sell them where they bring the highest return, no questions asked. Both of the above cases happen routinely.
You can't compare guns crimes in states that do not consider many shootings to be a crime to guns crimes in states where most shootings are a crime. If George Zimmerman had shot Trayvon Martin in NY State under the circumstances he shot him in Florida we wouldn't be having a guilty-not guilty argument at this point, we'd be having a "what gun crime is he guilty of?" argument instead. The 5 year old who was given a gun and shot his 2 year old sister produced no prosecution in Kentucky. Therefore no gun crime occurred. Again, in NY the odds are pretty good one of both of the parents would have been charged with reckless endangerment at the least and we'd have had a gun crime. If you don't consider most shootings to be a crime then your gun crime rate is going to be low. If you don't allow most people to carry a gun legally and consider most shootings to be a crime your gun crime rate will be higher. The Gun Industry has pushed very hard to avoid having an accurate gun fatality count established by state. Not gun murders, gun fatalities. The reason they've pushed so hard is that the evidence that exists suggests that the gun fatality rate in states in which guns are readily available is much higher than the gun fatality rate in states in which guns are not readily available. By readily available we mean legally and black market.
Oh, sweet, the <insert name here> game! I'm pretty good at this one, can I play? <insert name here> comes into the country illegally, sets up a meth lab, and trades 4 kilos of crystal for a dozen AK-47s. Ten people die in the adjoining county in the next week, and there are no suspects to question. <insert name here> is a known gang banger in the inner city. He makes his money by slinging 20 bags of coke. During a slow week, he gives an 8-ball to a customer for a .38 caliber pistol, breaks into a home where two unarmed senior citizens live, takes every cent they have hidden in the closet, and kills both of them execution-style. <insert name here> the convicted felon is angry at his ex-wife for cheating on him while he was locked up. <insert name here> goes over to his ex-wife's house and beats her boyfriend to death, and then strangles his ex-wife to death. W00t w00t! How many points do I get for the commonality of those occurrences?
I just used <insert name here> because using a name that somebody actually has in real life somewhere can produce weird consequences in this Google enabled life. You know people who should not have access to guns are buying them at gun shows where there is no meaningful check on sales at all. You know people are selling $295 guns for $600 out of their trunks all over the country. You know these things. Don't get caught up in arguments that you don't need to be having.
