Only because Zimmerman got the worse end of the encounter. If Zimmerman pushed Martin, for example, and then Martin pushed back harder and got the better of him, then there would be no such evidence.
I don’t know what happened, and neither do you, or anyone aside from Zimmerman. Considering that, I’m not inclined to slander a dead boy who, at worst, overreacted to being approached at night, for no good reason, by a stranger with a gun.
There is, of course, plenty of evidence that zimmerman was stalking martin, and plenty of evidence that he was armed.
Is there a reason why someone who is being stalked by an armed man at night should not be in fear for their life?
Put it this way, if an armed man was stalking you, you confront them, and get the physical advantage in a fight, do you feel that you have “earned a bullet”?
I suppose if Martin had been carrying, he could have simply shot Zimmerman, and then you would be taking his side, and saying that zimmerman had “earned a bullet”?
Or if martin had managed to get the gun away from zimmerman, and shot him with it, then zimmerman would have “earned a bullet”, albeit, a bullet that he had recently loaned out.
Or if martin had simply beaten zimmerman down, leaving him broken or even dead, he would have earned that too.
Right?
Basically, if I hear you right, you are saying that it is perfectly acceptable to stalk someone, or pick a fight with someone, and then, if it appears that you have chosen to stalk the wrong person, and now you find yourself at a disadvantage, it is perfectly fine to then go ahead and shoot the person that you were stalking, because they have “earned a bullet”.
What fantasy scenario are you envisioning that puts martin in the position of the aggressor here?
No, “at worst” he sucker-punched some Hispanic guy for watching him while he was looking for homes to break into, and then he climbed on top of him and tried to beat him to death with the sidewalk. That’s about the worst case scenario for Martin. The one you wrote is more of a middle-of-the-road possibility.
No, you don’t hear me right. There is NO EVIDENCE that Zimmerman ‘picked a fight’ with Martin.
The one where Zimmerman has a bloody nose and Martin has abrasions on his knuckles.
You didn’t hear me right, I said stalking. I put the “pick a fight” as an or to the stalking, asking if that was acceptable to you, not that zimmerman was picking a fight. I know he was not picking a fight, he was stalking.
Unless you are contending that martin dragged zimmerman out of his car and behind the houses, then yes, zimmerman created the situation.
He was stalking a young black man, for no reason other than he was a young black man, and when the target of his stalking got the upper hand, he killed him.
This is acceptable to you, yes? Then if this is acceptable to you, then picking a fight with someone, and then killing them when they get the upper hand would also be.
What’s your reasons for this claim?
“Homes to break into”? What the hell are you talking about?
How long was the rap sheet on this one?
From Zimmerman’s 911 call.
To be clear, I’m not claiming it’s an established fact, just that it would represent a worse case scenario for Martin than ‘minding his own business’ when he was ‘aggressively accosted’ by Zimmerman.
Getting longer
http://www.cnn.com/2013/11/18/justice/florida-george-zimmerman-arrest/
http://mashable.com/2014/07/29/george-zimmerman-guards-gun-store/#uD8LritS0aqh
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/george-zimmerman-arrested-aggravated-assault-weapon-n283586
So, the stalker was accusing the guy he was stalking of being up to no good. Did he have any evidence of this?
How does the state of Florida define the crime of “stalking”? Did Zimmerman’s established actions meet the elements of that crime? If not, he was ‘following’ him in public, which is, AFAIK, not a crime in Florida.
Assaulting someone for following you in public is a criminal act.
He was reporting what he observed. He called 911 because he saw someone acting suspiciously.
He was following him off of the public roads and sidewalks, and onto private property behind homes, where martin was trying to hid from this guy.
In florida, stalking requires the stalker to be “of malicious intent” which the jury decided he was not, because he had been on the phone with 911. But how was martin supposed to know that?
I am talking about this from martin’s perspective. He’s walking home from the store, and this suv starts following him. When he tries to make it harder for the suv to follow him by slipping between houses, the guy gets out, and starts following him. Now, since we know now that he had called 911, we can understand how a jury could be convinced that there was reasonable doubt that there was malicious intent, but martin had no way of knowing that. He just knows that there is this guy that is following him.
If someone was following you late at night like that, you would not consider him to be stalking you? You would not consider a man who had been following you in an SUV, and then continued to follow you on foot to be a threat?
You never answered any of the other questions I posed, either, so I suppose that you agree that if martin had killed zimmerman that night, you would now be talking about zimmerman “earning a bullet”?
This is a hijack, I know, but it is this mindset where you just casually talk about a tragedy where a young kid was killed for absolutely no reason, Zimmerman completely created that situation on his own, and casually throw out a phrase like “earned a bullet.” It is this mindset that causes killings like the Castile shooting to be normalized.
He called 911 because he was out looking for trouble. He saw a young black man walking down the road, and decided to report that as suspicious.
If Martin had killed Zimmerman, I’d be interested in hearing his version of events, what made him feel like he was reasonably acting in necessary self defense, etc. From here, I have a hard time imagining a combination of testimony and evidence that I’d find compelling enough to exonerate him, but I’m open to the possibility.
I think there was a very good reason for him being killed: he attacked a man, without, as far as I can see, legal justification to do so. He should not have done that. It ended up being a fatal mistake.
Pretty sure he was still on the sidewalk. That’s what Zimmerman’s head was getting bashed against.
Considering American history, including recent history, I can’t fault a young black person for being in fear of their life if someone is following them late at night for no good reason. For this reason, among others (including the incredible scumbag Zimmerman has revealed himself to be) I have great sympathy for Martin and his family.
Stick with the Castile, or Levar Jones, shootings. They’re much better cases to make the #BlackLivesMatter arguments than Trayvon Martin or Michael Brown.
I’m sure that’s great comfort to the Martin family as they observe strangers routinely slander their dead son and justify his death.