Oh, are you finished with Goetz, Martin, and robberies? Because the above has no bearing on any of that, or anything in this thread.
Try reading the thread again, unless this is just you witnessing, and not debating. No, that’s not a lesson anyone should take to heart, because it is astoundingly bad advice, and immoral to boot. It will get you beaten, jailed, or killed if you put it into practice.
Are you not? Because I highly doubt that anyone considers it “ok” to shoot an unwitting, non-threatening intruder that one has tragically and honestly mistaken for a threat. They may be split on whether doing so should be a crime, but not on whether it’s a bad thing to do.
That’s a question for a jury, and it depends on the facts of each individual case. Feel free to read up on robbery case law, where this sort of issues get settled.
No, you are not. You are morally justified in doing so only if you have a reasonable fear of imminent danger. Both the reasonableness and the imminence are entirely necessary. Someone following you, at minimum, is not an imminent threat.
Someone in your house uninvited is inherently an imminent threat, so using force against them is, IMHO, perfectly morally acceptable. Someone banging on your door in the middle of the night in an agitated state? Imminent threat.
As for the two cases referenced in the OP, Goetz was threatened by four armed men, and Zimmerman was actually being beaten at the time they shot. There’s no way to claim that either were not in imminent danger.
Trayvon Martin was not, based on all the evidence, in imminent danger at any point before he punched Zimmerman.
There is no evidence that Martin felt threatened by Zimmerman. According to his own testimony as reported by Jeantel (admittedly not the best or most articulate source, but all we have) Martin had already made his way back to his father’s girlfriend’s backdoor, and was out of sight of Zimmerman. Martin could simply have stepped into the house and been completely safe. Instead he chose to double back and go looking for Zimmerman. If one is in fear of someone and manages to lose him, one does not double back and try to re-establish contact.
Zimmerman was the neighborhood watch guy, and there had been several recent burglaries in the area. A neighbor said that the previous month, Zimmerman had interrupted a burglary in progress. Martin was a relative stranger in the area, and was wandering around in the rain looking at houses.
Do you understand the moral distinction between being followed by the neighborhood watch, and attempted armed robbery?