It is interesting to see the Zimmerman supporters twist themselves into knots trying to maintain that Zimmerman was just defending himself, but Trayvon, the kid who was just walking down the street minding his own business was not defending himself.
Zimmerman was the driver of events. Had he not armed himself and approached Trayvon that night, all that would have happened was that Trayvon would have returned to his family and watched the rest of the game.
I think it comes down to the fact that some people are scared of black teens (especially black teens in hoodies!) and are okay if they are gunned down every once in awhile to keep the rest in line. All the rest of the absurd mental gymnastics by which Zimmerman was just defending himself and the guy minding his own business was the aggressor is just to justify some really ugly prejudices.
Yeah, that’s surely a wonderful thing, to be relieved of the horror of cowering. Yes indeedy.
You gotta love the special insanity of a law that’s designed to protect your ego, rather than your face.
And what do you attribute this to? A general distaste for advocating that 17 year old black kids be armed? Or a fundamental recognition of the fact that the right-to-carry law contributed mightily to this happening at all and a desire to avoid shining a light on that fact?
Throughout this thread you have maintained that Zimmerman is acting in self defense which seems to preclude that Martin was acting in self defense. You in fact said it was not relevant if Martin was acting in self defense. I had proposed that maybe you think both people are acting in self defense, but that seems kind of crazy.
I’m surprised that no one in this thread has called Zimmerman a hero yet, but I’m sure its coming.
I explicitly said that it is quite possible for both parties to act in self-defense.
To the law it is irrelevant - there is nothing in the law that depends on the other party acting in self-defense or not. If you think it is relevant - please point out in the law where the relevant part is.
And it may seem kind of crazy to you, but that’s your problem, not mine.
So - can you cite a post of mine or someone else’s that said that Martin was not acting in self-defense? Because that is what you claimed.
A genuinely healthy ego is a necessary thing. But this sort of ego-protection is incredibly destructive and represents a fundamentally fragile, unhealthy ego. A healthy ego has no attachment at all to something like needing to “stand your ground”, a healthy ego has no problem with cowering and covering one’s face to avoid damage to oneself or harm to another, especially if the alternative is killing someone.
Sadly, history is littered with the bodies of people who disagreed.
Let me say first that I am not a lawyer, or a police officer, and I’m not going to discuss the law and precedent and previous applications and so on, because I’m just not competent to do that. And I have no idea what the meaning of the word “agression” is in a legal context, either in general or in the case of Florida law.
But following someone and demanding what their business is, on a public street, is a very aggressive act. It implies (or states outright) that the person being questioned has some obligation to justify his or her presence in a given place at a given time. It implies that that person has no right to be there, and that the person doing the questioning has the right to decide if the person being questioned may go about his or her business.
Someone walking along a public street, who is not clearly engaged in some illegal activity, does not have to justify his presence there to anyone.
Is that what you call withdrawing from a conflict without killing someone?
The threat to the ego is the overwhelming fear of the world you feel. It makes you feel like a big puss, so you arm yourself and shoot a 17 year old kid.
Listen, for everyone’s sake, take Stuart Hamm’s advice: If you’re scared, stay home. The rest of us? We got this.
Thank you for proving once again that if Zimmerman reasonably believed that he was in imminent danger of death or great bodily harm, it is irrelevant to the law whether Martin was acting in self-defense or not.