Senate The shooting of Trayvon Martin

Aytee-Aytee

 

I would phrase it that he has a habit of tending towards physical altercations, and reaching too readily for firearms. All of which tends to dissolve what cloud of ambiguity there is around the events that led to Trayvon Martin's death.

 

I misread this post as coming from Vivec on my mobile app and was quite confused.

It doesn't resolve the ambiguity, and it doesn't negate the physical evidence consistent with Zimmerman's version of events.

But he needs to give up his firearms before he hurts someone else or gets himself into anymore trouble.


I used my phone. Beware.pf.typos.

 

So he needed to kill an unarmed skinny kid in self-defense last year to defend himself and now has to pull out a shotgun to defend himself against his pregnant, unarmed girlfriend. Not to mention he threatened and abused his ex-wife and ex-girlfriend. Not only is he a violence-prone lunatic, but he's a wimp. What a hero.

 

Jaysis...will someone please shoot this mother****** already?

 

Yeah the last thing we'd want is some white person to get shot.

 

So he's a gunoholic?

 

Zimmerman: Yesterday was one of the greatest days of my life! Mary and I went skiing, we made a snowman, she touched my leg...
Public: Okay. Kill him!

 

im just glad i dont have a "neighborhood watchman"

 

You don't think maybe his current behavior is a reaction to being jumped by someone in the middle of the night, forced to kill him, then put through absolute hell for the next year and a half?


I used my phone. Beware.pf.typos.

 

Wasn't it the late evening when he was killed? And in later winter so it was dark and had been?


I used my phone. Beware.pf.typos.

 

Just looked up - the sun had been set for half an hour and it was raining. It was dark out but not totally night. My mistake.

And no, I'm not being sarcastic. I'm presenting Zimmerman's point of view. His account of events was reasonable and has never been contradicted by evidence. Eyewitness testimony confirms his account as well.

It's not unreasonable to think that all the things that have happened to Zimmerman since that night have caused this paranoid behavior of his, rather than the behavior being evidence of a violent disposition at the time of Martin's killing.


I used my phone. Beware.pf.typos.

 

Trayvon Martin was killed at 7:16 PM, after the sun had been set for less than one hour.

So, no. Not really the "middle of the night" at all.

 

So if someone has been beating your head against concrete, is going for you gun, and saying they're going to kill you, what exactly are you forced to do to keep yourself alive? It's a perfectly reasonable use of the word.

I previously corrected that. But this is a silly point to dwell on.


I used my phone. Beware.pf.typos.

 

Kind of hard to do when you can't land any blows and they're straddling you, but I agree with you that Zimmerman should not have been chasing Trayvon down.


I used my phone. Beware.pf.typos.

 

How about we look at it from Trayvon Martin's point of view? Obviously he isn't around to tell his side of the story, but we know that he felt threatened by this creepy guy who was following him, and we know that he had no history of violent behavior up until that point. So, it's not unreasonable to assume that a confrontation broke out between these two individuals and turned into a physical brawl...a fight in which Martin would have justifiably believed he was the one being attacked. If Martin felt his life was threatened by this unknown assailant, then he would have been justified in beating that assailant's head against the concrete if that's what it takes to defend himself...and moreover if he saw that this assailant had a gun, he would have been more than justified in trying to take that gun so that it could not be used against him.

Lastly, if I'm right about Zimmerman doing something stupid to initiate the confrontation, then do we expect this guy to be forthcoming in his role in starting it? Obviously this is speculation, and perhaps it doesn't meet the jury's standard for conviction, but I'd say the most likely scenario really involves Zimmerman being at fault for triggering the fight and therefore being at fault for Martin's death.

 

The truth is that by merit of their one month late start, relevant evidence (physical especially, but applicable to all types) was of pretty degraded quality. This makes it very hard to make firm judgments about what happened. However, in some sense their irrelevant. Most of the substantiated elements of Zimmerman's accounts were never really under dispute: the two got into a fist fight, he shot Martin, etc.

The real questions are precisely about motive. Who was the aggressor? Did Zimmerman bully a child, or did a belligerent young man, angry at being frightened, circle back with an intent to harm? Was Zimmerman's life under threat at the time he pulled out his gun and used it? Etc. A substantial element in all this is the context provided by an assessment of each participant's character. In this case, even before the Martin incident Zimmerman had seen legal action for getting into fights with a police officer, had a restraining order placed against him, and had been compelled to take anger management classes. I'm not inclined to attribute his recent behavior to his post-trial life because it is pretty much the same sort of thing he was doing before he ever saw Trayvon Martin.

 

I love that this has started back up again.