Trayvon Martin: 'Shoot first' law under scrutiny

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Bocephus said:
Umm, a properly trained and licensed man with a weapon doesn’t have much of a choice in the situation unless the aggressor himself is armed. You can’t pull a gun on someone approaching you just because they look like their about to start swinging.
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Oh, really, not even to warn them off? I have to admit to being totally ignorant of anything to do with guns.
 
seekerz said:
Then I suppose there’s only so much that training can fix…:rolleyes:
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you are right. some people will do what they want to do no matter what the law states.

it is also a shame that florida has so many criminals running around with guns who didn’t acquire them legally.

i think we can agree that in every case where we see evil committed, someone decided to make themselves their own god.
 
seekerz said:
We know for a fact that Zimmerman began following Martin - so he was the initiator of the chain of events.
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Wouldn’t that depend on Martins suspicious behavior? What if Zimmerman didn’t follow him, Martin realizes nobody is around, breaks into a house/car and gets away? Zimmerman was doing the right thing by keeping an eye on him, from what I can tell he messed up by approaching him. It seems, if the story is true that we know, Martin messed up if he started the punching.
We don’t know who struck first and I don’t think that matters; if someone is poised to attack me does the law require me to stand and take the first punch or the first shot?
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It’s all that matters. If someone pulls a weapon on you and you feel your life is in danger you have the right to take matters into your own hands at that point. Whether its a knife or a gun. But you don’t have the right to throw a punch just because the other guy looks like he might throw one first.

There are a lot of situations where someone may pull a knife or gun and the smart thing to do is to let them have what they want and go. But if they do so out of anger and you believe they have every intent to use it on you then by all means, you might want to find a way to defend yourself and retaliate if possible.
 
seekerz said:
Guess that means wimps can’t hide behind their guns; they still need to learn self defense skills. 😉
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I know women who carry guns, I know sharpshooters who carry multie guns, I don’t know any wimps who do so. Unless you consider a women a wimp because she wouldn’t want to be faced alone with a rapist twice her size.
 
jen_fla said:
you are right. some people will do what they want to do no matter what the law states.

it is also a shame that florida has so many criminals running around with guns who didn’t acquire them legally.

i think we can agree that in every case where we see evil committed, someone decided to make themselves their own god.
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Every state has criminals with illegal guns, that’s why they call them criminals.
 
seekerz said:
Guess that means wimps can’t hide behind their guns; they still need to learn self defense skills. 😉
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If someone is going to chase someone, then yes, they need to know self-defense other than deadly force.
 
seekerz said:
“A white guy with blonde hair” would create hundreds of suspects in most areas that I’ve lived…must have kept you guys in ‘suspicion’ mode 24/7.
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there are many neighborhoods in florida where caucasian “looking” people are the minority. and even though many hispanics or latinos have white listed in the census for race, for all practical purposes, they look hispanic.

my point was if someone gives a description, we tend to look out for that description if we see someone doing something suspicious. that doesn’t mean that if i saw a korean looking into someone’s windows, i wouldn’t report them, just because it didn’t fit the description i was looking for. is there anything wrong with that?
 
seekerz said:
We know for a fact that Zimmerman began following Martin - so he was the initiator of the chain of events.

We don’t know who struck first and I don’t think that matters; if someone is poised to attack me does the law require me to stand and take the first punch or the first shot?
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It doesn’t matter who struck who first? Poised to attack is another assumption on your part.
 
Bocephus said:
Wouldn’t that depend on Martins suspicious behavior? What if Zimmerman didn’t follow him, Martin realizes nobody is around, breaks into a house/car and gets away? Zimmerman was doing the right thing by keeping an eye on him, from what I can tell he messed up by approaching him. It seems, if the story is true that we know, Martin messed up if he started the punching.

It’s all that matters. If someone pulls a weapon on you and you feel your life is in danger you have the right to take matters into your own hands at that point. Whether its a knife or a gun. But you don’t have the right to throw a punch just because the other guy looks like he might throw one first.

There are a lot of situations where someone may pull a knife or gun and the smart thing to do is to let them have what they want and go. But if they do so out of anger and you believe they have every intent to use it on you then by all means, you might want to find a way to defend yourself and retaliate if possible.
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Your what-if’s might make some sense if the kid had been DOING something suspicious AND the police were not minutes away.

We don’t know if Zimmerman pulled his gun on Martin or not. What seems pretty logical is that a self-defense law would not require you to allow a person to shoot or punch first, otherwise that young woman with the baby might be in jail today and so would the man in Texas who WENT OUTSIDE and shot the burglars of his neighbor’s house.
 
Bocephus said:
I know women who carry guns, I know sharpshooters who carry multie guns, I don’t know any wimps who do so. Unless you consider a women a wimp because she wouldn’t want to be faced alone with a rapist twice her size.
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👍

i love how people like to judge legal gun owners without having ever walked in their shoes. let them go up to handicapped person that works a night shift and call them a wimp. or a petite woman that is a rape survivor. or a grown man that was kidnapped as a child. or an elderly person that is frail. most of the times, i find people who do so, live or work in relatively safe areas or have a large family to surround them. not everyone has that luxury.
 
johnnyjones said:
It doesn’t matter who struck who first? Poised to attack is another assumption on your part.
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I assumed nothing; I was proposing a scenario. We don’t know who struck who first but I don’t see why it matters. Is allowing the first blow a requirement of self defense?
 
seekerz said:
Repeatedly: from every ‘gut friend’/‘uncle’/friendly neighbor who could get near a mic, not to mention his dad and brother. (Of course, I’m assuming the police got the same version as his defenders).
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Now we know that it wasn’t Zimmerman screaming for help on the 911 call (therefore it was Trayvon’s).
The voice heard crying for help on a 911 call just before Trayvon Martin was shot to death was not that of George Zimmerman, according to two forensic voice identification experts, the Orlando Sentinel reported Saturday.
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usnews.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/04/01/10963191-trayvon-martin-case-audio-screams-were-not-george-zimmermans-2-experts-say
Trayvon is more than one month dead, and Zimmerman is still free. It looks like being from a well-connected family lets you get away with murder in the USA (just like it probably got Zimmerman his concealed gun permit despite a past of attacking a police officer.)
 
seekerz said:
Your what-if’s might make some sense if the kid had been DOING something suspicious AND the police were not minutes away.

We don’t know if Zimmerman pulled his gun on Martin or not. What seems pretty logical is that a self-defense law would not require you to allow a person to shoot or punch first, otherwise that young woman with the baby might be in jail today and so would the man in Texas who WENT OUTSIDE and shot the burglars of his neighbor’s house.
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seekerz, i’m having some trouble trying to understand what you are trying to convey. if you wouldn’t mind, could you please read my post (421) and let me know if you disagree with anything?

thanks.
 
Bocephus said:
I know women who carry guns, I know sharpshooters who carry multie guns, I don’t know any wimps who do so. Unless you consider a women a wimp because she wouldn’t want to be faced alone with a rapist twice her size.
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Did you read the post I was responding to? Obviously not.

It was informing me, a non-gun owner, that a person could not draw a gun to warn someone away who seemed to be threatening physical violence. In light of such information, my statement is a logical conclusion: owning a gun is not a solution to being unable to defend yourself physically.
 
jen_fla said:
seekerz, i’m having some trouble trying to understand what you are trying to convey. if you wouldn’t mind, could you please read my post (421) and let me know if you disagree with anything?

thanks.
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“Imminent” is understood in all the scenarios my post includes: Trayvon vs Zimmerman, the young woman and the baby, the Texas burglaries (though I really don’t get how you ‘defend yourself’ from your neighbor’s house getting robbed).
 
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