“You cannot start a fight and then claim stand your ground, so says, the man who authored the law and the governor that signed the law and everyone that voted for the law that has been ask. Zimmerman started a fight and then murdered the kid.”
By golly, you got something there. Never mind that it’s just as reasonable (and the physical evidence and calls seems to indicate it’s more likely) to guess that Zimmerman ceased pursuit and got attacked by Martin while he was waiting for the cops to show up.
As to the guy who wrote the the “stand your ground” law, I foolishly thought it was up to the courts to decide what laws meant...otherwise you’d get politicians saying “That’s not what I meant!” whenever something they enacted turned out to be unpopular at the moment.
IF, and it’s a big IF, Zimmerman approached Martin and assaulted him, and only pulled out the gun after Martin got the upper hand in the fight, then he should pay the legal price for the killing.
If he merely followed Martin, and Martin decided the best defense is a good offense and assaulted Zimmerman to “protect himself” then Zimmerman is fully within his rights to respond with deadly force.
I wasn’t there, so I don’t know.
Was Zimmerman unwise to follow Martin at all? I’d be he’d say so now, but that doesn’t make it unlawful.
It’s a sad situation all around, and now it’s more a political/racial football than a legal matter. Too bad many are rushing to judgement based on what they want to see rather than what we know. Too bad politicians like Obama aren’t showing equal outrage and concern over other violence that has recently occurred.
The Genie is out of the bottle now, and no matter how calmly and fairly the local authorities act, it’s not going to satisfy the emotions whipped up by conjecture, half-truths and political pandering.
Oh, and remember, what you read, see and hear in the media is put out by journalists with a longstanding agenda that historically isn’t exactly likely to support defensive use of a firearm.
It also takes a very big person to back down from public pronouncement. I think this is why each side tries to whip up people well before the real facts are known, so they can get people to stake their claim to one side or the other and to publicly say what they believe the truth is. They know that even if the truth is not as it initially seemed many will stick by the first opinion they put out there, to avoid seeming to have stupidly jumped the gun.
And that’s why I’m stepping back and trying to wait for those silly stubborn facts. I sure don’t know what happened.