I think you are miss characterizing what the majority of people here are saying. Being followed or watched is not grounds for punching someone. He may not have liked being followed or watched but he had no right to attack. If he was so frightened by Zimmerman’s behavior why approach him. You can be somewhere you have a right to be, doing nothing wrong, and still be suspicious. Many times I have been places working late at night to finish some aspect of a construction project I was working on only to have the police show up because someone thought it was suspicious that a truck was pulled up to a job site late at night and a guy was loading tools. The correct response was to always explain politely that I was working late and give the name and number of the builder. Whether Zimmerman was a member of the neighborhood watch or just a concerned citizen makes no difference. He had a right to call in a suspicious person to the police. It also could be that this Zimmerman had a hair trigger when it came to calling things in. That still would not justify an attack, which the evidence seems to indicate happened. There’s no indication from what I have read that Zimmerman was breaking any laws so the comment that some freepers think that Martin was not protected by the law is not correct.
Turns out Florida’s law lets even unarmed people take affirmative action if they ‘believe” there is a threat use deadly force’. Try this article out: http://articles.orlandosentinel.com/2012-03-17/news/os-qanda-trayvon-martin-shooting-20120317_1_law-enforcement-castle-doctrine-deadly-force or go to the statute most point to at http://www.leg.state.fl.us/statutes/index.cfm?App_mode=Display_Statute&URL=0700-0799/0776/0776.html (NOTE: believe is used 13 times in this chapter, so think long and hard about “believe” and what you “believe’ believe really means)