Hate to jump into a good argument and all, but there is another key point to all this that is being roundly ignored.
If you are part of a neighborhood watch, you must have some knowledge of what you can, can’t, should, and shouldn’t do when you actually exercise your “duties” as a member of such.
This is doubly true if you happen to have a CCW or are otherwise armed. With carrying a weapon comes GREAT responsibility.
I don’t know what happened, exactly, in this case. I don’t know who took the first swing, who started what, etc. I frankly don’t care. What matters is this situation escalated way beyond what it should have because Zimmerman apparently got cocky due to the presence of a sidearm on his person.
Before anyone jumps me for attacking Zimmerman or claiming he should be arrested and strung-up from the highest tree, forget it. That’s not at all what I’m saying.
You can’t don that weapon and don a new personality a la Bronson’s character Paul Kersey in the “Death Wish” films or a Dirty Harry. Inexperienced, insecure people can find it way too easy to slip into such a mindset when armed....and that is a recipe for disaster, as it was here.
Zimmerman may very well have been within his rights to shoot the kid. I don’t know. All I do know is he never should have put himself and the kid in such a volatile and highly dangerous situation in the first place.
A weapon is a last resort tool. You pull it....you use it, period. No warning shots. You pull, you shoot, you aim to kill.
Unless you’re prepared to do that, one should never deliberately allow a situation to escalate (WHEN you can possibly avoid such) to the point where you have, in this case, a dead teenager, a probably decent man whose life is now in tatters, and a**hole black racists screaming for whitey’s blood all over the country.
It could have been handled better, it should have been handled better. I hope we all learn one hell of a valuable lesson from this.
Pardon the length of my rant, guys; I just feel very strongly about this.
You’ve presented a reasoned position IMHO.
It appears likely he never pulled the weapon out until he was being beaten about the head by Martin, while Zimmerman was on his back.
The preliminary report also noted Zimmerman was bleeding from the nose and back of his head and stated Zimmerman while being medically treated on scene stated, "I was yelling for someone to help, but no one would help me".