It may shake out as legit SD. Or it may not. But surely you can agree that a “lesson learned” here is that a CCW holder puts himself into grave legal jeapordy if he follows a “suspect,” thereby initiating a series of events.
If the “suspect” pulls a J-turn back at his follower, the SD aspect is put at risk by the follower’s actions before the shooting.
You don’t see this? Really? Does this mean you suggest as a reasonable and recommended practice that CCW holders should follow “suspects” around and demand information from them?
You don’t see how this puts the CCW holder in grave legal danger?
You stated Zimmerman had no right to ask Trayvon any questions. That is what I took issue with. No matter what questions Zimmerman asked Trayvon, he did not have the right to physically assault Zimmerman for some perceived disrespect.
Having a CCW does not preclude you from anything a non CCW holder does, except go into certain buildings. Is he supposed to disarm in order to provide info to the dispatcher? The point is, he is well within his right to ask a question, carrying or not. If he is not carrying when the person turns, (or maybe in this case, ambushes) then there is no SD aspect, because the guy is pummeled, possibly killed. Then you have another thug crime with no media coverage.
I don’t mean to muddy up the waters here, because I believe you’re making a valid point. The responses to your original posting have some valid points as well, most especially that this was a gated/restricted-access community. That can play a big role in the law in some states, I can’t speak to FL and you’re much better versed in Florida law than I am.
But let’s cut to the chase here, shall we?
ANY time ANY CCW holder shoots a choir boy who happens to be black, there’s a huge potential for this furor. Never mind the facts. Facts can go hang themselves here.
Fact: the CCW carrier here isn’t “white” - if he is, then so is Obama. But that doesn’t matter here, because as the news is now telling it, this guy was just short of admission to the Klan. I guess since Robert Byrd has passed on, the Klan has relaxed admission requirements.
Fact: The black yute wasn’t where he was supposed to be. While we cannot postulate exactly where he was supposed to be, we can definitively say that he wasn’t supposed to be, and that was on the grounds of this community.
Fact: The CCW carrier had reason to call 911 before the lethal engagement started. Additional fact: The 911 operator didn’t command him to not follow, only said that he didn’t “need” to do that. That’s not terribly imperative language there.
Fact which is in contest, according to the color of the observer’s skin: The black yute wasn’t looking for his church hymnal that he dropped earlier in the neighborhood while returning from Bible Study.
There have been cases I’ve seen where a homeowner bags a perp *in his house* and the mother is on TV the next day, wailing about “what a good boy he was” and so on. The relatives come out of the woodwork, all claiming that the “boy was turning his life around.” It is all I can do to restrain myself from wanting to scream at the TV “Did you not take notice of the fact that this ‘good’ boy broke into someone’s house?”
You’ve heard it before too, I’m sure.This is the sign of a truly diseased culture in which we now live, wherein a significant segment of our society believes that they’re above the law. Sometime, check out how many 1040’s the IRS gets wherein the filer is claiming to not have to pay taxes as part of “reparations for slavery.” Go ahead, check it out. Don’t believe me:
http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-news/ir-02-08.pdf
The cure for this is to hammer them flat with the power of the law and prove to them that “no, you’re not so terribly special.” But that’s not happening in the current environment. What is sordid and worse is that their behavior is actually being encouraged by the highest office holders in the land.
I’m not saying that Zimmerman was justified in his actions that put him into a situation where lethal force was employed, much less that he took a high-IQ route to arrive at this situation. All I’m saying is that the law is no longer color blind WRT perps here, and that’s a fact for both CCW holders AND COPS. A CCW holder doesn’t need to put himself out on the very thin edge of the law as Zimmerman did to have The Justice Brothers standing on his doorstep the next week, agitating for the feds to become involved.
Now, given your background and ability to assess no-crap-for-real threats, I wholeheartedly agree with you that it is a physically (as well as legally) stupid thing to put oneself into the position into the situation Zimmerman did. No way I’d have done what he did, because, quite frankly, no one is paying me to do that and I’m not stupid enough to volunteer my physical safety to take on that risk for something outside my home.