If you’re following the Zimmerman trial… — 38 Comments
That’s a auspicious name for this context.
I have been following it (more closely than I like to admit). One thing I’ve noticed is that people who are not following it closely seem to have developed a very strong personal bias against Zimmerman. Having now learned more about him and the events of that night (through observing the trial itself), I wouldn’t say that I have a “favorable” opinion of him but I can certainly see why the initial decision not to prosecute was made.
Thus far the State’s case has been so weak that the best results they have been able to tease from their own witnesses are mere concessions that there is indeed reasonable doubt, and even those instances have been rare. Most of their witnesses have 100% corroborated the self-defense defense.
Against a backdrop of race-baiting publicity and misinformation spread by the MSM (not to mention the president’s ill-advised commentary on the case), I can certainly understand why many people still think GZ was a nosy, meddling wanna be cop — and from what I’ve see this stereotype is not being borne out by the evidence – – and should be convicted of at least ‘something’.
And I can’t help but remarking that there is another big elephant in the room here besides race, and that’s the presence of the handgun itself.
One of the things my first round of instructors kept telling me was that people, civilian or law based prosecutors, would always try to get me if my justifications for using force were not iron clad. Meaning, I always had to justify my use of force at the same level of lethal force, as justified on police rules of engagement. A bit looser for a civilian, but at the same level. They wouldn’t let me do things like beat people up at bars because they were asking for it. They kept droning on and on about how if I ever used force, based upon the various things they taught me, it has to be when I feared for my life or just wanted to end the other person’s life. No exceptions.
Later on, I sort of figured out why that was so specifically, since they didn’t give any specifics about the legal issue. But other people did give legal examples, such as civilians suing you even if the court found you innocent of homicide or something (unjustified homicide).
This caused me to think of the things my original round of instructors told me in a new light. While I knew that they were speaking the real deal in terms of experience and wisdom, it did not particularly sit well with my image of myself to always be backing off from temptations, provocations, and various other things. I suppose if I thought I reacted and moved myself away from violence, it would either follow me or put me in a weaker position. As I saw more legal examples, I became aware of how I could use that to my advantage. If they were going to get me, no matter what I did, and the only thing that mattered was witness testimony, evidence and what not, then it was my strategic responsibility to stack the decks in my favor. Assuming the tactical situation was not something I felt afraid of losing.
So I kept wondering and asking myself, “if that guy pulls a knife on me, should I pretend to run away and maybe sustain a knife wound, just so I can have an excuse to kill him”. If 5 guys to 20 are chasing me down a street, maybe I can run down a single person alleyway after confirming there is a witness, and ambushing as many of them were stupid enough to follow me.
Strategy motivated me to question the environment I was in before the conflict and after the conflict, with witnesses, personal behavior, and evidence that either goes against me or supports my position.
For in human conflict, tactics can win any number of battles, but a single wrong strategy can lose you the war.
Two general types of people exist who can navigate such events.
1. The battle experienced, who have learned from victories or loss how to get things done.
But there’s another one, surprisingly
2. The person that has little to no battle experience because he has correctly used strategy to avoid all conflicts where he might have lost and only engaged in conflicts where he had 100% chance of victory.
This is a derivation and branch splitting of the concept that the best self defense for civilians come from mimicking people who have never been in a fight, rather than learning from those who have been in a lot of fights. There’s a reason why that guy has gotten that many fight experience on the streets and bars, and it’s not because everyone hates him on sight. There’s a reason why that civilian hasn’t gotten in a fight, and it’s not because everyone loves him on sight.
Zimmerman would have had better chances against both his immediate enemies as well as future enemies if he had just prepared some extra evidence. Whether he allowed the situation to produce that evidence or merely gathered it after the fight (medical reports) doesn’t really matter. If you aren’t particularly afraid of someone, but you want an excuse to kill them, have them injure you in some fashion that can be documented, kill them, then say that you were in fear of your life.
Any normal person would have been, after all. But people under fear usually don’t think in the long term: strategically that is.
My fear here is that the jury will come to the same conclusion that the prosecution here- it is totally worth it to imprison this guy to avoid the wrath of the mob and race hustling activists.
One of the reasons why I sought out training and knowledge of martial arts, wasn’t really about exercise or self defense techniques, although I suppose I got some practical benefit out of it in those categories. The primary reason was because I didn’t know how to use what I knew, without the outcome being either my enemies being dead or me being dead. So it felt really like I knew nothing at all, at least in the case of 93% of incidents where people are in conflict and someone doesn’t end up dead. If what I know only applied to that slim 10%, then what the heck was I doing for the super majority of the time?
That led me to start researching martial arts and its ‘lingo’. I was trying to find some non-lethal methods which I could use. In my journey, I found out that non lethal methods were much harder to learn and use than lethal ones. That was rather counter intuitive to the stuff I was culturalized with.
I also found out of monkey do, monkey see training methods which didn’t appear very effective. Since civilian conflicts are often held without preparation, advance knowledge, or chain of command. No matter how good your instructor is, if all you can do is copy his moves and the words out of his book of life, that isn’t going to do you much good when you are in a life and death conflict and he is nowhere for you to “consult with”.
Military style training is very quick and convenient, except when all the NCOs and officers happen to die at once. Then the guy on the bottom has a problem figuring out what to do. That soldier can still fight, and die, for the cause, but not sure whether his hard work will come out of anything in the end. There’s no brain dictating the tactics or strategy any more.
Much of American self defense methods are based around “do what you see me do”. I don’t like it. Why? Because when push comes to shove and somebody loses their eye, you are going to have to decide what is right or wrong, what is acceptable or unacceptable, what you are or are not willing to kill/die for. If all you have ever been told when you were learning was “copy what I do, you’ll be good in a decade or two”, you will not be very competent at making good decisions for yourself. The police won’t tell you what to do, they only arrive to get the body bags. Your mother and father won’t be there for you to consult. Your instructor and your instructor’s instructor won’t be there for you to ask them to show you the “right techniques” to use.
You’ll be by yourself, operating alone for the most part, with all decisions and responsibilities. And whatever results… will be on you, entirely.
Those who have not prepared themselves to shoulder this responsibility, instead shoving it off to somebody else or somebody else’s school of martial arts ideology or self defense ideology… might be very surprised at what life smacks them with. Life is full of challenges. You are either up to the task or not. And there is no Democrat welfare agency that will give you a “leg up”.
A few years ago (maybe even a decade), i was talking to some “Libertarians” (aka anti gun Leftists that self proclaim themselves liberty fighters) about guns used for home defense. I was arguing that handguns should be an option for a person to use. Other people were talking about shotguns always being good and handguns being easily bannable since they’ll have shotguns for home defense.
The point was, there will be some people who decide that a handgun is better for their defense than a shotgun, of whatever caliber or type. Taking away these options, in order to benefit yourself and whomever you care about at the cost of other people’s lives, is called evil. Well, I didn’t call it evil back then because I didn’t really know what “Leftist evil” was at the time.
In the course of that “discussion”, the topic was brought up concerning shooting center mass. I was of the belief that sufficiently trained and skilled people can choose to shoot at limbs, instead of going for the kill, if they felt the situation was not that dangerous. The handgun banners felt that one should always shoot center mass. But not just that, but that there “were no situations” where shooting at anything else than that was correct.
Yet I know of at least one person that can reliably shoot people in the head with a handgun at relatively close ranges. That’s not center mass. There’s also times when brandishing a gun has stopped escalation of fights, and nobody was shot center mass then. While it is a great legal recommendation to not pull out a gun unless you intend to shoot at center mass and go for the kill, my concern was not really with legalities. (Laws are not that meaningful to me, except in so far as the penalties are applied)
What I was concerned with was personal decision making, freedom of choice, and the ability to include all sorts of people with all sorts of decisions and situations.
Those of the Left live in a very constrained world where people are only given a choice between 1 or 2 “best judgments”. Anything else, it seems, is flawed or mistaken or illegal. I believe that there are limitless numbers of “best judgments”, just as there are unlimited situations and people who make them.
In a limited world where the correct decision is always A, in my world there is “no right decision” per say. Only the “right people” and their decision making.
As such, in a limited world Leftists seek to change the world and control the people in it, to force people to make the “best decisions”. Whereas I advocate that people should remake themselves into someone better, someone that is capable of making the “right choices” more than an average person could.
In Zimmerman’s case, our enemies are attempting to destroy him for violating one of their strange occult gun totem superstitions. Whereas I would have offered him help in training to overcome his own limitations. In many ways, we are already too late. The die has already been cast. But what of the several hundreds of millions the Left has yet to force into their little Cube Utopia?
And the importance of “culture” in determining strategy and tactics.
Just FYI.
The babbling babblers are now speculating that the state is hoping that the jury will do a lesser charge of manslaughter. Ironically, in Florida, because a gun is involved that would be 30 years, same as 2nd degree murder.
The Judge really should dismiss the case after the prosecution rests; but, I do not expect that for reasons we all understand.
I suppose there will be many pools to guess how long Zimmerman will last in jail. Of course he will not be a lot safer outside of jail, unless he can get out of town and disappear.
Neo, so many people bought the trashing of Zimmerman before any evidence was available and they are not going to back off now.
By the way the Prosecution has started the campaign to present Zimmerman as a kill-mad cop wannabe. You see he studied criminal justice in college and did want to be a cop. Now, that is a bad thing?
Center mass is simply easier for most of us to hit. iN GENERAL, the mere presence of a pistol will end the assault.
To the use a shotgun crowd, let’s discuss toting one around and exactly how difficult it to bring one to bear in an enclosed space. Shotguns are fine, an Ar-15 is fine, put a pistol, in my humble opinion offers the best compromise of power to weight , flexibility and convenience .
I prefer .45
I’ve been chatting with people about home defense options and have been steered by more than one person to the 20 gauge shotgun with a pistol grip. While I own a 9 mm, I’d hate to have to aim in case I miss and shoot my through my neighbor’s house. My hope would be that the noise alone would cause someone to flee.
Center mass? After watching dash cams of police shootings, it would seem that ready-fire-aim results in few people actually getting hit, so perhaps aiming at anything is better than nothing in the heat of the moment.
Either way – if you do end up with a non-lethal shot, do you want to risk your life if the person is hopped up on drugs and continues to come at you? IM(very)HO, I would prefer that the other person ends up dead, not me. Indeed, my life would be changed forever, and I would offer up Mass after Mass for the criminal, but better him than me.
~
With regard to St. Trayvon, it appears that he jumped/suker punched/surprise attacked Zimmerman, and was having his head bashed into concrete. Given that such things can disable or kill you, and Z said that Martin went for the gun, I cannot fault him.
~
With regard to following the incident, I followed http://theconservativetreehouse.com/ in detail after someone posted the link somewhere. My initial reaction was that of ‘wannabe cop’ + ‘wannabe thug’ = tragedy.
My opinion changed in short order when I started reading the facts that the posters there were exposing. Z haters are not open to other theories of what happened. Why bother since they already know ‘the truth’. It’s rare that truth isn’t relative but when it comes to Left wing belief, it’s turns into dogma.
As we learned from Mr. John Dunne, facts are an inconvenient irrelevancy.
Only thing that counts is to put oneself on the right side of the racism issue.
Here is another outstanding source, they have debunked the false narrative point by point from day one.
When I was young and growing up, I looked at a policeman with awe, not fear or hatred or disgust. Whenever I might find myself on someone’s property, I announced myself. I did not feel comfortable, and I certainly didn’t feel like I had the right to not be confronted. About the greatest crime of my youth was stealing apples from an apple tree. And I didn’t do it because I thought the apples belonged to me; I did it because of a dare and it seemed like a wild but wonderful thing to do. That was adolescence and it represents the America that used to be, where the neighbor’s dad could scold and run off the mouthy and be backed up by parents and teachers and the community.
Now, thanks to WG (white guilt), all minority youths (and by extension white youth) are a matter only for the police–like everything else. And the police, tasked to do a job which belongs to all of us, are isolated and unsupported. No wonder there was a rise in police brutality. And given the decline in the teaching of restraint and humanity, alot of the brutality was heinous, but much of it was merely a requirement of survival. You ask me, many police were less supported and less equipped to fight crime than any military unit in a war.
As usual with the progressive agenda, the thug, the creep, the hippie was excused, even apotheosized. A million movies excoriated the police and Hollywood let us know the police were pigs. Few of the elite even cared to know, much less assert, that 90% of black murder is accomplished by another black, or that the rate of blacks murdering whites is vastly greater than the rate of blacks as a percent of our country.
So how is it that there should be one iota of “black fear or outrage?” Let me offer this: that a scapegoat is a mighty handy thing. Hitler knew it and sold a great lie. The same type of great lie is and has been sold, and if you are white, you might think of the denial the European Jew expressed before they were annihilated.
You’re right, Marina, theconservativetreehouse.com’s reporting on this case has been stellar. Sort of like old-fashioned investigative reporters who worked at newspapers. Remember them? Long ago, once upon a time?
Meanwhile, our so-called “legitimate media” have been misrepresenting, distorting, and ignoring the facts of this case from the beginning. They seem to be hell-bent on fomenting a race war.
“They seem to be hell-bent on fomenting a race war.”
When it comes to deer, antelope, or elk I go for a kill shot to the heart and my eyes can still perform at 200 yards with open sights. It will be blood in the streets in my neighborhood if push comes to shove. The fascists will need to wrap their heads in multiple layers of kevlar to stop a 192 grain FMJ 8MM.
That conservative commune site is decent, but they go a bit overboard, e.g., reporting on a “citizen’s grand jury” thing which is just some website and not some sort of formal step of the judicial system as is implied.
Parker,
You ain’t shootin without me!
“Knowing a defensive position has valid interlocking fields of fire greatly increases defender confidence and their ability to defeat an attacking force with a minimal amount of resources.”
Obviously, we’ve already established our range and targets. We’ve got good flash suppression and plenty of ammo. Some flares for night light and smoke grenades for cover. And we’ve either dug in or we’re behind a bunch of earth and concrete. All we need is some Claymore’s out front.
Jamie Foxx has doubled down on his racist antics. What a shame; he’s a talented actor. But to hell with him.
He’s taken to wearing a Trayvon t-shirt and making inflammatory statements about George. Poor multimillionaire that he is; evil old America and those awful white people have treated Jamie So badly that he just can’t get over it.
Did I mention I’m old and would much rather die in battle than by healthcare. I might just consider it a bonus to take out a death panel.
Hello, can I get those death pills. Thank you.
BOOM.
Uhhh, as potential hero of the people, I’d like to petition for a head transplant.
Okay.
And a plaque that reads “Justice for Zimmerman.”
Readers,
How many of you out there are afraid? You’re afraid to say what you really believe. Why?
You don’t quite agree with all my rhetoric and bombast, but you’re deathly tired of the obvious race hustlers and you want to prevent Al Sharpton from turning Trayvon into a Tawana.
I’ll man the front lines, you just express your honest to god true thoughts.
That’s all.
“interlocking fields of fire”
My wife, our sons and daughter and their spouses and underage grand children, our brothers and sisters, our nephews and nieces, and our cousins will ‘interlock’. You are free to join us. 😉 We all can shoot and we understand tactics.
“I might just consider it a bonus to take out a death panel.”
Read Unintended Consequences by John Ross. That is how to fight the machine once the war to end all wars begins. Keep blades sharp and bludgeons ready.
“Poor multimillionaire that he is; evil old America and those awful white people have treated Jamie So badly that he just can’t get over it.”
I got dead aim with a 357. Today, tomorrow, and when ever is a good day to die. Fold it five ways and let the chips fall. I’ve lived a good life and i am ready to die.
Until the end, Parker, you’re worth more as an educator and drill sergeant directing the troops. What’s in your head, as far as basic drill and weapons handling, is worth far more than your death taking out a few dozen (let it be so.)
People keep wanting to deny, deny, deny. They want to keep the truth at bay while the most repugant and offensive persons assume control as judges, police and city managers. These toads defraud and lie and discriminate against Christians and Catholics and eventually everyone, and there is no response!
We are the response!
Hopefully, the majority, which is on our side, will activate and shrug off the evil philosophy that there is no truth and that anything goes. But it does not matter to us what the majority or minority do. In the words which helped establish American tradition, “Give me liberty or give me death.”
Song of the Soul-of-Man
When I was Solo-man
I was unsure, although
the plan was pure. I filled
all my appetites and
my eyes and ears; but now
I love the wonderous Word.
Maintaining reality:
I have spoken, lately, to Charlie (Charlie Sheen! and by extension, the American people!) and he is not happy of the revelation of certain secrets!
But as Charlie tells me, there are enormous (ginormous, as in phalic-normous) revelations in the George Zimmerman trial. According to Charlie, the trial is a mock trial of the Cylons attempt to dominate the bumble gun market. Or perhaps the candy market. Or real estate. Yeah real estate. He’s sure now it’s real estate although real estate and bumble gum are pretty much the same thing.
All of us need to be concerned since black people buy a lot of bubble gum and could use their boycott in destructive ways. The NAACP of Africa, otherwise known as Africa, want to endorse the idea that all American bumble gum is theirs. Charlie has called them and offered his brokering services. Thank God.
Finally, concerning national consumption of large sodas, certain Mayors have have stated its okay as long as an equal amount of protein is consumed. These same Mayors also need a lot of pyramid builders. So.
Since I recently completed CHL training, I have a slightly different opinion of the Zimmerman/Martin incident than I did when it was first reported. Assuming Zimmerman’s story is true, and I believe it is, he was within his legal right to defend himself. But.
But I also believe he has set back the right of citizens to carry a weapon for self defense. In my case, the class instructors focused a lot on what the statutes say, and real cases of licensed people who have defended themselves. The reality is that even those who have been in situations where the average observer would agree they were justified to use deadly force, the legal difficulties of convincing a grand jury your life was in danger is quite a different matter. The instructors spend a lot of the class challenging you to think about why you want to have such a license, and when you would cross that line to use deadly force. By doing so, you are putting yourself in a situation that may not end well for you. You may be indicted, and a jury may find you guilty. Even if you’re cleared, you’re going to spend $50-100k to defend yourself in the aftermath, because you can still be sued in civil court regardless of your innocence.
Regarding Zimmerman – if he was just on his way home, minding his own business and he was attacked, that’s a clear case of self defense – or as clear as it can be.. But the intent of the license to carry isn’t for people to deputize themselves and patrol their neighborhoods — i’m not denying his right to do that, (and it sounds like he did this on other occasions) but it’s not the reason we have the right to carry a weapon for self defense. At the very least, don’t do these things alone.
If he had not been carrying a weapon, I doubt he would have been following suspicious characters in his neighborhood, or anywhere else.- the fact he had a gun is one reason he was willing to be the neighborhood watch guy – and do so alone. So to take it one step further, I believe he put himself in a dangerous situation he could have avoided, and he put himself in it simply because he was armed. Whether we agree with it or not, the right to carry is not intended for this kind of use, although I understand the Florida law actually allows for it in some broad sense. Even if if does allow him to be an instigator or initiator, this trial is evidence that laws can be interpreted different ways and with race injected, all bets are off as to what a jury will do.
So my thinking is a little different now – I think Zimmerman was very stupid, and not the kind of person who should be licensed to carry a firearm. I don’t doubt he felt he was going to get his brains beat in at the moment he pulled the trigger, and from what he says, Martin saw the gun and went for it. That’s fear for your life, but the context is going to be investigated and considered, and the CHL classes teach you to understand this can and probably will happen after such an incident. Zimmerman stretched his right to carry further than necessary, and beyond what was intended for reasonable citizens to defend themselves. He should have known better. If Martin were in his front yard, or somebody else’s, kicking in doors or assaulting someone, that’s a different situation – looking suspicious isn’t a good reason to put yourself in danger – let the cops handle that, and go back to your house and defend YOUR property and family.
For a person to carry a weapon, they need to know the difference between being proactive in situations, and when you or another person is about to become a victim of a potentially life threatening crime. If Zimmerman felt he was going to die, the law allows him to to do what he did, but it’s a risky and questionable situation for him to have stepped into, and his actions don’t help the rest of us who can be trusted to use better judgment.
“So my thinking is a little different now — I think Zimmerman was very stupid, and not the kind of person who should be licensed to carry a firearm.”
This is based upon the premise that one can read the minds of other people merely because journalism has exposed their private affairs.
Human empathy doesn’t cross hundreds of miles of real space, at least not normal human can do so.
It’s a very falsifiable premise. This makes the same mistake as it accuses Z of: bad judgment backed up by the erroneous assumption that one has the power and knowledge to get it right.
One of the ways the Left advances government totalitarianism is by convincing the regular folks at the bottom that some guy doing X is somehow going to affect your security, wealth, and freedom negatively. This can easily convince people to give power to the government in order to “fix” things.
Conservatives are actually even weaker to this type of propaganda than other people, due to the ideology over “personal responsibility”.
The Left can blame all sorts of things on “personal responsibility” and their enemies eat it up. Sarah Palin was “responsible” for ethics violations. George Bush was “responsible” for lying about WMDs and people dying from lies.
People just eat it up.
Personally, the Left are full of evil people who need to be terminated with extreme prejudice and whenever they talk about personal or legal responsibility, I don’t hear a word of it. Not a single word. I don’t care who they think is responsible. I don’t care who they think is right or wrong. I don’t care who they think should be punished or crucified as a result of it.
I’ll deal with all those questions of “personal responsibility” after the blacks and other slaves have been freed and the Leftists terminated. Then we’ll hold a jury and trial, a real one, to determine who was “responsible for what”.
Ymarskar –
Quite to the contrary, my thinking about Zimmerman being stupid hasn’t anything to do with the media’s take on any of it. My thinking is based solely on asking myself under what circumstances I would choose to carry, and what circumstances would prompt me t use the gun. That was a result of the training I got which explained the potential legal consequences of shooting a person in self-defense and deciding what represents a genuine threat.
The training is very clear that when you decide to carry the firearm, you are taking a big risk yourself. If you use it, you need to be certain it’s a life threatening situation, and moreover, you need to convince a grand jury and a police detective of that. You cannot dismiss that the detectives and DA are going to examine closely the situation — and how you came into a life threatening situation is a valid question. Being carjacked is different situation than driving home from the grocery store and noticing a punk wandering around your neighborhood, and following him. You can certainly do that, but you’re trained to understand that no matter what the situation is in a shooting, you’re going to be arrested, thrown in the back of a police car, and taken to the station for questioning. The advice in CHL training is not to say anything without a lawyer. Nothing. So based on what I have learned, I think Zimmerman used bad judgement, IF he expected anything other than a lot of trouble, and part of carrying a weapon is deciding where and when you are going to be in situations where you would need to defend yourself. The vast majority of people have a good idea of when they might be going to a dangerous area or situation and using judgment is part of the responsibility of carrying a concealed weapon. Most of CHL training is explaining to you that you are assuming a lot of risk, even in a clear cut self defense case. And they show you many, many examples of real cases that don’t make the national news, where people who were attacked through no fault of their own went through legal hell defending themselves.
There’s no doubt in my mind that Zimmerman was either poorly trained, or used very bad judgement to put himself into that situation. Before you put on the gun, you need to be clear in your mind when it is needed and when it isn’t. And that is his problem with self defense — in the moment he used the gun, it was self defense, in the moments leading up to that, he should have been thinking about where he was going and what he was doing. Martin had no right to assault him, but Zimmerman could have avoided it, and was advised to do so by the police. He should have taken that advice. The definition of self defense begins with avoiding or managing conflict when possible, and his best self defense in this case was to go home.
I would recommend the classes even if you have no intention of getting a license. Probably half the contributors to this site have a license — I don’t know. My opinion is you need to think long and hard ahead of time before you walk out the door with the gun. If Zimmerman has done this, and still decided this was the kind of situation where he needed to insert himself and use his gun, then I stand by my statement that he is stupid and shouldn’t have a license. Because that says he made up his mind ahead of time he might do something like this.
“My thinking is based solely on asking myself under what circumstances I would choose to carry,”
So basically you believe you know what Zimmerman was thinking and deciding because you know what you would decide and do in the same circumstance.
Except, Zimmerman is not you and you aren’t him. He can neither impact your rights and safety any more than you could help or hinder Zimmerman at this junction in time.
The idea that is flawed and false is that you know what Zimmerman was thinking and deciding, purely because the media gave you descriptions of what people thought happened and purely because you have an idea of yourself.
That is the flaw in the arch.
The best you can claim at this juncture is that you would have done things differently given Zimmerman’s context and events. Your claims weren’t so much focused on your own individual behavior as on other people. That was the conclusion you obtained.
“And that is his problem with self defense”
His problems are not your problems. When you start thinking like his judgment is somehow negatively affecting your circumstance, you go down a completely wrong road to begin with.
If you call into question Zimmerman’s judgment, for whatever reason, then I call into question your own judgment about what it is “other people should do”. Nothing you have said makes me think you have any idea of what is the right course of action for other people. All you have spoken of is training that benefits yourself.
Where is your training that allowed you to help, train, and benefit others though?
It looks like the Trayvon Martin case is just the tip of the iceberg — a friend sent me this Drudge Report link:
The Dissident Media have uncovered something the Pravda Media aren’t covering (again). Martin’s previous criminal activity was covered up even before the shooting — by an elaborate scheme by the Miami School Police Dept. concocted to knock down the statistics of, specifically, black male crime in the schools.
Therefore, Martin’s theft of women’s jewelry (including diamond earrings) wasn’t reported as a theft; the jewelry was never returned to the owner, but parked in the Property Dept. (lost and found), and he was suspended from school briefly. His egg donor and sperm donor (absent parents) knew nothing of the incident.
“The final approach, to insure no-one would find out about the manipulation, was to change the Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for inter-agency information sharing.
“This new SOP was outlined by a communications directive in 2010 forbidding the sharing of Miami-Dade School Police reports to outside agencies without redaction. Officers had to send any and all requests through the public information officer.”
Miami’s School Police also reclassifies black male criminal activity as psychological disorders so they can sweep it under the rug of the HIPAA confidentiality laws.
Then they claimed they “reduced school crime” by 60%!! See how it’s done? Class dismissed.
Ymarskar- when you pick up a gun and carry it out the door, you have either thought in advance of what you will and will not use it for, or you are a dangerous fool. My perspective I suppose.
I carry a 380 when I am in big cities. And I respect no law that says I do not have the right to defend myself with lethal force should I have good reasons to fear bodily harm. At all other times I have an Applegate-Faribairn combat folder with both edges sharpened. I chose to carry a weapon whenever I walk out the door. I walk upright, breathe the atmosphere. and piss water therefore I have the right to possess the tools of self defense.
“Ymarskar- when you pick up a gun and carry it out the door, ”
The most you have been trained or taught to think is that “I am stupid if I make these decisions”.
You are neither qualified nor trained to be talking about what other people should be doing.
You are going to waste a significant amount of the benefit you got in concealed handgun license training separating yourself from “other people” when the objective was to get you to think about yourself. The objective was not for you to become a qualified court witness or judge of what happened to somebody else.
I have my own judgments as to what is correct or not, but I am not foolish enough to attempt to apply them to people I have never killed, ate with, interviewed, or psychologically analyzed.
That’s because it’s been long enough since the time of my original training, that I’ve had time to think “beyond” myself. Southpaw, you will need a lot more time than you’ve had, to be able to think of other people as they should be thought of.
When people are initially trained, whether due to inexperience or youth, they always think there is a single correct answer: A. They think that either because that’s what their experience showed them or whether because instructors showed them video and conditioned them to think so, doesn’t matter.
There is no single correct judgment. There is no “If that guy didn’t think ahead and come to the EXACT SAME CONCLUSION AS I HAVE, they are stupid”.
There is no such thing.
And a word of warning. The more you think like that Southpaw, the more you contribute to your own risk if you come to any situation that requires objective, exact, immediate survival based decision making. Human beings have a number of different goals and thoughts. The blind assumption that other people in this world think exactly the same or that they are operating by the same rules and parameters, or priorities, has gotten more than one human killed. They made the wrong assumption and obtained the wrong premise. They were too busy thinking about what was wrong with the other guy’s behavior, that they forgot about interrogating their own actions and thoughts.
Whether I agree with your concept of preparation, Southpaw, doesn’t matter. For the record, I agree with the majority of it when it concerns caution and avoiding unnecessary conflict. But we’re not talking about what you would have done or what I would have done. I was specifically interested in what Zimmerman had done and his motivations.
If all you had claimed about things was that “you would have been stupid to have done what Zimmerman was said to have done or you would have been stupid to have decided the things that eventually led to Zimmerman’s fate” I would most likely have agreed with you. But that wasn’t exactly the line of thought you chose to investigate.
If Zimmerman’s fate brings about caution, wisdom, and benefit to yourself or someone else, then learning about and investigating the matter would be a noble cause worthy of effort. If Zimmerman’s fate is investigated because people are interested in obtaining arrogant power and superiority over those they think inferior and mistaken, then the investigators are living on pillars of sand.
Leave a Reply
HTML tags allowed in your
comment: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>
That’s a auspicious name for this context.
I have been following it (more closely than I like to admit). One thing I’ve noticed is that people who are not following it closely seem to have developed a very strong personal bias against Zimmerman. Having now learned more about him and the events of that night (through observing the trial itself), I wouldn’t say that I have a “favorable” opinion of him but I can certainly see why the initial decision not to prosecute was made.
Thus far the State’s case has been so weak that the best results they have been able to tease from their own witnesses are mere concessions that there is indeed reasonable doubt, and even those instances have been rare. Most of their witnesses have 100% corroborated the self-defense defense.
Against a backdrop of race-baiting publicity and misinformation spread by the MSM (not to mention the president’s ill-advised commentary on the case), I can certainly understand why many people still think GZ was a nosy, meddling wanna be cop — and from what I’ve see this stereotype is not being borne out by the evidence – – and should be convicted of at least ‘something’.
And I can’t help but remarking that there is another big elephant in the room here besides race, and that’s the presence of the handgun itself.
One of the things my first round of instructors kept telling me was that people, civilian or law based prosecutors, would always try to get me if my justifications for using force were not iron clad. Meaning, I always had to justify my use of force at the same level of lethal force, as justified on police rules of engagement. A bit looser for a civilian, but at the same level. They wouldn’t let me do things like beat people up at bars because they were asking for it. They kept droning on and on about how if I ever used force, based upon the various things they taught me, it has to be when I feared for my life or just wanted to end the other person’s life. No exceptions.
Later on, I sort of figured out why that was so specifically, since they didn’t give any specifics about the legal issue. But other people did give legal examples, such as civilians suing you even if the court found you innocent of homicide or something (unjustified homicide).
This caused me to think of the things my original round of instructors told me in a new light. While I knew that they were speaking the real deal in terms of experience and wisdom, it did not particularly sit well with my image of myself to always be backing off from temptations, provocations, and various other things. I suppose if I thought I reacted and moved myself away from violence, it would either follow me or put me in a weaker position. As I saw more legal examples, I became aware of how I could use that to my advantage. If they were going to get me, no matter what I did, and the only thing that mattered was witness testimony, evidence and what not, then it was my strategic responsibility to stack the decks in my favor. Assuming the tactical situation was not something I felt afraid of losing.
So I kept wondering and asking myself, “if that guy pulls a knife on me, should I pretend to run away and maybe sustain a knife wound, just so I can have an excuse to kill him”. If 5 guys to 20 are chasing me down a street, maybe I can run down a single person alleyway after confirming there is a witness, and ambushing as many of them were stupid enough to follow me.
Strategy motivated me to question the environment I was in before the conflict and after the conflict, with witnesses, personal behavior, and evidence that either goes against me or supports my position.
For in human conflict, tactics can win any number of battles, but a single wrong strategy can lose you the war.
Two general types of people exist who can navigate such events.
1. The battle experienced, who have learned from victories or loss how to get things done.
But there’s another one, surprisingly
2. The person that has little to no battle experience because he has correctly used strategy to avoid all conflicts where he might have lost and only engaged in conflicts where he had 100% chance of victory.
This is a derivation and branch splitting of the concept that the best self defense for civilians come from mimicking people who have never been in a fight, rather than learning from those who have been in a lot of fights. There’s a reason why that guy has gotten that many fight experience on the streets and bars, and it’s not because everyone hates him on sight. There’s a reason why that civilian hasn’t gotten in a fight, and it’s not because everyone loves him on sight.
Zimmerman would have had better chances against both his immediate enemies as well as future enemies if he had just prepared some extra evidence. Whether he allowed the situation to produce that evidence or merely gathered it after the fight (medical reports) doesn’t really matter. If you aren’t particularly afraid of someone, but you want an excuse to kill them, have them injure you in some fashion that can be documented, kill them, then say that you were in fear of your life.
Any normal person would have been, after all. But people under fear usually don’t think in the long term: strategically that is.
My fear here is that the jury will come to the same conclusion that the prosecution here- it is totally worth it to imprison this guy to avoid the wrath of the mob and race hustling activists.
One of the reasons why I sought out training and knowledge of martial arts, wasn’t really about exercise or self defense techniques, although I suppose I got some practical benefit out of it in those categories. The primary reason was because I didn’t know how to use what I knew, without the outcome being either my enemies being dead or me being dead. So it felt really like I knew nothing at all, at least in the case of 93% of incidents where people are in conflict and someone doesn’t end up dead. If what I know only applied to that slim 10%, then what the heck was I doing for the super majority of the time?
That led me to start researching martial arts and its ‘lingo’. I was trying to find some non-lethal methods which I could use. In my journey, I found out that non lethal methods were much harder to learn and use than lethal ones. That was rather counter intuitive to the stuff I was culturalized with.
I also found out of monkey do, monkey see training methods which didn’t appear very effective. Since civilian conflicts are often held without preparation, advance knowledge, or chain of command. No matter how good your instructor is, if all you can do is copy his moves and the words out of his book of life, that isn’t going to do you much good when you are in a life and death conflict and he is nowhere for you to “consult with”.
Military style training is very quick and convenient, except when all the NCOs and officers happen to die at once. Then the guy on the bottom has a problem figuring out what to do. That soldier can still fight, and die, for the cause, but not sure whether his hard work will come out of anything in the end. There’s no brain dictating the tactics or strategy any more.
Much of American self defense methods are based around “do what you see me do”. I don’t like it. Why? Because when push comes to shove and somebody loses their eye, you are going to have to decide what is right or wrong, what is acceptable or unacceptable, what you are or are not willing to kill/die for. If all you have ever been told when you were learning was “copy what I do, you’ll be good in a decade or two”, you will not be very competent at making good decisions for yourself. The police won’t tell you what to do, they only arrive to get the body bags. Your mother and father won’t be there for you to consult. Your instructor and your instructor’s instructor won’t be there for you to ask them to show you the “right techniques” to use.
You’ll be by yourself, operating alone for the most part, with all decisions and responsibilities. And whatever results… will be on you, entirely.
Those who have not prepared themselves to shoulder this responsibility, instead shoving it off to somebody else or somebody else’s school of martial arts ideology or self defense ideology… might be very surprised at what life smacks them with. Life is full of challenges. You are either up to the task or not. And there is no Democrat welfare agency that will give you a “leg up”.
A few years ago (maybe even a decade), i was talking to some “Libertarians” (aka anti gun Leftists that self proclaim themselves liberty fighters) about guns used for home defense. I was arguing that handguns should be an option for a person to use. Other people were talking about shotguns always being good and handguns being easily bannable since they’ll have shotguns for home defense.
The point was, there will be some people who decide that a handgun is better for their defense than a shotgun, of whatever caliber or type. Taking away these options, in order to benefit yourself and whomever you care about at the cost of other people’s lives, is called evil. Well, I didn’t call it evil back then because I didn’t really know what “Leftist evil” was at the time.
In the course of that “discussion”, the topic was brought up concerning shooting center mass. I was of the belief that sufficiently trained and skilled people can choose to shoot at limbs, instead of going for the kill, if they felt the situation was not that dangerous. The handgun banners felt that one should always shoot center mass. But not just that, but that there “were no situations” where shooting at anything else than that was correct.
Yet I know of at least one person that can reliably shoot people in the head with a handgun at relatively close ranges. That’s not center mass. There’s also times when brandishing a gun has stopped escalation of fights, and nobody was shot center mass then. While it is a great legal recommendation to not pull out a gun unless you intend to shoot at center mass and go for the kill, my concern was not really with legalities. (Laws are not that meaningful to me, except in so far as the penalties are applied)
What I was concerned with was personal decision making, freedom of choice, and the ability to include all sorts of people with all sorts of decisions and situations.
Those of the Left live in a very constrained world where people are only given a choice between 1 or 2 “best judgments”. Anything else, it seems, is flawed or mistaken or illegal. I believe that there are limitless numbers of “best judgments”, just as there are unlimited situations and people who make them.
In a limited world where the correct decision is always A, in my world there is “no right decision” per say. Only the “right people” and their decision making.
As such, in a limited world Leftists seek to change the world and control the people in it, to force people to make the “best decisions”. Whereas I advocate that people should remake themselves into someone better, someone that is capable of making the “right choices” more than an average person could.
In Zimmerman’s case, our enemies are attempting to destroy him for violating one of their strange occult gun totem superstitions. Whereas I would have offered him help in training to overcome his own limitations. In many ways, we are already too late. The die has already been cast. But what of the several hundreds of millions the Left has yet to force into their little Cube Utopia?
What are we to do with them?
Ymarsakar – if you haven’t read VDH’s Carnage and Culture: Landmark Battles in the Rise to Western Power (link to Amazon), you might find it an interesting read on the subject of military training and leadership.
And the importance of “culture” in determining strategy and tactics.
Just FYI.
The babbling babblers are now speculating that the state is hoping that the jury will do a lesser charge of manslaughter. Ironically, in Florida, because a gun is involved that would be 30 years, same as 2nd degree murder.
The Judge really should dismiss the case after the prosecution rests; but, I do not expect that for reasons we all understand.
I suppose there will be many pools to guess how long Zimmerman will last in jail. Of course he will not be a lot safer outside of jail, unless he can get out of town and disappear.
Neo, so many people bought the trashing of Zimmerman before any evidence was available and they are not going to back off now.
By the way the Prosecution has started the campaign to present Zimmerman as a kill-mad cop wannabe. You see he studied criminal justice in college and did want to be a cop. Now, that is a bad thing?
Center mass is simply easier for most of us to hit. iN GENERAL, the mere presence of a pistol will end the assault.
To the use a shotgun crowd, let’s discuss toting one around and exactly how difficult it to bring one to bear in an enclosed space. Shotguns are fine, an Ar-15 is fine, put a pistol, in my humble opinion offers the best compromise of power to weight , flexibility and convenience .
I prefer .45
I’ve been chatting with people about home defense options and have been steered by more than one person to the 20 gauge shotgun with a pistol grip. While I own a 9 mm, I’d hate to have to aim in case I miss and shoot my through my neighbor’s house. My hope would be that the noise alone would cause someone to flee.
Center mass? After watching dash cams of police shootings, it would seem that ready-fire-aim results in few people actually getting hit, so perhaps aiming at anything is better than nothing in the heat of the moment.
Either way – if you do end up with a non-lethal shot, do you want to risk your life if the person is hopped up on drugs and continues to come at you? IM(very)HO, I would prefer that the other person ends up dead, not me. Indeed, my life would be changed forever, and I would offer up Mass after Mass for the criminal, but better him than me.
~
With regard to St. Trayvon, it appears that he jumped/suker punched/surprise attacked Zimmerman, and was having his head bashed into concrete. Given that such things can disable or kill you, and Z said that Martin went for the gun, I cannot fault him.
~
With regard to following the incident, I followed http://theconservativetreehouse.com/ in detail after someone posted the link somewhere. My initial reaction was that of ‘wannabe cop’ + ‘wannabe thug’ = tragedy.
My opinion changed in short order when I started reading the facts that the posters there were exposing. Z haters are not open to other theories of what happened. Why bother since they already know ‘the truth’. It’s rare that truth isn’t relative but when it comes to Left wing belief, it’s turns into dogma.
As we learned from Mr. John Dunne, facts are an inconvenient irrelevancy.
Only thing that counts is to put oneself on the right side of the racism issue.
Here is another outstanding source, they have debunked the false narrative point by point from day one.
http://theconservativetreehouse.com/
Marina.
Irrelevant. See mine of 9:23.
When I was young and growing up, I looked at a policeman with awe, not fear or hatred or disgust. Whenever I might find myself on someone’s property, I announced myself. I did not feel comfortable, and I certainly didn’t feel like I had the right to not be confronted. About the greatest crime of my youth was stealing apples from an apple tree. And I didn’t do it because I thought the apples belonged to me; I did it because of a dare and it seemed like a wild but wonderful thing to do. That was adolescence and it represents the America that used to be, where the neighbor’s dad could scold and run off the mouthy and be backed up by parents and teachers and the community.
Now, thanks to WG (white guilt), all minority youths (and by extension white youth) are a matter only for the police–like everything else. And the police, tasked to do a job which belongs to all of us, are isolated and unsupported. No wonder there was a rise in police brutality. And given the decline in the teaching of restraint and humanity, alot of the brutality was heinous, but much of it was merely a requirement of survival. You ask me, many police were less supported and less equipped to fight crime than any military unit in a war.
As usual with the progressive agenda, the thug, the creep, the hippie was excused, even apotheosized. A million movies excoriated the police and Hollywood let us know the police were pigs. Few of the elite even cared to know, much less assert, that 90% of black murder is accomplished by another black, or that the rate of blacks murdering whites is vastly greater than the rate of blacks as a percent of our country.
So how is it that there should be one iota of “black fear or outrage?” Let me offer this: that a scapegoat is a mighty handy thing. Hitler knew it and sold a great lie. The same type of great lie is and has been sold, and if you are white, you might think of the denial the European Jew expressed before they were annihilated.
You’re right, Marina, theconservativetreehouse.com’s reporting on this case has been stellar. Sort of like old-fashioned investigative reporters who worked at newspapers. Remember them? Long ago, once upon a time?
Meanwhile, our so-called “legitimate media” have been misrepresenting, distorting, and ignoring the facts of this case from the beginning. They seem to be hell-bent on fomenting a race war.
“They seem to be hell-bent on fomenting a race war.”
This will not end well for those hell-bent.
http://tinyurl.com/6eym9f8
“Center mass?”
When it comes to deer, antelope, or elk I go for a kill shot to the heart and my eyes can still perform at 200 yards with open sights. It will be blood in the streets in my neighborhood if push comes to shove. The fascists will need to wrap their heads in multiple layers of kevlar to stop a 192 grain FMJ 8MM.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvkSBX6Lofo
That conservative commune site is decent, but they go a bit overboard, e.g., reporting on a “citizen’s grand jury” thing which is just some website and not some sort of formal step of the judicial system as is implied.
Parker,
You ain’t shootin without me!
“Knowing a defensive position has valid interlocking fields of fire greatly increases defender confidence and their ability to defeat an attacking force with a minimal amount of resources.”
http://noblecotactical.com/1/post/2013/05/-establish-interlocking-fields-of-fire.html
Obviously, we’ve already established our range and targets. We’ve got good flash suppression and plenty of ammo. Some flares for night light and smoke grenades for cover. And we’ve either dug in or we’re behind a bunch of earth and concrete. All we need is some Claymore’s out front.
Jamie Foxx has doubled down on his racist antics. What a shame; he’s a talented actor. But to hell with him.
He’s taken to wearing a Trayvon t-shirt and making inflammatory statements about George. Poor multimillionaire that he is; evil old America and those awful white people have treated Jamie So badly that he just can’t get over it.
Did I mention I’m old and would much rather die in battle than by healthcare. I might just consider it a bonus to take out a death panel.
Hello, can I get those death pills. Thank you.
BOOM.
Uhhh, as potential hero of the people, I’d like to petition for a head transplant.
Okay.
And a plaque that reads “Justice for Zimmerman.”
Readers,
How many of you out there are afraid? You’re afraid to say what you really believe. Why?
You don’t quite agree with all my rhetoric and bombast, but you’re deathly tired of the obvious race hustlers and you want to prevent Al Sharpton from turning Trayvon into a Tawana.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/06/03/al-sharpton-s-long-bill-of-goods-from-tawana-brawley-to-primetime.html
I’ll man the front lines, you just express your honest to god true thoughts.
That’s all.
“interlocking fields of fire”
My wife, our sons and daughter and their spouses and underage grand children, our brothers and sisters, our nephews and nieces, and our cousins will ‘interlock’. You are free to join us. 😉 We all can shoot and we understand tactics.
“I might just consider it a bonus to take out a death panel.”
Read Unintended Consequences by John Ross. That is how to fight the machine once the war to end all wars begins. Keep blades sharp and bludgeons ready.
“Poor multimillionaire that he is; evil old America and those awful white people have treated Jamie So badly that he just can’t get over it.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kMFaFgC0PAg
I got dead aim with a 357. Today, tomorrow, and when ever is a good day to die. Fold it five ways and let the chips fall. I’ve lived a good life and i am ready to die.
Until the end, Parker, you’re worth more as an educator and drill sergeant directing the troops. What’s in your head, as far as basic drill and weapons handling, is worth far more than your death taking out a few dozen (let it be so.)
People keep wanting to deny, deny, deny. They want to keep the truth at bay while the most repugant and offensive persons assume control as judges, police and city managers. These toads defraud and lie and discriminate against Christians and Catholics and eventually everyone, and there is no response!
We are the response!
Hopefully, the majority, which is on our side, will activate and shrug off the evil philosophy that there is no truth and that anything goes. But it does not matter to us what the majority or minority do. In the words which helped establish American tradition, “Give me liberty or give me death.”
Song of the Soul-of-Man
When I was Solo-man
I was unsure, although
the plan was pure. I filled
all my appetites and
my eyes and ears; but now
I love the wonderous Word.
Maintaining reality:
I have spoken, lately, to Charlie (Charlie Sheen! and by extension, the American people!) and he is not happy of the revelation of certain secrets!
But as Charlie tells me, there are enormous (ginormous, as in phalic-normous) revelations in the George Zimmerman trial. According to Charlie, the trial is a mock trial of the Cylons attempt to dominate the bumble gun market. Or perhaps the candy market. Or real estate. Yeah real estate. He’s sure now it’s real estate although real estate and bumble gum are pretty much the same thing.
All of us need to be concerned since black people buy a lot of bubble gum and could use their boycott in destructive ways. The NAACP of Africa, otherwise known as Africa, want to endorse the idea that all American bumble gum is theirs. Charlie has called them and offered his brokering services. Thank God.
Finally, concerning national consumption of large sodas, certain Mayors have have stated its okay as long as an equal amount of protein is consumed. These same Mayors also need a lot of pyramid builders. So.
Since I recently completed CHL training, I have a slightly different opinion of the Zimmerman/Martin incident than I did when it was first reported. Assuming Zimmerman’s story is true, and I believe it is, he was within his legal right to defend himself. But.
But I also believe he has set back the right of citizens to carry a weapon for self defense. In my case, the class instructors focused a lot on what the statutes say, and real cases of licensed people who have defended themselves. The reality is that even those who have been in situations where the average observer would agree they were justified to use deadly force, the legal difficulties of convincing a grand jury your life was in danger is quite a different matter. The instructors spend a lot of the class challenging you to think about why you want to have such a license, and when you would cross that line to use deadly force. By doing so, you are putting yourself in a situation that may not end well for you. You may be indicted, and a jury may find you guilty. Even if you’re cleared, you’re going to spend $50-100k to defend yourself in the aftermath, because you can still be sued in civil court regardless of your innocence.
Regarding Zimmerman – if he was just on his way home, minding his own business and he was attacked, that’s a clear case of self defense – or as clear as it can be.. But the intent of the license to carry isn’t for people to deputize themselves and patrol their neighborhoods — i’m not denying his right to do that, (and it sounds like he did this on other occasions) but it’s not the reason we have the right to carry a weapon for self defense. At the very least, don’t do these things alone.
If he had not been carrying a weapon, I doubt he would have been following suspicious characters in his neighborhood, or anywhere else.- the fact he had a gun is one reason he was willing to be the neighborhood watch guy – and do so alone. So to take it one step further, I believe he put himself in a dangerous situation he could have avoided, and he put himself in it simply because he was armed. Whether we agree with it or not, the right to carry is not intended for this kind of use, although I understand the Florida law actually allows for it in some broad sense. Even if if does allow him to be an instigator or initiator, this trial is evidence that laws can be interpreted different ways and with race injected, all bets are off as to what a jury will do.
So my thinking is a little different now – I think Zimmerman was very stupid, and not the kind of person who should be licensed to carry a firearm. I don’t doubt he felt he was going to get his brains beat in at the moment he pulled the trigger, and from what he says, Martin saw the gun and went for it. That’s fear for your life, but the context is going to be investigated and considered, and the CHL classes teach you to understand this can and probably will happen after such an incident. Zimmerman stretched his right to carry further than necessary, and beyond what was intended for reasonable citizens to defend themselves. He should have known better. If Martin were in his front yard, or somebody else’s, kicking in doors or assaulting someone, that’s a different situation – looking suspicious isn’t a good reason to put yourself in danger – let the cops handle that, and go back to your house and defend YOUR property and family.
For a person to carry a weapon, they need to know the difference between being proactive in situations, and when you or another person is about to become a victim of a potentially life threatening crime. If Zimmerman felt he was going to die, the law allows him to to do what he did, but it’s a risky and questionable situation for him to have stepped into, and his actions don’t help the rest of us who can be trusted to use better judgment.
“So my thinking is a little different now — I think Zimmerman was very stupid, and not the kind of person who should be licensed to carry a firearm.”
This is based upon the premise that one can read the minds of other people merely because journalism has exposed their private affairs.
Human empathy doesn’t cross hundreds of miles of real space, at least not normal human can do so.
It’s a very falsifiable premise. This makes the same mistake as it accuses Z of: bad judgment backed up by the erroneous assumption that one has the power and knowledge to get it right.
One of the ways the Left advances government totalitarianism is by convincing the regular folks at the bottom that some guy doing X is somehow going to affect your security, wealth, and freedom negatively. This can easily convince people to give power to the government in order to “fix” things.
Conservatives are actually even weaker to this type of propaganda than other people, due to the ideology over “personal responsibility”.
The Left can blame all sorts of things on “personal responsibility” and their enemies eat it up. Sarah Palin was “responsible” for ethics violations. George Bush was “responsible” for lying about WMDs and people dying from lies.
People just eat it up.
Personally, the Left are full of evil people who need to be terminated with extreme prejudice and whenever they talk about personal or legal responsibility, I don’t hear a word of it. Not a single word. I don’t care who they think is responsible. I don’t care who they think is right or wrong. I don’t care who they think should be punished or crucified as a result of it.
I’ll deal with all those questions of “personal responsibility” after the blacks and other slaves have been freed and the Leftists terminated. Then we’ll hold a jury and trial, a real one, to determine who was “responsible for what”.
Ymarskar –
Quite to the contrary, my thinking about Zimmerman being stupid hasn’t anything to do with the media’s take on any of it. My thinking is based solely on asking myself under what circumstances I would choose to carry, and what circumstances would prompt me t use the gun. That was a result of the training I got which explained the potential legal consequences of shooting a person in self-defense and deciding what represents a genuine threat.
The training is very clear that when you decide to carry the firearm, you are taking a big risk yourself. If you use it, you need to be certain it’s a life threatening situation, and moreover, you need to convince a grand jury and a police detective of that. You cannot dismiss that the detectives and DA are going to examine closely the situation — and how you came into a life threatening situation is a valid question. Being carjacked is different situation than driving home from the grocery store and noticing a punk wandering around your neighborhood, and following him. You can certainly do that, but you’re trained to understand that no matter what the situation is in a shooting, you’re going to be arrested, thrown in the back of a police car, and taken to the station for questioning. The advice in CHL training is not to say anything without a lawyer. Nothing. So based on what I have learned, I think Zimmerman used bad judgement, IF he expected anything other than a lot of trouble, and part of carrying a weapon is deciding where and when you are going to be in situations where you would need to defend yourself. The vast majority of people have a good idea of when they might be going to a dangerous area or situation and using judgment is part of the responsibility of carrying a concealed weapon. Most of CHL training is explaining to you that you are assuming a lot of risk, even in a clear cut self defense case. And they show you many, many examples of real cases that don’t make the national news, where people who were attacked through no fault of their own went through legal hell defending themselves.
There’s no doubt in my mind that Zimmerman was either poorly trained, or used very bad judgement to put himself into that situation. Before you put on the gun, you need to be clear in your mind when it is needed and when it isn’t. And that is his problem with self defense — in the moment he used the gun, it was self defense, in the moments leading up to that, he should have been thinking about where he was going and what he was doing. Martin had no right to assault him, but Zimmerman could have avoided it, and was advised to do so by the police. He should have taken that advice. The definition of self defense begins with avoiding or managing conflict when possible, and his best self defense in this case was to go home.
I would recommend the classes even if you have no intention of getting a license. Probably half the contributors to this site have a license — I don’t know. My opinion is you need to think long and hard ahead of time before you walk out the door with the gun. If Zimmerman has done this, and still decided this was the kind of situation where he needed to insert himself and use his gun, then I stand by my statement that he is stupid and shouldn’t have a license. Because that says he made up his mind ahead of time he might do something like this.
“My thinking is based solely on asking myself under what circumstances I would choose to carry,”
So basically you believe you know what Zimmerman was thinking and deciding because you know what you would decide and do in the same circumstance.
Except, Zimmerman is not you and you aren’t him. He can neither impact your rights and safety any more than you could help or hinder Zimmerman at this junction in time.
The idea that is flawed and false is that you know what Zimmerman was thinking and deciding, purely because the media gave you descriptions of what people thought happened and purely because you have an idea of yourself.
That is the flaw in the arch.
The best you can claim at this juncture is that you would have done things differently given Zimmerman’s context and events. Your claims weren’t so much focused on your own individual behavior as on other people. That was the conclusion you obtained.
“And that is his problem with self defense”
His problems are not your problems. When you start thinking like his judgment is somehow negatively affecting your circumstance, you go down a completely wrong road to begin with.
If you call into question Zimmerman’s judgment, for whatever reason, then I call into question your own judgment about what it is “other people should do”. Nothing you have said makes me think you have any idea of what is the right course of action for other people. All you have spoken of is training that benefits yourself.
Where is your training that allowed you to help, train, and benefit others though?
It looks like the Trayvon Martin case is just the tip of the iceberg — a friend sent me this Drudge Report link:
http://patdollard.com/2013/06/trayvon-martins-involvement-in-local-burglaries-covered-up-by-media-school-police/
The Dissident Media have uncovered something the Pravda Media aren’t covering (again). Martin’s previous criminal activity was covered up even before the shooting — by an elaborate scheme by the Miami School Police Dept. concocted to knock down the statistics of, specifically, black male crime in the schools.
Therefore, Martin’s theft of women’s jewelry (including diamond earrings) wasn’t reported as a theft; the jewelry was never returned to the owner, but parked in the Property Dept. (lost and found), and he was suspended from school briefly. His egg donor and sperm donor (absent parents) knew nothing of the incident.
“The final approach, to insure no-one would find out about the manipulation, was to change the Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) for inter-agency information sharing.
“This new SOP was outlined by a communications directive in 2010 forbidding the sharing of Miami-Dade School Police reports to outside agencies without redaction. Officers had to send any and all requests through the public information officer.”
Miami’s School Police also reclassifies black male criminal activity as psychological disorders so they can sweep it under the rug of the HIPAA confidentiality laws.
Then they claimed they “reduced school crime” by 60%!! See how it’s done? Class dismissed.
Ymarskar- when you pick up a gun and carry it out the door, you have either thought in advance of what you will and will not use it for, or you are a dangerous fool. My perspective I suppose.
I carry a 380 when I am in big cities. And I respect no law that says I do not have the right to defend myself with lethal force should I have good reasons to fear bodily harm. At all other times I have an Applegate-Faribairn combat folder with both edges sharpened. I chose to carry a weapon whenever I walk out the door. I walk upright, breathe the atmosphere. and piss water therefore I have the right to possess the tools of self defense.
“Ymarskar- when you pick up a gun and carry it out the door, ”
The most you have been trained or taught to think is that “I am stupid if I make these decisions”.
You are neither qualified nor trained to be talking about what other people should be doing.
You are going to waste a significant amount of the benefit you got in concealed handgun license training separating yourself from “other people” when the objective was to get you to think about yourself. The objective was not for you to become a qualified court witness or judge of what happened to somebody else.
I have my own judgments as to what is correct or not, but I am not foolish enough to attempt to apply them to people I have never killed, ate with, interviewed, or psychologically analyzed.
That’s because it’s been long enough since the time of my original training, that I’ve had time to think “beyond” myself. Southpaw, you will need a lot more time than you’ve had, to be able to think of other people as they should be thought of.
When people are initially trained, whether due to inexperience or youth, they always think there is a single correct answer: A. They think that either because that’s what their experience showed them or whether because instructors showed them video and conditioned them to think so, doesn’t matter.
There is no single correct judgment. There is no “If that guy didn’t think ahead and come to the EXACT SAME CONCLUSION AS I HAVE, they are stupid”.
There is no such thing.
And a word of warning. The more you think like that Southpaw, the more you contribute to your own risk if you come to any situation that requires objective, exact, immediate survival based decision making. Human beings have a number of different goals and thoughts. The blind assumption that other people in this world think exactly the same or that they are operating by the same rules and parameters, or priorities, has gotten more than one human killed. They made the wrong assumption and obtained the wrong premise. They were too busy thinking about what was wrong with the other guy’s behavior, that they forgot about interrogating their own actions and thoughts.
Whether I agree with your concept of preparation, Southpaw, doesn’t matter. For the record, I agree with the majority of it when it concerns caution and avoiding unnecessary conflict. But we’re not talking about what you would have done or what I would have done. I was specifically interested in what Zimmerman had done and his motivations.
If all you had claimed about things was that “you would have been stupid to have done what Zimmerman was said to have done or you would have been stupid to have decided the things that eventually led to Zimmerman’s fate” I would most likely have agreed with you. But that wasn’t exactly the line of thought you chose to investigate.
If Zimmerman’s fate brings about caution, wisdom, and benefit to yourself or someone else, then learning about and investigating the matter would be a noble cause worthy of effort. If Zimmerman’s fate is investigated because people are interested in obtaining arrogant power and superiority over those they think inferior and mistaken, then the investigators are living on pillars of sand.