The Trayvon Trial

Himeo_sl said:

You have freedom of speech not freedom from being offended. Walking up to someone or talking to someone is not provoking a fight. Physically restraining them, verbally threatening them, or attacking them is provocation. We have no evidence that Zimmerman did any of those things.

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noble savage_sl said:

Tanoomba your entire rant is based of the intent to go kill someone. Are you really saying that GZ's intent the whole time was to kill a black person and get away with it? Your fucking dumb.

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Duppin_sl said:

That doesn't mean he wasn't a racist asshole who has fulfilled his life's dream by gunning down a black man and (probably) getting away with it.

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Duppin_sl said:

I have said consistently through this thread that Zimmerman probably shouldn't be convicted, at least of murder, based on the actual evidence.

That doesn't mean he wasn't a racist asshole who has fulfilled his life's dream by gunning down a black man and (probably) getting away with it.

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Duppin_sl said:

I have said consistently through this thread that Martin probably shouldn't have been killed, at least this time, based on the actual evidence.

That doesn't mean he wasn't a punk ass thug who almost fulfilled his life's dream by beating down a white man and (theoretically) getting away with it.

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Duppin_sl said:

Boy, you sure are stuck on that, aren't you? I probably faked that Myspace page, too!

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Duppin_sl said:

Anyway, I'm getting off track here. Let's go back to talking about how awesome of a guy Zimmerman was, and how he just wanted to offer to buy Martin a pony.

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Tanoomba_sl said:

Really? I guess that means I can grab a gun then go out and pick fights with random dangerous-looking people. Once they've overpowered me (I'm not much of a fighter), I can shoot them dead and say I was defending my own life. Then I can find someone else, pick a fight, get the shit kicked out of me and shoot them too. Lather, rinse, repeat, and all the goons I can shoot with no consequences. Sounds like a great system. What's missing from this hypothetical situation? Oh yeah, any responsibility on my part for instigating the fights. You can say that as long as I don't throw the first punch I'm not breaking the law, right? So I can find some drunk guy or a college jock or a roid-raged bodybuilder, tell him that after I fucked his mother her vagina looked like his face, then legally shoot the guy after he beats the shit out of me. It's consequence-free murder! Why isn't everybody doing this all the time?

We can't say who threw the first punch between Zimmerman and Martin, there's no proof either way. A lot of people are assuming that Martin started the fight for no other reason than he's supposedly a "wanna-be gangster" or "that's just what makes more sense to me", as if that counted for shit. The fact that Martin was in a dominant position during the fight has zero correlation to who started the fight. Either one of them could have started with a "You got a problem, why don't you come do something about it?" or by pushing at the other's shoulder or by yelling threats. It really doesn't take much to get "macho" men (which applies to both young black men who feel they have to stand up for themselves and to "enforcers" who feel it's their duty to keep the undesirables in check) riled up enough to start fighting. It could very well be that Martin said something that pushed Zimmerman's button and got him to throw the first punch, then get overpowered and rely on his gun to kill the kid. It could have started the opposite way, with Zimmerman pushing Martin's button. Again, we'll never know. But unless you think my previous paragraph makes perfect sense, people should have to take responsibility for their actions, and that includes intimidating a stranger who had done nothing wrong. And yes, following somebody around and questioning their right to be there counts as intimidation. That's why we usually let authority figures handle it.

We can't just call this a case of "Welp, these things happen". Somebody died unnecessarily. Many of you are trying to blame it on Martin based on nothing but your racist hunches. Fucking quit it. We can't prove who threw the first punch, so making assumptions is fucking pointless. We do know that Zimmerman was following someone who had done nothing wrong, and this ended in the death of a kid. I'm sorry, you can talk 'till you're blue in the face about how Zimmerman was just trying to look out for his neighborhood and that he had successfully contributed to the capture of past hoodlums, but that doesn't change the fact that the only thing that made Martin "suspicious" was that he was black and wearing a hoodie. "But it's not illegal to follow somebody! It's not illegal to ask someone what they're doing! It's not illegal to be racist!" Sure, but at what point do we have to take responsibility for our actions? If I run into Harlem and yell out "Come and get me, American Inventors!", whoever gets riled up enough to come throw a punch at me will technically be the first one to break the law, right? So does this mean I have no responsibility? Zimmerman's actions lead to an unnecessary death. He should take some responsibility for that.

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Famm_sl said:

This is just like Casey Anthony or any of the over hyped media circus cases to have come about in the past. You have some people who have decided on guilt and want to see the perp fry, evidence and procedure be damned. Sometimes like this you have the same mindset on the other side that thinks the victim deserved it and the defendant is being railroaded.

Then there are others who understand, at least generally, how our criminal justice system functions, and we realize thateven though our system can make mistakesit is geared towards erring on the side of presumption of innocence for the defendant. I don't want to live in a society that errs on the side of the accused's guilt. We've been doing this long enough to realize that letting a potentially guilty man walk is the lesser of two evils. If anything a bigger problem is that people who are found guilty are often treated too leniently, and I don't even support capital punishment.

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Tanoomba_sl said:

No, that's not what my entire rant was based on at all.
If:
A) Having the shit kicked out of you is a good enough reason to legally shoot and kill somebody, and
B) You can pretty easily get the shit kicked out of you by legally being an asshole

Then we've got a huge legal loophole where any "macho" type guy can get killed and there don't have to be any consequences at all, regardless of whether or not intent to kill exists in the other party. Unless, of course, we have people take responsibility for their actions that lead to altercations. Sounds crazy, I know.

My fucking dumb what?

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Tanoomba_sl said:

No, that's not what my entire rant was based on at all.
If:
A) Having the shit kicked out of you is a good enough reason to legally shoot and kill somebody, and
B) You can pretty easily get the shit kicked out of you by legally being an asshole

Then we've got a huge legal loophole where any "macho" type guy can get killed and there don't have to be any consequences at all, regardless of whether or not intent to kill exists in the other party. Unless, of course, we have people take responsibility for their actions that lead to altercations. Sounds crazy, I know.

My fucking dumb what?

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