Florida Codifies that Your Stalker Can Legally Murder You If Threatened
July 15, 2013

 
Share

Last Saturday night, the Florida jury in the George Zimmerman murder trial declared that if you defend yourself against an armed stalker to the point where your stalker fears bodily injury, he can kill you “in self defense”. It doesn’t even matter if that fear is justified or not. All they have to do is claim they feared for their life, and anything they do after that is justified. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a more asinine ruling in my life. Think about it. If Trayvon Martin had been an attractive white girl that was being followed by a man with a gun, and she took it upon herself to kick his ass, at which point he shoots & kills her in the name of “self defense”, is there any question Zimmerman would be sitting in a concrete room with striped sunlight right about now? What is even more troublesome is that the Florida ruling has just provided criminals with an added incentive to kill their victims to ensure that only one side of the story (theirs) is ever heard. The most mind-boggling thing in all this is just how many people see this completely differently; that Zimmerman’s claim of “self defense” was justified and that he never should of even been arrested in the first place.

Living in a deep read state like Texas, I’ve had my share of encounters with Zimmerman Defenders. One thing I’ve noticed among ALL of them (without exception) is that, to them, the Zimmerman Case has nothing to do with Zimmerman or the crime itself, it’s all about the Second Amendment and their own right to shoot and kill anyone they feel threatened by… which is a dangerous thing when you consider that they’re all paranoid gun-nuts that think blacks, immigrants, alQaeda and Uncle Sam (in no particular order) are all out to get them. It should come as no surprise that the SAME people defending Zimmerman’s right to shoot & kill an unarmed young black kid that he took upon himself to pursue, are the SAME people that believe THEY could of taken out the Colorado movie theater shooter if only THEY had been there with their gun (in a fire fight with a man dressed in full body armor, firing a semi automatic rifle in a darkened theater filled with teargas and people running around fleeing for their lives.) To say these people don’t live in the Reality-Based Community is an understatement.

In order to conclude Zimmerman “did nothing wrong”, you must totally disregard how the two men came in contact with one another in the first place (another shocker from the same people that think the Second Amendment begins with “dot dot dot”). Because if Zimmerman had not been looking out his window that night (or had just stayed home and not taken it upon himself to pursue Martin), Trayvon simply would have walked home uneventfully with his purchases from the convenience store and lived to see another day. Zimmerman put himself “in harms way” by following someone he had profiled as “up to no good”. So concerned was he that the person he was pursuing might be dangerous that he brought along a loaded weapon. Upon confronting Martin, he didn’t identify himself as from “the neighborhood watch”. Likewise, Trayvon was living in that neighborhood, so in fact, Zimmerman’s job was to protect Trayvon. He didn’t ask him, “Where are you going?” or “Let me walk you home so you’ll be safe out here at night”… something I’d betcha $1000 he would have done if Trayvon has been an attractive white girl. No, George only saw a “suspicious” black male supposedly “looking in windows” (the defense never produced a single witness to substantiate that claim) that he was determined to “detain” until the cops arrived.

“They always get away.”

One of my first thoughts upon learning of the verdict yesterday was the Rodney King Trial and how the assault of King was actually caught ON TAPE and yet the jury STILL acquitted the people that assaulted him. There too, the prosecution played the “dangerous black man” card, suggesting the FIVE armed police officers surrounding King (only four were tried IIRC) were justified in feeling threatened by the severely injured, unarmed black man they had just beaten to a bloody pulp. No one ever claimed King, with a lengthy arrest record, was a choir boy, but there was NO justification for beating the crap out of him rather than simply handcuffing King and throwing him in the back of a squad car.

The Defense’s case looked like it had been ripped from the pages of a “lynching” trial in the 1930’s, showing carefully selected B&W photos of a frightening looking black man to the all female, mostly white, jury, suggesting that the victim was someone white women needed protecting from and the world is now a safer place without Trayvon in it.

I learned yesterday that I hate ABC’s “Dan Abrams”, who was brought on to both “ThisWeek” and the World News Tonight as an “expert”, declaring that “the only thing that mattered was whether or not Zimmerman reasonably feared for his life as the moment he pulled the trigger”. Bullshit. PURSUERS CAN NOT CLAIM SELF DEFENSE. Period. End of story. As I noted two weeks ago, the two men should never have come in contact with one another in the first place. Zimmerman had NO justification for leaving the safety of his home that night to pursue Martin. He’s not a cop and it wasn’t his job to “detain” people he deemed suspicious. Hell, the “neighborhood watch” didn’t even permit watchers to carry firearms. This was a wannabee cop that called 911 so many times (sometimes 2-3 times a night) that he was on a first name basis with the operator (note the number of times Zimmerman called to report a “suspicious black male”). His job was to report “suspicious” activity to the police and let them handle it, NOT take matters into his own hands and try to detain a suspect at gunpoint.

“They always get away.”

So ANY discussion of what happened after he left the safety of his home is irrelevant. At that point, he had knowingly placed himself (and Trayvon) in harms way.

The act of pursuing makes you the instigator. The Florida verdict sets a very bad precedent. It declares that ANYONE… including Stalkers, Rapists, thugs of any kind… can now pursue someone, and should that person try to defend themselves, their attacker can kill them and claim they “feared for their life”. I nearly said, “as long as they don’t attack first…”, but that doesn’t matter either, because now the Stalker has an incentive to kill their victim to ensure they can’t challenge their side of the story in a court of law. “I didn’t touch her! She just walked up and attacked ME for no reason! And fearing for my life, I shot & killed her. Those cuts & bruises on her are from when SHE attacked ME, not because I attacked her.” Sounds absurd, doesn’t it? Yet that is EXACTLY the defense George Zimmerman used to justify killing Trayvon Martin.

I find it interesting that the all-female six-member jury is in hiding tonight and have refused to speak to the Press. Do you think maybe they’re afraid some nut with a gun might walk up to them in the middle of the night and shoot them? I can’t imagine why.
 


Writers Wanted
 
Got something to say? Mugsy’s Rap Sheet is always looking for article submissions to focus on the stories we may miss each week. To volunteer your own Op/Ed for inclusion here, send us an email with an example of your writing skills & choice of topic, and maybe we’ll put you online!

RSS Please REGISTER to be notified by e-mail every time this Blog is updated! Firefox/IE users can use RSS for a browser link that lists the latest posts! RSS


 

Share

July 15, 2013 · Admin Mugsy · 8 Comments - Add
Posted in: Crime, General, Guns & Violence, Racism, Rants, Right-Wing Insanity

8 Responses

  1. Grant in Texas - July 15, 2013

    As Rich Benjamin writes in Salon today, the “not guilty” verdict “…is an implicit green light for every paranoid, sub-intelligent,
    vigilante racist to go on victimizing black youth. Trayvon Martin is
    dead for no reason other than being black.
    This murder of Trayvon brings back memories of young, black Robbie Tolan, shot in his own front yard at his home in Bellaire, Texas just after parking his car at the curb.  Robbie’s dad is a retired major league baseball player from the St. Louis Cardinals and young Robbie once had a promising future in major league baseball before a cop put a bullet next to his liver.  The Tolan family could afford to live in tony Bellaire in a neighborhood of homes that start at a half million dollars on up to a couple of million.  But black folk aren’t expected to live there so it can be dangerous to drive or walk about there.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robbie_Tolan_shooting_incident

  2. cunning linguist - July 15, 2013

    A truly disgusting turn of events.You are absolutely right in stating that Z started all this. He racially profiled a young man, an opinion informed by his twisted notion of who deserved to walk on “his” streets and, against the advice of the 911 dispatcher, decided to persue this young man, who had every right in the world to walk on that street.Armed with a handgun and a wanna-be cop attitude he forced a confrontation, and when he started getting his ass kicked, like the coward he is, he resorted to deadly force.There is no doubt in my mind that some communication might have prevented this outcome. Instead, we had a bully who “knew” he was following a criminal based on his deeply flawed and highly bigoted preconceptions, and we had a young black man, probably scared in the knowledge that he was being followed by some strange dude with unknown intentions. In this case, the one who truly stood his ground was Trayvon.As I’ve said before, this whole thing stinks to high heaven, and welcome to vigilante AmeriKKKa.

  3. Grant in Texas - July 15, 2013

    MoveOn.org just had its worst case of cyber attack in its history. They say their best guess
    is that it was sparked by the NAACP petition they placed on their web site calling for a Department of Justice investigation into the death
    of Trayvon Martin.  “But we take on rich and powerful players in the right wing every day, in campaign after campaign: Monsanto.
    Big oil and coal companies. Conservative Republicans. Corporate lobbyists.” 
    To the chagrin of Fox News and right-wing haters, so far there has been no violence across the nation except for maybe a few broken windows.  There has been more property damage in many cities following athletic events! MOST of the demonstrations have been peaceful and a large number of white Americans have turned out, to march along the side of their black brothers and sisters.  Can you imagine the demonstrations IF George Zimmerman had been found guilty???

  4. Mildred G. Oconnor - July 16, 2013

    Yes, it was way back in 1955 when 14-year-old Emmitt Till was murdered in Mississippi for flirting with a white woman. But it was last Wednesday when a white Mississippi teenager pleaded guilty to murder for seeking out a black victim, coming across a man named James Craig Anderson, and running him over with his pickup truck.

  5. cunning linguist - July 16, 2013

    That’s just it Grant.The predicted Rodney King 2.0 didn’t happen. And I sense disappointment among the ranks of professional liars employed by the propaganda outlets.I work in Sanford. My friends in the community are filled with quiet rage. There will be no violent confrontations, these people are not stupid.If anything, resolve fills the community. They have learned that resolve changes things, blind rage does not.This is far from over…

  6. Grant in Texas - July 17, 2013

    Sadly, a mob did break into a L.A. “South Central” Walmart store but some thugs are always trying to find an excuse to loot whether about a political decision or a sports team victory.  Took them 3 days to decide to “protest”.  Responsible people are demonstrating within the law, exercising their First Amendment rights.   http://www.idesigntimes.com/articles/6690/20130716/breaking-lapd-begin-mass-arrests-zimmerman-protestors.htm

  7. Vernon D. Foster - July 28, 2013

    Let’s put it another way to make it crystal clear – a private citizen cannot stalk President Obama, who is black or Vice President, Joe Biden, who is white, for walking on a private or public street, then confront them demanding to know “what are you doing here?” then add violence to the mix. You can’t go around harassing people like that, then engage in acts of deadly violence. Zimmerman was out of order and deserves life in prison without the possibility of parole.

  8. Silver Price - July 31, 2013

    Zimmerman gets to be the current poster boy for the widespread and historical practice of a white police force of a southern small town not arresting the murderer of a Black person. It’s a reminder that non-majority people STILL live in a United States where the powers that be in stinky little towns can put their heel on the head of anyone they wish. The cliché is that little southern town in Lowndes County, but I sure wouldn’t want to have to live in Arizona if I were Latino—and the south is not alone; just try Driving While Black in Clark, N.J.

Leave a Reply