Florida's Stand your Ground law

It's a crazy thing that this guy, who committed homicide, wasn't arrested and charged with a crime. Just insane.

Bunch of Floridiots down there

Cycloptichorn

I mean at least arrest him and let a judge or jury decide if it was self defense, as they did with the first guy, who actually was defending himself but still had to sit in jail for 3 years while they figured it out.

If I had a brown skinned teenage son in Florida right now I'd be getting him a concealed weapon permit and a gun and telling him if any authoritarian neighborhood watchmen make him fear for his life to shoot him.

Ok I wouldn't really do that but that's what that story makes me feel like.

Can't tell a black kid to shoot someone, he'd be arrested immediately. It's pure and simple, open racism at work.

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/03/18/446768/what-everyone-should-know-about-about-trayvon-martin-1995-2012/

Good news: the FBI is apparently getting involved.

Cycloptichorn

Have you heard the 911 tapes?



It's really hard to piece together between the reports I heard and what you hear on the tape from the shooter.

If the kid was running away, like he says on the tape, it doesn't seem that he would have needed to "stand his ground".

I haven't listened to them but I've read the descriptions of what they say, including that you can hear the kids begging for his life in the background. I don't have the heart to listen to it.

I think it must have been edited out of the tape I posted because you can't hear anything like that, just the neighbors reporting that they hear someone.

It sounds like the shooter was looking for any reason to shoot this kid.

I don't see how the stand your ground law applies. My understanding is that you need to feel that you are in immediate physical danger. The shooter obviously wasn't. He needs to be arrested.

I'm not sure I agree that everyone who defends himself with a firearm should bear the cost of defending against a capital crime. Obviously, some should.

I've been a fairly strong proponent of gun ownership, mostly on the theory that a right to self defense is pointless without a means to defend oneself. On the other hand, I have known several people with multiple guns who can talk themselves into a frenzy describing what their particular ammunition will do to a person, and how they're going to react to their unlikely scenarios.

There are people actually hoping they can get into a situation that lets them somehow 'prove' themselves. They're not convicted felons, they have not been adjucated mentally incompetent, and they're as legal as you or I.

White Floridians scare me.

But no, there's no racism involved with Fox News and their producers, at all, what a silly thing to say

Cycloptichorn

I just don't see how he wasn't arrested. If the evidence shows it was self defense then he can be released. But there's a dead, unarmed kid who was not committing any crime and the guy who admits shooting him goes home to his family. That's all even beside the fact that a claim of self defense in this case is getting harder and harder to believe the more facts come to light.

in the case of Treyvon's killer, it seems that should be modified with a "yet"

I don't advocate taking away everybody's gun - I would advocate it if it was possible to outlaw guns and war all at once, worldwide, but that will not happen in this century, most likely. - But the ones like the guy that murdered Treyvon ought to face the consequences when they go berserk. There is one hundred percent no chance he acted responsibly.

That's understandable. White Floridians scare everybody.

Agreed, and in addition to that, he broke just about every rule outlined in that particular neighborhood's Neighborhood Watch manual -- which specifically states the volunteers are absolutely not allowed to be armed.

Yep.

Petition about this for those of us who find the whole thing appalling:

http://signon.org/sign/justice%2Dfor%2Dtrayvon%2Dmartin

Most Floridians scare me and I live here, you get out of St. Pete/Tampa Bay area and away from any big city and its like traveling back 30 years in time.

I approve of people having the right to self-defense. And as I understand it, stand-your-ground laws in general are just an affirmation of people's right to self-defense. That being said, I disapprove of this specific stand-your-ground law because it merely requires a subjective feeling to justify the use of deadly force. There has to be a better balance between the use of deadly force and the threat that justifies it. And this balance has to hinge on the reality of the thread, not on imagery in someone's head.

Thanks, soz! Just signed it.

BOO!