The politics of hoodie wearing

Aidan says:

Quote:

I'm afraid of guns in the hands of criminals. I'm not any more afraid of the average unarmed American as I am of the average unarmed Brit or Italian or Spaniard, etc.

Ah, but ARMED American citizens are the ones you've got to watch out for. Like the student at the CHRISTIAN college in California this week who was turned down for a nursing program, so shot and killed seven people. Hey, you gotta take out your disappointment on someone, don't you?

Or the guy who was mad at the way his wife cooked his eggs so he got his gun and killed her and the two neighbors she ran to for help. David said it was her fault because she wasn't wearing a gun while she cooked breakfast.

Or the guy who shot and killed a Japanese exchange student who came to his door because he was lost and was looking for directions to a Halloween party and didn't speak great English.

If you see an American with a gun, get out of Dodge fast.

Is there any objective, impartial evidence on that point??

Emotional and physical distance can also allow a person to kill his foe.
Distance can be classified as mechanical, social, cultural and emotional distance.
Physical distance has to do with the distance. It is much more difficult to kill someone when you can feel his breath and see the fear in his eyes as you ram home a knife. It is very traumatic at such close range.

Distance from the other human directly affects how easy it is to kill him.

Emotional distance allows a person to kill at closer ranges and allows him to justify it more easily. Cultural distance is defined as viewing the enemy as an inferior life form. The enemy is dehumanized and considered inferior. Like the Nazi's classified Jews and blacks as inferior and subhuman, putting them outside the human species and thus little more than an animal to be killed.

Moral distance is classifying the enemy as morally wrong. US troops fighting the Nazi's or Japanese had moral distance to help them kill. The Nazi's were butchers, cruel and vicious. The Nazi's were guilty and had to be punished by those who were right and just.

Social Distance is a form of classifying others as lesser beings. For instance, in the medieval ages of Knights and men-at-arms, the Knights, the nobility were the primary killers. A soldier could look across the line at another soldier just like him, terrified and unwilling to kill. A Knight would look down at the serf/soldiers as lesser beings who simply could not compare to himself and their loss was not important because they were not as great as he was.

It is bullshit to attempt to pretend that the discussion about gun crime was one of absolute numbers. It wasn't, it was about percentages all along, so the greater population of the United States does not explain why there his a higher percentage of gun crime than in Canada.

Most of the rest of those 8O,OOO,OOO remained peaceful
and we do not relinquish our defensive rights to keep and bear arms.

Is there any objective, impartial evidence on that point??

This is from a very interesting article I was reading for work as we're getting quite a few soldiers returning from Afghanistan who are having trouble reintegrating into society:
Here's the link:
http://www.military-sf.com/Killing.htm

I think this excerpt really covers just about all of the influences of social, emotional and cultural distance Zimmerman exhibited that he felt toward Trayvon through his own words:

Emotional and physical distance can also allow a person to kill his foe.
Distance can be classified as mechanical, social, cultural and emotional distance.
Physical distance has to do with the distance. It is much more difficult to kill someone when you can feel his breath and see the fear in his eyes as you ram home a knife. It is very traumatic at such close range.

Distance from the other human directly affects how easy it is to kill him.

Emotional distance allows a person to kill at closer ranges and allows him to justify it more easily. Cultural distance is defined as viewing the enemy as an inferior life form. The enemy is dehumanized and considered inferior. Like the Nazi's classified Jews and blacks as inferior and subhuman, putting them outside the human species and thus little more than an animal to be killed.

Moral distance is classifying the enemy as morally wrong. US troops fighting the Nazi's or Japanese had moral distance to help them kill. The Nazi's were butchers, cruel and vicious. The Nazi's were guilty and had to be punished by those who were right and just.

Social Distance is a form of classifying others as lesser beings. For instance, in the medieval ages of Knights and men-at-arms, the Knights, the nobility were the primary killers. A soldier could look across the line at another soldier just like him, terrified and unwilling to kill. A Knight would look down at the serf/soldiers as lesser beings who simply could not compare to himself and their loss was not important because they were not as great as he was.

I mean, Zimmerman just assumed that Trayvon was doing something wrong and so was able to convince himself that at least morally - he was distanced from him. Even if he wasn't racist and culturally distanced from Trayvon by viewing him as lesser - why did he look at him and assume he was 'up to no good'?

David says:

Most of the rest of those 8O,OOO,OOO remained peaceful
and we do not relinquish our defensive rights to keep and bear arms.

10,000 or so of you don't remain peaceful every year. And that's just counting gun murders.

Boomerang shared a video showing Geraldo putting forth the opinion that Trayvon's apparel choice that night was as much to blame for his death as anything.

I just thought I'd recap - since the thread had devolved at the hands of Lash, Finn, Omsick and Birdseye into a lamentation about how much conservatives love Dr King, and how racist blacks with victimhood mindsets and deceptive liberals are subverting the pursuit of justice.

The 911 calls alone provide enough, but when coupled with the police report and the accepted fact that the kid is dead and had no weapon, the rest is easy to deduce. There's always the possibility that some new fact could come out that would change my perception, but it's not likely. These are the very basic facts and they were not obtained from watching television. You are welcome to see it otherwise, but your judgment doesn't pursuade me.

What makes this story a big deal to me was the cavalier attitude taken by the police and prosecutors.
The shooter wasn't arrested.

I was looking at my son the other day standing there wearing his baseball cap under his sweatshirt jacket with the hood up and thinking, 'It could have been him'.