he's black so no

and now, here comes two hundred rationalizations!

No, but if you get in a fist fight and lose, then you can kill the winner.

A broken nose and some minor cuts? Pull out your weapon and kill 'em!

I look forward to the future carnage at high schools, sporting events, and bars.

The good Lord made a mistake way back giving men hands on the ends of their Arms. Arms are to be borne, not hands, and the Founding Fathers saw fit to rectify that Initial Error. The fist is not Constitutionally proscribed.

chancho, the "stand your ground" laws in florida apply everywhere.

however, "stand your ground" laws in all other states with those laws only apply on your property. so please, that absurd extrapolation doesn't hold any water, even with the ridiculous florida law.

jangbones. somebody was actually talking about the laws that let zimmerman walk, and you brought up race. way to go, pal.

binro. if trayvon wasn't hurt and zimmerman was, we can assume that in this situation zimmerman's use of his gun wasn't an insane overreaction. it's not good that he used a gun in this case, but it was legal. that's the real issue that needs to be ironed out.

i'm sure you people still think i'm racist, because i'm not screaming "it was because he was black!!" just like the media spun it

Oh, I'm sorry Zerdzer. I guess Zimmerman had worse injuries than a broken nose (closed fracture) and some minor cuts?

Also, I should have added "in Florida" to my comment. That makes a huuuuuge difference.

how bad your injuries are are not going to be factoring into whether or not you use a gun when you're being hurt. it's not like he could stop and examine himself to quantify just how badly he was hurt, and whether it was okay or not to use a gun based on that. both zimmerman and trayvon made stupid decisions that kept leading to more stupid decisions, but nothing zimmerman did was illegal.

plus, if zimmerman only shot once, he probably wasn't trying to kill trayvon. it actually takes a lot of self control not to just dump a mag into whatever you're shooting, which would have been more likely to kill trayvon.

i'm pretty sure this was all ironed out during the trial.

I believe you are referring to this from the Florida statute:
(3) A person who is not engaged in an unlawful activity and who is attacked in any other place where he or she has a right to be has no duty to retreat and has the right to stand his or her ground and meet force with force, including deadly force if he or she reasonably believes it is necessary to do so to prevent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony.

A broken nose and minor cuts is "great bodily harm"?

Does this apply to all fights in Florida?

Zerdzer,

No, defense attorneys have pretty much established that Trayvon need only have "feared for his life" to invoke "Stand Your Ground" as a defense. It wouldn't have mattered if Zimmerman had laid a hand on him or not.

Martin was confronted at night by some strange hostile stalker who looked kind of like a drug dealer with his shaved head, goatee and street clothes. I'd have been scared. So would a lot of other people. I'll bet those ladies on the jury would have been scared of him, too.

And you and George Zimmerman can say he's not a racist all you want, but if it walks like a racist duck and quacks like a racist duck, it's a racist duck.

binro: i never once said george zimmerman isn't racist, actually. he very likely is. i did say that whether or not he's racist wasn't and should not be a deciding factor in the verdict, for what he was charged with. whether or not zimmerman was hostile or really made martin fear for his life is stuff we don't actually know. it's hard to think of a realistic scenario where zimmerman makes martin fear for his life without touching him. if you see a guy threatening you with a gun, are you going to really try punching him? it'd be more likely you'd try that if you didn't know he had a gun.

chancho: a broken nose and minor cuts are not "great bodily harm". the law allows you to shoot your gun if you believe you will have great bodily harm inflicted upon you. again, i don't agree with that law, i think it should be changed.

Yeah, I have to say, assuming that race had nothing to do with it, apparently, under stand your ground, either man could have killed the other if he felt threatened. The essential thing is to be the one who has the gun. Being armed is 9/10 of the law.

Zerdzer, we agree that a broken nose is not great bodily harm. The medical examiner called his injuries "not significant".

So, as his defense said, the case hinges on his "feeling afraid".

Zimmerman followed Trayvon, chased him on foot, had a weapon, ignored a police dispatcher's request to not chase Trayvon, and initiated the fight by attempting to grab Trayvon. We can assume he was not afraid under these conditions.

So, when Trayvon punched him, he suddenly switched to being afraid and used the weapon he carried with him to kill Trayvon?

I believe that when all the factors are considered, Zimmerman's actions demonstrate his state of mind clearly and his state of mind was not fearful.

well, if you believe that's what happened, fine. but there was still reasonable doubt that zimmerman did anything illegal, so he walked, since people are presumed innocent until proven guilty.

bottom line: stupid decisions were made by these two individuals, a stupid set of laws decided if those stupid decisions were illegal, and the law (however stupid it may be) is what matters in a court. rule of law prevailed in this case, as it should; however, the law itself is flawed, and should be changed asap.

what this case should be drawing attention to is that law, which is the largest cause of what happened. we need to focus less on race in the context of this case, because people are getting up in arms for nothing. there are so many more important things the media could be drawing attention to, that people could be rallying for. this is what i've said from the beginning... that's all.

What was Trayvon's stupid decision?

As far as I can tell, he was stalked by an armed man so Trayvon fled from danger, but the armed man chased him down and grabbed him. Trayvon had commited no crime, had a legal right to be where he was, and Zimmerman had no legal authority to detain him. Trayvon defended himself from his attacker and his attacker killed him.

If Trayvon had been a white woman, and a similar scenario went down, would you claim that the white woman had been lawfully killed?

the law is only a shadow of justice and that is the best it can ever hope to be

although no one wants to believe or admit it, every single law ever written is subject to discretion, by citizens, police, lawyers, prosecutors, judges, and juries, because every law and every application of it is subject to human interpretation

race continues to be an obsession and a major informant to human decisions about other people, regardless of how worthless a reason it is

for example, there is nothing written in New York's stop-and-frisk law that suggests it should be overwhlemingly applied to only one racial group, yet it is

thus, saying the Martin-Zimmerman case is or is not about race is irrelevant because the law and the world has racial prejudice applied to it everywhere, constantly

alright, that's enough from me

if i believed the same story you do about zimmerman chasing down trayvon with a gun out, i'd feel the same way you do.

i believe what's stated in the video is what is most likely to be true, and i stick to the points made by this guy. regardless of the story, i think zimmerman made a series of bad decisions, and what he did was wrong, but it was not illegal beyond any reasonable doubt. again, race is not factoring into this for me at all. that's really all i have to say about it, apart from what i've already said

I never said Zimmerman chased him "with a gun out" but Zimmerman knew he had a gun. With a weapon, he was much less likely to be afraid and certainly wasn't afraid because he chased Trayvon.

If Zimmerman was afraid while chasing and grabbing Trayvon, then we have found an incredibly unique human being.

And I'm still interested in your answer to my "what if": if Zimmerman had behaved the same way towards a white woman, would you feel the same way about the killing?

yes i would feel the same way about the killing

the whole point of that question is to ask me if i personally give a shit about the race of people, and nothing i've said would indicate i do. if anybody's been paying any real attention to what i've said, i've been unhappy that the media capitalizes on racism and creates drama about the wrong things. this actually brings out the racism in people.

would you change the way you feel about this killing based on the race of the people involved? i'm going to go out on a limb and say you wouldn't have felt different based on the race of the people involved, but you only have these strong feelings about this case because it was put in the news and spun to be a racially charged issue more than it already was. nobody televises cases like this where a black dude kills a black dude, nobody televises cases like this where a white dude kills a white dude. because that's not something that can be racially charged by the media. zimmerman was the perfect candidate for that shit, because why he confronted trayvon was partially due to trayvon's race.

Kentucky's Stand Your Ground Law.

http://surfky.com/index.php/communities/51-top-news-for-all-si tes/34618--kentuckys-stand-your-ground-law-explained

You can stand your ground anywhere, you're just exempt from prosecution if it's in your home. This case would have gone to court the same here. You do not have a duty to retreat in any place you are legally allowed to be.

What Zimmerman did was pursued a person armed with a loaded weapon, instantiated a fight, and murdered someone.

Pursued a person WHILE armed with a loaded weapon. Sorry, Strunk & White.

Zerdzer, I use the example of a white woman to show that Zimmerman's behaviour was not fearful. But Trayvon's being a black male definitely changes things.

If Zimmerman:
followed a woman
disregarded a police dispatcher's request not to follow her
left his vehicle to pursue her
carried a weapon with him with chasing her
attempted to grab her
was punched in the face by her
killed her for punching him in the face

Then I have a hard time believing any jury would NOT convict him of murder.

But, substitute black male (even a black kid who was eating candy) for woman, and the result is NOT GUILTY.

I have no problem with someone using deadly force to defend themselves or their family, but this is beyond ridiculous.

Zimmerman was not facing great harm and was not fearful, and killed a black kid for no reason. Even under Florida's retarded law he is guilty as fuck. If you want to believe otherwise, then I have to lump you in with the rest of the scumbags who defend Zimmerman.

Don't even make it a woman, make it a white teenager named Travis to change only the skin color. Every single person who currently supports Zimmerman would instead be saying "Wait, you thought he looked suspicious ... why again? Because you didn't recognize him and he was wearing a hoodie in the rain? And this was so suspicous to you that you followed him? Jesus, dude."

although i agree with the guy in this video on every point he makes, i am not that guy.

also, you should probably remove the 'zerdzer' tag from your video, and rename it too.

it's breaking the rules.

"5. Do not submit videos to attack other users. Do not claim the video is of another user etc, do not make personal attacks through videos."

Take your medicine.

Staff will ban you when they eventually remember poetv

too lazy to argue, eh, just call 'em a racist and shame 'em