While vacationing in Hawaii last week, I tried to use my ipad to write my blog. However, google noticed that I was trying to write from Hawaii and thought that someone had hacked into my blog. Well, I am back home now and I am glad that Google thinks that this blog is important enough for someone to try to hack into. This also shows that Google can keep track of where I am if it wants to. As I said before, Big Brother may not be the government, but private enterprises. Or worse, it can be private enterprises in cooperation with the government.
I guess the big story from the mainland this past week was George Zimmerman's not guilty verdict in the killing of Trayvon Martin. Thank goodness there has not be violence breaking out over the verdict. I had not followed the trial carefully. After reading about it afterward, I feel that the jury acted reasonably in coming back with a not guilty verdict. It was a difficult case to prove beyond reasonable doubt given the right to not stand down law in Florida. The idea that you have a law where you can start something and then claim self defense is absurd. I mean following this logic: If a small man wants to kill a big man, all he has to do is provoke the big guy, gets hit in the face, claims that he fears for his life, and fires his gun. Once he got hit by a big guy, it is reasonable that he feels scared for his life. In fact, what would have happened if Martin had a gun when Zimmerman approached him. Martin could have claimed that as a black man walking in a white neighborhood he felt his life was in danger when a white man approached him for no reason. Would Martin have been justified if he shot Zimmerman?
As I have said before, if Zimmerman was not carrying a gun, he would not have approached Martin. He would have waited for the police. Pro gun people believe that guns and self defense laws will save innocent people from danger. But in this case, Zimmerman was never in any danger. But an innocent man did die because Zimmerman had a gun. Ultimately the so called innocent people like Zimmerman will not be safe with a gun and a law backing him. Once REAL criminals, not a guy just walking down the street, realize that there are regular people carrying guns out there, they will up the ante and carry ak47s. They may even shoot first before committing the crime. Worse yet, an innocent person like Martin may walk the streets carrying guns himself. He may shoot first and talk later. So eventually we will have "non-criminals" shooting at each other. It will be the wild wild west again. So are we an advanced civilization or not?
Will the justice dept. file civil right charges against Zimmerman? They may do it due to political pressure but I don't think they have a good case. It is not clear at all that Zimmerman approached Martin because he was black. This is not like the Vincent Chin case where the killer hurled racial slurs at Chin prior to killing him. Even that conviction never led to jail time for the killers. So I don't think Zimmerman will go to jail for Martin's death. A civil lawsuit will probably successful but the family only can win money from Zimmerman. It is likely Zimmerman will declare bankruptcy and avoid paying much. It seems that they should have charged Zimmerman with harassing Martin which would be a no doubter. Maybe it would not mean much jail time but Zimmerman should have been found guilty of at least harassment.
This is a tragedy and will be repeated in the future unless these so called stand down laws are repealed. These laws violate the spirit of self defense and lead people to confrontations instead of avoiding confrontations. The same with the right to carry guns for "protection". It leads to more unnecessary confrontations and as a result avoidable tragedies.
Wednesday, July 17, 2013
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Welcome back Angry Yellow Man. I was wondering why you did not talk about the verdict. Hope things went well in Hawaii. You must be a great surfer! Any truth that you have the voice of a younger Don Ho?
ReplyDeleteI really didn't care what happened with the Martin/Zimmerman case. I was leaning toward a manslaughter verdict after the trial. I admit that I probably don't know everything since I didn't watch every minute of the trial.
I also can't come up with an informed decision, only my own thoughts. I would hate to send an innocent man to jail, though I think that any time you pull the trigger, you deserve the consequences that come with it. Even in self defense.
The only thing that puzzled me (and you hit upon this), is that Zimmerman got out of his car. Had he not done that, a confrontation may not have occurred.
But after that, everything is a guessing game. Now, if Zimmerman did not have a gun, would Martin have critically injured him or killed him? Who knows. We don't deal with what ifs. The facts are the facts.
Finally, my last viewpoint on this is that people come up with their own ideas of what happened and only two people know what really happened. And somehow, this has become a political thing, which to me, is wrong.
You've got right wingers who send out fake pictures of Martin, saying that the liberal media keeps showing a much younger Martin. Then you have the liberals who say that Martin was killed because Zimmerman profiled him.
So if you were politically slanted already, you'd probably believe whatever side was spinning the story.
I've heard a lot of chatter from the Asian American leaders who are siding with the Martin camp and comparing this to Vincent Chin.
To me, they're similar in a way but not the same. The Vincent Chin murder to me, is, excuse the pun, black and white.
The two that murdered Chin sought him out and there were witnesses. They beat Chin to death with a baseball bat. So it wasn't in self defense. Plus, as you say, they hurled racial slurs to Chin which witnesses actually heard.
-LBOAYM
You are right about the Vincent Chin case being very different from this case. The Chin case was murder period. Chin was not killed in a struggle while fighting in the bar. He was ambushed after the fight was over. There was plenty of time for the killers to reconsider their action. Zimmerman was wrong to approach Martin but at least he shot Martin in the heat of a fight. It is also not completely clear how much race has to do with this case even though to say race definitely had nothing to do with it, is absurd.
ReplyDeleteThe good news is that killings in this country due to pure racial reasons are way down from 30-40 years ago. Even if progress is slower than we like, there is definitely progress. We are becoming more civilize in this regard.
But we are still not civilize in terms of gun deaths. No matter how you argue it, a civilize society should not kill more than 10,000 of its own citizens a year with guns. And if you argue that guns don't kill, people do, I would say that no way Zimmerman kills Martin without a gun.