Zimmerman was legally armed and presumably had his weapon concealed. Legally carrying a concealed weapon does not constitute aggression. "Instigating a confrontation" is not a criminal offense in any jurisdiction I'm aware of. If you argue with someone for example they do not get permission to punch you and slam your head into concrete.
It certainly seems like GZ is an idiot who could have avoided the situation. He could have greeted MT, introduced himself and then asked him questions. Is it only intelligent wise people who have self defense rights? I don't see proof beyond reasonable doubt that GZ broke any laws.
We have the right to defend ourselves here as well, but there are actual requirements involved. Seeing a black person wearing a hoodie is not sufficient to give us legal right to use lethal force. That man would have to be engaged in a forceable felony or represent a real threat.
So would someone punching you in the face and pounding your head on concrete constitute a forceable felony or real threat?
There's a difference between victim blaming and risk assessment. My girls learn ju-jitsu. It's not because I blame girls who get raped (or otherwise attacked) for not knowing self defense, it's a risk mitigation strategy. Ideally nobody would commit rape and it is commendable to work towards that but it hasn't been achieved yet.
Now ju-jitsu will work even if you are wearing revealing clothing. If they get drunk to the point of passing out in the presence of untrusted people ju-jitsu won't help. It's nothing to do with "victim blaming" its about a pragmatic approach as opposed to a moral one. If the thing you're most interested in is finding the right person to blame then in each case you have to wait until after a crime is committed. That's a commendable approach when taken by the courts. Not so commendable when taken by a father who should be advising his daughters on a wise course of action "Of course getting drunk with a crowd of football players doesn't mean you deserve rape, go ahead and have a good time!" Girls who get drunk with crowds of young men don't deserve rape at all but they do increase the odds of it happening.
In the past I have written Job Safety Analyses and Safe Work Method Statements on industrial sites. I suggest you have a look at some material on how to manage risk. It's about prevention and would hopefully help you understand that not everything is about your rights or blame, sometimes it's best to take a pragmatic, preventative approach. Your ER doctor was giving you good advice. I'm sure he would have preferred to give it to you before the accident but you didn't turn up at ER and ask him then, so he gave it to you before your next accident which happened to be right after your last one.
the ease of constructing such weapon increases and we will see their eventual use.
For most use cases for this weapon it could be replaced with a shiv. It gives slightly longer reach but is less concealable. A killing behind security is almost certainly going to be politically or religiously motivated and will happen according to the fanaticism of the assassin rather than the availability of particular weapons. It would potentially enable assassins who were too weak or not confident of their ability with a knife but it isn't really a game changer. It doesn't introduce significant new capability.
Then it's just a matter of a slippery slope, or scope creep
Yes, don't want those pesky citizens having freedom, they might abuse it or make wrong choices. Far better to have a rigid system of penalties, diligently enforced. While we're at it, let's ban dancing, who knows what it could lead to.
If you can't text and drive at 10MPH without having an accident (on a three lane highway has been my peak hour experience, no kids chasing balls onto the road) you shouldn't have a license and probably need to be strapped into your chair to have dinner.
They're doing it all wrong. You can't solve a social problem with technological features.
I think driverless cars will be a better solution to this problem. As someone who drives quite a lot for my work, I hope the day soon comes it is illegal to drive manually because it is too dangerous compared to our robotic chauffeurs. Judging by the way google navigation works for me, it won't be this year.
In the meantime, I agree with your first two solutions, the third is too drastic. Jail time if you cause an accident while texting perhaps but I don't think someone stuck in walking pace traffic who texts their wife they'll be late deserves jail time.
It's highly unlikely any training will help you if it's a fight.
is contradicted by this statement:
I've done a reasonable amount of full contact fighting which taught me to get the first heavy hit in
It's true that situational awareness will do more for you than being trained but caught unawares. My wife does ju-jutsu training. They teach the women that if they are confronted by a large male attacker, unless they have no other option they should run for the exact reason you bring up, it is hard to land a devastating first blow and the first blow they land will devastate you. I tell her find a weapon, since we have kids and it's likely she won't be able to run without leaving them. Untrained, even with a kitchen knife she's not that scary. I want her trained so that hopefully she could intimidate an attacker and as a last resort have a better chance of landing that first blow.
When I was in my teens I did farm work during holidays that strengthened me quite a bit, so in that case yes, but not because of a "sense of reliance and independence".
You know, until that happened, you'd just be a tin-foil hat wearer, without a shred of credibility to you.
Yeah, if that had never happened they'd be totally wrong about it. What ignorant fools! I think I'll plug my ears up and sing "lalalalala" now. Or chant "not listening, not listening".
Firstly, I would have had my kid involved in extracurricular activities, had them assisting in chores and other things, and developed in them a sense of self-reliance and independence.
I did plenty of chores and sport and it never solved any bullying problems for me.
Such self-reliance would include self-defense classes; No girl should fear that a boy will assault her.
Given opponents of equal fighting skill the larger will tend to win. Not always but it's the way to bet. Being trained to fight to a higher level than your potential opponents is a good way for an individual to overcome bullying but on a larger scale won't solve bullying but can change who the bullies are. There is also a lot of bullying that isn't physical. How do you use self defense classes to combat embarrassing pictures on facebook?
Secondly, I'd track down the parents of the child bullying and explain the situation to them verbally and in person. If the parents didn't step up to the plate, I would explain to them in a non-verbal way my disappointment in their lack of parenting.
<snip>
If I'm angry enough to fight someone, they're going to be facing me and they're going to be armed. And then they're going to lose.
So you'll talk to the parents and if they don't respond to your satisfaction you'll fight them to the death? Unless I've misunderstood, I think you need to revise this plan. If you win, it ends with you in prison and bullies doing whatever they like to your child while you are occupied with much tougher bullies.
It is not legal to own a firearm for self defense in Australia, although it was apparently legal for Susan Falls to use one but illegal to sell to her.
You apparently haven't read the book. The Wealth of Nations discusses international trade including import duties etc. It was not a society of exclusively locally produced goods. The morality of the population is the morality of the market. If a market has no morality, it is not a reflection on markets it is a reflection on the population.
How many find the site by searching for "independent grassroots supporters of Ron Paul" and how many by searching for "Ron Paul". They use his name and reputation to generate hits and then want to sell those hits to him. If their website is so independent, why didn't they put their own name on it instead?
Frankly I believe that Australia is generally a safer place since the Howard government restricted legal gun ownership.
Our murder rate was declining before the gun laws (yes, even including the mass shootings that prompted them). NZ doesn't ban semi-auto's or require registration of most firearms and hasn't had a mass shooting for a similar length of time as us, so it would seem that our gun laws haven't prevented any mass shootings either. While people proclaim our current lack of mass shootings as a success of gun laws they ignore that we still have mass killings such as the Childers Palace fire and the Quakers Hill Nursing Home fire. Apparently murder doesn't matter so much if you burn them to death instead of shooting them.
Our gun laws didn't make the place safer they just made people who don't understand the issue feel better. There was not such fear of bikie gangs when guns could be bought by everyone, I don't even remember it being an issue, and "glassing" was something that happened at bikie bars and dive bars frequented by criminals, NOT your average bar or nightclub. Not that glassing would be affected directly by gun laws but I don't think your idea that gun laws made us safer stands up to scrutiny.
Spin it any way you like, the good doctor wants to use an arm of the UN to confiscate other peoples' property by threat of force.
No his argument boils down to that it is not rightfully their property. Resolving property disputes is a function of courts universally accepted by libertarians. The reality is that pretty near all the traffic to that site would be made up of people who were duped into thinking it was a site by Ron Paul. The only reason the cyber squatters aren't being condemned on this site is so that people can have a cheap shot at Ron Paul.
What "free marketers" never seem to get is: the "free market" has no morals.
Really?
The Theory of Moral Sentiments is a 1759 book by Adam Smith. It provided the ethical, philosophical, psychological, and methodological underpinnings to Smith's later works, including The Wealth of Nations...
Sounds like you must be talking about the other free market, not the Adam Smith thing.
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
I'm not American but I do believe in the right to revolt against despotic government. I know about various abuses and wars of the US government which are common knowledge. There are at least a couple of reasons why Americans have not risen up against their government:
1. The conditions of life for the vast majority of Americans is far better than would be had in a civil war.
2. If you had enough people to win a revolution you could just win an election instead. You can complain about a rigged election system all you like but what proportion of the population do you need to win a civil war? If you had that many people turn up to vote instead of fight you could get your changes without getting killed.
Believe it or not, not all people who believe in the right to revolution are some sort of trigger happy crazies just looking for an excuse.
We hadn't yet seen the slippery slope that lead to almost total confiscation of firearms in other countries like the UK and Australia yet.
I'm an Australian and don't like our gun laws much but it is a myth that we have almost total confiscation. We didn't have right to carry previously anyway, most semi-auto's are gone but they've been replaced with other firearms. We have just as many as before but not the same type and not the free access we used to. Nevertheless, despite my dislike for our laws I will say this: they were brought in legally and do not violate our constitution. If I were an American I would find many US gun laws intolerable because of the constitutional violation. If we had the 2nd amendment I would have hidden my guns.
The fact that not everyone resists government oppression successfully is no reason to disarm people and make sure no one can. Perhaps the Libyan resistance wouldn't have survived until NATO stepped in if they were unarmed. They could have been quietly killed at Qaddafi's leisure. Instead of arguing with me though, why don't you make contact with some Libyan resistance and ask them if they would have been better off disarmed. Be sure to get back to me with their answer.
How does arming allied forces with cheap handguns in the 1940's have anything to do with the modern military/police?
It indicates that the 1940's military did not believe that populations with inferior small arms are incapable of resistance. This is not changed because of new weapons technology since civilians also have newer tech than they did in the 1940's.
In the case of resisting police and the military it is not a game where you win by scoring more points (kills) than the opposition. Politics comes into play. Any government has the potential to be oppressive but western democratic governments are not going to wholesale slaughter their populations with everybody looking. The population outnumbers the military by far and asymmetry in civilian and military deaths is a given in a civil war but not necessarily the deciding factor.
Hell, if you want to talk about the 40's, look at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
What about them? Nobody is saying small arms defend against nuclear weapons. Do you seriously believe the US government would nuke a US city if the citizens took up arms? Nonsense. Check out the Eureka Stockade as an Australian example of when poorly armed citizens fought the government, lost the battle but won the political point.
The only way a citizens group would ever have a chance at affecting change in government with guns would be by assassinating a politician--you have no chance against the military or police, sorry.
Indeed, and before the creation and repeatedly increased power of the Corporation to shield people from the consequences of their actions, when businesses were primarily local affairs, and communities were close-knit enough to be a strong motivator to most people, that theory held reasonably well.
Yet who supports small business owners? I often see a false dichotomy that power must go either to big business or big government, not many want to empower the individual. I'd relax taxation and record keeping on non-incorporated individuals. I'd like it to be a lot easier for an employee to make the transition to self-employment.
Slashdot Mirror
Zimmerman was legally armed and presumably had his weapon concealed. Legally carrying a concealed weapon does not constitute aggression. "Instigating a confrontation" is not a criminal offense in any jurisdiction I'm aware of. If you argue with someone for example they do not get permission to punch you and slam your head into concrete.
It certainly seems like GZ is an idiot who could have avoided the situation. He could have greeted MT, introduced himself and then asked him questions. Is it only intelligent wise people who have self defense rights? I don't see proof beyond reasonable doubt that GZ broke any laws.
We have the right to defend ourselves here as well, but there are actual requirements involved. Seeing a black person wearing a hoodie is not sufficient to give us legal right to use lethal force. That man would have to be engaged in a forceable felony or represent a real threat.
So would someone punching you in the face and pounding your head on concrete constitute a forceable felony or real threat?
There's a difference between victim blaming and risk assessment. My girls learn ju-jitsu. It's not because I blame girls who get raped (or otherwise attacked) for not knowing self defense, it's a risk mitigation strategy. Ideally nobody would commit rape and it is commendable to work towards that but it hasn't been achieved yet.
Now ju-jitsu will work even if you are wearing revealing clothing. If they get drunk to the point of passing out in the presence of untrusted people ju-jitsu won't help. It's nothing to do with "victim blaming" its about a pragmatic approach as opposed to a moral one. If the thing you're most interested in is finding the right person to blame then in each case you have to wait until after a crime is committed. That's a commendable approach when taken by the courts. Not so commendable when taken by a father who should be advising his daughters on a wise course of action "Of course getting drunk with a crowd of football players doesn't mean you deserve rape, go ahead and have a good time!" Girls who get drunk with crowds of young men don't deserve rape at all but they do increase the odds of it happening.
In the past I have written Job Safety Analyses and Safe Work Method Statements on industrial sites. I suggest you have a look at some material on how to manage risk. It's about prevention and would hopefully help you understand that not everything is about your rights or blame, sometimes it's best to take a pragmatic, preventative approach. Your ER doctor was giving you good advice. I'm sure he would have preferred to give it to you before the accident but you didn't turn up at ER and ask him then, so he gave it to you before your next accident which happened to be right after your last one.
the ease of constructing such weapon increases and we will see their eventual use.
For most use cases for this weapon it could be replaced with a shiv. It gives slightly longer reach but is less concealable. A killing behind security is almost certainly going to be politically or religiously motivated and will happen according to the fanaticism of the assassin rather than the availability of particular weapons. It would potentially enable assassins who were too weak or not confident of their ability with a knife but it isn't really a game changer. It doesn't introduce significant new capability.
Then it's just a matter of a slippery slope, or scope creep
Yes, don't want those pesky citizens having freedom, they might abuse it or make wrong choices. Far better to have a rigid system of penalties, diligently enforced. While we're at it, let's ban dancing, who knows what it could lead to.
5 - 10 MPH: ticket, $200 fine
If you can't text and drive at 10MPH without having an accident (on a three lane highway has been my peak hour experience, no kids chasing balls onto the road) you shouldn't have a license and probably need to be strapped into your chair to have dinner.
They're doing it all wrong. You can't solve a social problem with technological features.
I think driverless cars will be a better solution to this problem. As someone who drives quite a lot for my work, I hope the day soon comes it is illegal to drive manually because it is too dangerous compared to our robotic chauffeurs. Judging by the way google navigation works for me, it won't be this year.
In the meantime, I agree with your first two solutions, the third is too drastic. Jail time if you cause an accident while texting perhaps but I don't think someone stuck in walking pace traffic who texts their wife they'll be late deserves jail time.
It's highly unlikely any training will help you if it's a fight.
is contradicted by this statement:
I've done a reasonable amount of full contact fighting which taught me to get the first heavy hit in
It's true that situational awareness will do more for you than being trained but caught unawares. My wife does ju-jutsu training. They teach the women that if they are confronted by a large male attacker, unless they have no other option they should run for the exact reason you bring up, it is hard to land a devastating first blow and the first blow they land will devastate you. I tell her find a weapon, since we have kids and it's likely she won't be able to run without leaving them. Untrained, even with a kitchen knife she's not that scary. I want her trained so that hopefully she could intimidate an attacker and as a last resort have a better chance of landing that first blow.
When I was in my teens I did farm work during holidays that strengthened me quite a bit, so in that case yes, but not because of a "sense of reliance and independence".
You know, until that happened, you'd just be a tin-foil hat wearer, without a shred of credibility to you.
Yeah, if that had never happened they'd be totally wrong about it. What ignorant fools! I think I'll plug my ears up and sing "lalalalala" now. Or chant "not listening, not listening".
Firstly, I would have had my kid involved in extracurricular activities, had them assisting in chores and other things, and developed in them a sense of self-reliance and independence.
I did plenty of chores and sport and it never solved any bullying problems for me.
Such self-reliance would include self-defense classes; No girl should fear that a boy will assault her.
Given opponents of equal fighting skill the larger will tend to win. Not always but it's the way to bet. Being trained to fight to a higher level than your potential opponents is a good way for an individual to overcome bullying but on a larger scale won't solve bullying but can change who the bullies are. There is also a lot of bullying that isn't physical. How do you use self defense classes to combat embarrassing pictures on facebook?
Secondly, I'd track down the parents of the child bullying and explain the situation to them verbally and in person. If the parents didn't step up to the plate, I would explain to them in a non-verbal way my disappointment in their lack of parenting.
<snip>
If I'm angry enough to fight someone, they're going to be facing me and they're going to be armed. And then they're going to lose.
So you'll talk to the parents and if they don't respond to your satisfaction you'll fight them to the death? Unless I've misunderstood, I think you need to revise this plan. If you win, it ends with you in prison and bullies doing whatever they like to your child while you are occupied with much tougher bullies.
It is not legal to own a firearm for self defense in Australia, although it was apparently legal for Susan Falls to use one but illegal to sell to her.
They used a domain name he didn't think to claim
You could say it like that I suppose, if your intent was to mislead. They used his name as a domain name. You're the one trying to spin.
You apparently haven't read the book. The Wealth of Nations discusses international trade including import duties etc. It was not a society of exclusively locally produced goods. The morality of the population is the morality of the market. If a market has no morality, it is not a reflection on markets it is a reflection on the population.
How many find the site by searching for "independent grassroots supporters of Ron Paul" and how many by searching for "Ron Paul". They use his name and reputation to generate hits and then want to sell those hits to him. If their website is so independent, why didn't they put their own name on it instead?
Frankly I believe that Australia is generally a safer place since the Howard government restricted legal gun ownership.
Our murder rate was declining before the gun laws (yes, even including the mass shootings that prompted them). NZ doesn't ban semi-auto's or require registration of most firearms and hasn't had a mass shooting for a similar length of time as us, so it would seem that our gun laws haven't prevented any mass shootings either. While people proclaim our current lack of mass shootings as a success of gun laws they ignore that we still have mass killings such as the Childers Palace fire and the Quakers Hill Nursing Home fire. Apparently murder doesn't matter so much if you burn them to death instead of shooting them.
Our gun laws didn't make the place safer they just made people who don't understand the issue feel better. There was not such fear of bikie gangs when guns could be bought by everyone, I don't even remember it being an issue, and "glassing" was something that happened at bikie bars and dive bars frequented by criminals, NOT your average bar or nightclub. Not that glassing would be affected directly by gun laws but I don't think your idea that gun laws made us safer stands up to scrutiny.
Spin it any way you like, the good doctor wants to use an arm of the UN to confiscate other peoples' property by threat of force.
No his argument boils down to that it is not rightfully their property. Resolving property disputes is a function of courts universally accepted by libertarians. The reality is that pretty near all the traffic to that site would be made up of people who were duped into thinking it was a site by Ron Paul. The only reason the cyber squatters aren't being condemned on this site is so that people can have a cheap shot at Ron Paul.
What "free marketers" never seem to get is: the "free market" has no morals.
Really?
The Theory of Moral Sentiments is a 1759 book by Adam Smith. It provided the ethical, philosophical, psychological, and methodological underpinnings to Smith's later works, including The Wealth of Nations...
Sounds like you must be talking about the other free market, not the Adam Smith thing.
Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.
I'm not American but I do believe in the right to revolt against despotic government. I know about various abuses and wars of the US government which are common knowledge. There are at least a couple of reasons why Americans have not risen up against their government:
1. The conditions of life for the vast majority of Americans is far better than would be had in a civil war.
2. If you had enough people to win a revolution you could just win an election instead. You can complain about a rigged election system all you like but what proportion of the population do you need to win a civil war? If you had that many people turn up to vote instead of fight you could get your changes without getting killed.
Believe it or not, not all people who believe in the right to revolution are some sort of trigger happy crazies just looking for an excuse.
We hadn't yet seen the slippery slope that lead to almost total confiscation of firearms in other countries like the UK and Australia yet.
I'm an Australian and don't like our gun laws much but it is a myth that we have almost total confiscation. We didn't have right to carry previously anyway, most semi-auto's are gone but they've been replaced with other firearms. We have just as many as before but not the same type and not the free access we used to. Nevertheless, despite my dislike for our laws I will say this: they were brought in legally and do not violate our constitution. If I were an American I would find many US gun laws intolerable because of the constitutional violation. If we had the 2nd amendment I would have hidden my guns.
The fact that not everyone resists government oppression successfully is no reason to disarm people and make sure no one can. Perhaps the Libyan resistance wouldn't have survived until NATO stepped in if they were unarmed. They could have been quietly killed at Qaddafi's leisure. Instead of arguing with me though, why don't you make contact with some Libyan resistance and ask them if they would have been better off disarmed. Be sure to get back to me with their answer.
How does arming allied forces with cheap handguns in the 1940's have anything to do with the modern military/police?
It indicates that the 1940's military did not believe that populations with inferior small arms are incapable of resistance. This is not changed because of new weapons technology since civilians also have newer tech than they did in the 1940's.
In the case of resisting police and the military it is not a game where you win by scoring more points (kills) than the opposition. Politics comes into play. Any government has the potential to be oppressive but western democratic governments are not going to wholesale slaughter their populations with everybody looking. The population outnumbers the military by far and asymmetry in civilian and military deaths is a given in a civil war but not necessarily the deciding factor.
Hell, if you want to talk about the 40's, look at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
What about them? Nobody is saying small arms defend against nuclear weapons. Do you seriously believe the US government would nuke a US city if the citizens took up arms? Nonsense. Check out the Eureka Stockade as an Australian example of when poorly armed citizens fought the government, lost the battle but won the political point.
The only way a citizens group would ever have a chance at affecting change in government with guns would be by assassinating a politician--you have no chance against the military or police, sorry.
Apparently the US military and CIA disagree with you:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FP-45_Liberator
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deer_gun
And I'm pretty sure a whole bunch of Iraqis and Afghans disagree with you too. Don't let facts get in the way of your opinion though, carry on.
Level of entry - the 3D printed version is likely easier to make (requiring less skill in some areas)
If that's the issue it's like saying it's legal until (too many of) you start doing it. Can a right only be allowed until people start exercising it?
Indeed, and before the creation and repeatedly increased power of the Corporation to shield people from the consequences of their actions, when businesses were primarily local affairs, and communities were close-knit enough to be a strong motivator to most people, that theory held reasonably well.
Yet who supports small business owners? I often see a false dichotomy that power must go either to big business or big government, not many want to empower the individual. I'd relax taxation and record keeping on non-incorporated individuals. I'd like it to be a lot easier for an employee to make the transition to self-employment.