This thread is growing at a speed faster than I cared to follow, but I saw a post in another forum that I browse which expresses how I feel about this issue much more eloquently than I can.
"Yes. He should be condemned for what he did. He should have stayed in his car. He took action against an individual on a public street who was walking home from the store. That individual is now dead. Zimmerman may not be criminally liable. The chain of events that starts with him patrolling the neighborhood in his car and ends with a dead kid may in fact, have enough attenuation in time and enough aggression on the part of the kid to prevent criminal charges against Zimmerman. None of us know for sure one way or the other, and it is clear that with the national attention being paid to this incident, there will be a full vetting of the facts.
All of that, however, is to lose sight of the primary point here. Zimmerman, who had no police authority whatsoever, deliberately started a chain of events that ended with the death of a kid who went out at half time for skittles. According to the unredacted tape posted earlier, Zimmerman doesn't get out of his vehicle until after he says "oh shit, he's running." He then gets out and pursues the kid.
Why? The kid took off. Zimmerman gets out of his vehicle to go find the kid. Why? The kid has a right to be on the street there. What possible justification does Zimmerman have for doing this. He's called the police. They are on their way. The police dispatcher has recommended that he not pursue. He has his vehicle and could continue to cruise around in it if he wanted to. Zimmerman had every ability to just give up at that point. He even says that he lost sight of the kid. Fine. At that point, wait for the police, make a report and be done with it. But he doesn't do that. He keeps going. It's a public area. It's not Zimmerman's job to secure it. It's not Zimmerman's private property.
Zimmerman made a whole series of really bad decisions. Because of those decisions a kid is dead. Even if that isn't criminal, it's whole buckets of wrong, and thus, he should be condemned.
If anyone posted a story here that he had acted like Zimmerman did, that person would be roundly screamed at by the membership. In fact, if you think back, we had a thread a couple of months ago where someone bragged that they had confronted a snooper at their girlfriend's apartment and that he ran off, but our intrepid hero had his Kimber in his hand and was prepared to use it. We beat that guy like a $5 mule for being an asshat.
Zimmerman behaved like a fool with tragic consequences. He was a fool with a gun, and like it or not, that affects all of us negatively."
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"No, not really. Nope, I don't feel better at all. I am trying to understand why some posters think this is ok or somehow not a big deal. I live in central Florida, not too far from Sanford and I can assure you that it is a huge deal here.
I don't follow why, when Zimmerman did so many stupid things and a kid ended up dead, so many posters in this thread think it's ok.
I haven't advocated that he be arrested, charged or convicted of anything. I have expressly noted that until the investigation is completed, and possibly not even then, will there be sufficient hard evidence to charge him with a crime. I have not called him a racist even though certain of his tape recorded statements may lead to that supposition. I have called him an over-zealous, cop wannabe idiot who exceeded any possible authority he had. I have accused him of making bad decisions at virtually every stage of this tragedy. Those bad decisions lead to the death of a human being.
You might note that I have also not referred to the victim as an "innocent kid". I have no idea if the kid is innocent or not. I don't know if the kid initiated contact with Zimmerman after he first ran away and Zimmerman went looking for him. I don't know what happened at the final confrontation at all.
And I don't need to know, because this situation should never have gotten to the final confrontation. If Zimmerman had behaved in a responsible way, he would just be an irritating neighborhood watch weenie who called 911 46 times in the prior year.
This case is a tragedy. This kid had no police record. He was returning to the home of his father's girlfriend to watch the remainder of the NBA All-Star Game with his dad. He's dead. As the Clash would say, "dead for ever" and he shouldn't be.
We all get caught up in gun rights and gun advocacy and we all want the right to defend ourselves and our property. I agree with these rights and exercise them myself. But we won't have these rights for long if we are cavalier about the impact of situations like this on the voting public.
I guess part of the issue is that I see what Zimmerman did as being fundamentally indefensible even if technically legal. I also have kids in their mid to late teens and I would hate to have them end up dead from a completely avoidable situation. By his actions, Zimmerman caused a tragedy, killing an apparently decent kid who was on his way to spend time with his family.
In addition to the fact that a kid is dead and the unbearable pain the deceased's family must be going through, I think that this will have a negative effect on gun laws and gun rights in Florida. We almost got open carry last year and things like this won't help. Insurance companies will now be all over homeowner associations concerning things like neighborhood watch patrols. There may well be legislation coming about neighborhood watch patrols. There will probably be legislation introduced to weaken the stand your ground law. None of this is good and all of it is a result of bad decision making."