Dude, first of all you don't have to take a class or receive special training to know that guns are dangerous (duh?). You don't need to know about guns to sit on a jury of a murder trial that involved a firearm and you can certainly write your congressperson to request for gun control without any training on guns so I don't know how what you say is relevant. That crap is just a talking point that the gun lobby tells gun owners to use. Secondly, even though the Zimmerman defense team did not use Stand Your Ground as an argument in the case,
it was certainly cited in the jury instructions and was a factor in the verdict that was made by the jurors. Yes, it was similar to the Marissa Alexander case because Stand Your Ground was used and it is not all BS.
What in the blue hell are you talking about?
I never ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever ever said that you need ANY training to know that guns are dangerous. Nope, didnt say that or anything REMOTELY close to that. Sure didnt. Once again YOUR comprehension has failed.
I will repeat my reason for saying what I said-I have seen a GREAT deal of ignorance regarding guns and gun laws, particularly in the past year or two(probably primarily due to Colorado theater shooting, Sandy Hook shooting, Zimmerman case, and so on). MUCH of what I heard surprised me. Mainly because, like you mentioned before, I assumed that the general public had a decent grasp of firearms knowledge. The questions and answers, news reports, and so on have proven that I was wrong. Yes, I have even personally had people ask questions about whether they had to have a background check to purchase a firearm-which is the EXACT topic at hand (again, referencing what I said about how, in my opinion, anyone who can qualify to own/possess a firearm should).
Those are not talking points from anyone, that is my opinion which was formed through my own knowledge and experience. I could give a crap about what the NRA or anyone else says when it comes to most topics. I dont have an agenda, they do. I expressed my opinion and told you why I said it the way that I did. You challenged it (questioning my motives), you were wrong and still are wrong.
Regarding the stand your ground law, apparently you did not read the article that I posted. Here is a cut and paste from that article, I bolded some parts below.
Some people have insisted that SYG was applied in the case as a defense through Judge Nelson’s jury instructions. This is understandable given the fact that the jury instructions state that there is no duty to retreat. The jury was told that if Zimmerman “was not engaged in an unlawful activity and was attacked in any place where he had a right to be, he had no duty to retreat and had the right to stand his ground and meet force with force, including deadly force if he reasonably believed [as above].”
However, the common law does not impose a duty to retreat. It preexisted the SYG law in most states. If it didn’t, hundreds of thousands of cases of self-defense would have had different results after people defended themselves rather than flee. Indeed, this is a point that I often made in opposing these laws: you already have the right to defend yourself and not to retreat. There are slight difference in the jury instruction among the states, including Florida,
but the Zimmerman instructions reflected the general common law standard for self-defense and the justified use of force. If the President was referring to the no duty to retreat rule in his call for reform, he would have to change not the SYG laws but the common law in the majority of states. This has been a rule either through statute or common law for a long time. The change would require citizens to retreat or flee when attacked in most cases or lose the defense in the use of lethal force.
There has been much to do about the inclusion of an instruction that “If in your consideration of the issue of self-defense you have a reasonable doubt on the question of whether George Zimmerman was justified in the use of deadly force, you should find George Zimmerman not guilty.” That is also found in many states though some states have different burdens of proof. That is not a reflection of SYG immunity but a state preference in self-defense cases generally. As noted above, the legislation that included the immunity provision also adopted the common law rule on self-defense. You have no duty of retreat in many states that do not have a formal SYG law. Many people who may not like the immunity provision (barring criminal prosecution) would likely support the common law rule that, once attacked, you do not have to flee in order to claim self-defense in the use of lethal force. Note that in cases of non-lethal force, there is no such rule even in retreat states and, under the common law, you must still show that your use of lethal force was commensurate with the threat.
Moreover, the jury verdict seemed to reflect its view of the fact in relation to the main charge of the instructions (a standard charge) on self defense that a defendant is “justified in using deadly force if he reasonably believes that such force is necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm to himself.” That is a standard that is used in the same basic form by all states that I know of.
This case turns on classic self-defense. Moreover, Zimmerman seemed motivated by an obsession with crime and not the SYG law. Even without the law, this encounter would have likely unfolded in the same way and the outcome at trial would have likely been the same, in my view. The outcome may have been different if Angela Corey had not over-charged the case and framed it as manslaughter. Many experts have criticized her charging and handling of the case. Yet, this again has little to do with the SYG law.
None of this means that we should not get rid of these laws. Those of us who have criticized these laws for years would welcome allies, particularly the President. I do believe that these laws, including the Castle Doctrine laws, do motivate some people like Joe Horn in Texas. However, the controversy over the Zimmerman trial should not be allowed to stray from the central and material questions, in my view. Reasonable people can disagree on the facts. In fact, one of the reasons this debate has remained so bitter is a refusal of both sides to recognize that reasonable people can disagree about what the evidence shows without revealing some bias or deep-seated prejudice. The jury clearly found the evidence lacking, as I pointed out in an earlier column. That does not mean that they were carrying out a racial agenda or blind to the historic mistreatment of blacks in America. They could have had a good-faith reason for reasonable doubt of what occurred at this place at that time.
Here are all of the jury instructions.
Update: In commentary on this posting, some have objected that Stand Your Ground was used in the jury instructions, which is precisely what this blog addressed below (though one person noted that he decided not to read the whole blog). There was an insistence that there is nothing to waive and no pre-trial hearing. That is simply not true. What most people refer to as the purpose of SYG is the immunity provision, which states as follows:
Fla. Stat. § 776.032 (2013)
§ 776.032. Immunity from criminal prosecution and civil action for justifiable use of force
(1) A person who uses force as permitted in s. 776.012, s. 776.013, or s. 776.031 is justified in using such force and is immune from criminal prosecution and civil action for the use of such force, unless the person against whom force was used is a law enforcement officer, as defined in s. 943.10(14), who was acting in the performance of his or her official duties and the officer identified himself or herself in accordance with any applicable law or the person using force knew or reasonably should have known that the person was a law enforcement officer. As used in this subsection, the term “criminal prosecution” includes arresting, detaining in custody, and charging or prosecuting the defendant.
(2) A law enforcement agency may use standard procedures for investigating the use of force as described in subsection (1), but the agency may not arrest the person for using force unless it determines that there is probable cause that the force that was used was unlawful.
(3) The court shall award reasonable attorney’s fees, court costs, compensation for loss of income, and all expenses incurred by the defendant in defense of any civil action brought by a plaintiff if the court finds that the defendant is immune from prosecution as provided in subsection (1).
In order to seek immunity, you have to invoke the SYG provision and have a substantive pre-trial hearing. The court rules on the matter from the bench. If successful, there is no criminal trial. See Wonder v. State, 64 So. 3d 1208; 2011 Fla. LEXIS 1246 (Fla. 2011). That is the most significant difference in the SYG law and most of us have referred to that provision in the case.
The defense did indeed waive that argument in not seeking the pre-trial hearing. They wisely chose to make a conventional self-defense argument to the jury. Moreover, for those who read the entire blog, the point was that the no retreat language in the instruction is not the invention of the SYG law but rather a common law rule (though Florida did once have a retreat rule). No retreat is the common law rule and the SYG language comes from common law cases. While the wording may differ from state to state, most states have always recognized the right to defend yourself without having an obligation to flee or retreat in the face of an attack. In other words, you can have the same defense with no duty to retreat in states without a formal SYG law.
While this may be only of interest to some lawyers, these distinctions are often lost in the actual application to given cases. Even states with a duty to retreat like Connecticut, that duty is required only if “he or she knows that he or she can avoid the necessity of using such force with complete safety (1) by retreating. . . ” See Conn. Sec. 53a-19. Use of physical force in defense of person. As stated in Smiley v. State, 966 So. 2d 330, the legislature did indeed change a prior rule with a duty to retreat in Florida with the legislation. Furthermore, as discussed in Weiand v. State, 732 So. 2d 1044, the Florida case law required a duty to retreat, but most states do not under the common law. The prior Florida law had exceptions for home or “retreat to the wall” defense. The legislation effectively adopted the common law rule in those other states. See Wayne LaFave & Austin Scott, Jr., Criminal Law § 5.7(f) (2d ed. 1986). Notably, even under the old Florida rule, Zimmerman could have made the same defense that he used at trial. He insisted that it was Martin who attacked him and that during the struggle he had to use lethal force in the struggle. Under the prior Florida rule, “if the defendant was placed in a position of imminent danger of death or great bodily harm and it would have increased his own danger to retreat then his use of force likely to cause death or great bodily harm was justifiable.” Dias v. State, 812 So. 2d 487 (2002) The adoption of the common law rule however certainly changed the instruction to expressly eliminate any retreat duty. If you waived immunity by not asking for the pre-trial SYG finding, you were left with the same rule in other states under the common law.
