Discussion: Guns, The Second Amendment, NRA - Part II

[Teelie]

It is especially problematic when gun rights activists are also pushing for people to be allowed concealed or even open weapon permits. All that a cop will see is a gun and someone to shoot, regardless of the person's intent or the context.

We already saw this in Alabama where a man was legally carrying his firearm and killed by the police who then lied about his involvement in a mall shooting. They said he was a part of the altercation, firing the gun, then said he ignored orders to drop it. I think they finally admitted he was shot by a confused and scared police officer who shot first, didn't bother questioning later.

 

[Batmannerism]

"You're part of the global warming problem nyaaa!"

Perpetuating coal through fighting progress! .

Well, with carefully reasoned arguments like that you should run for President.

It's actually our agriculture, particularly dairy, industry that makes up for most of our contribution to global warming.

As @DarthSkywalker and @DeadPresident have ably pointed out your suggested scenarios aren't reflective of New Zealand reality. I can't remember the last time a Police Officer has been shot since poor Len Snee.

This is not to say that our Police do not face physical danger every day ( they wear stab resistant body armour for a reason) but manage to do very well.

If the situation changed and our Police were at more risk of violence or were being assaulted more often I would change my position. But until there's a real reason to arm them, I'm happy for things to stay as they are.

Good luck with your Presidential campaign!

 

[Holiday]

'Anything can be mistaken as a gun if the cop says so. That is the issue. We have people justifying a shooting based on a cellphone. A cellphone looks nothing like a gun. Does that change a thing? Nope.

So many kids on my street ran around with the black cap guns they sold when I was young. From across the street, no one would know it wasn't real. Does that mean one could just get shot for playing?

We're not talking about the Stephon Clark shooting, were talking about the Tamir Rice shooting where the object police mistook for a real gun was a gun.

What you or anyone else did as a child with toy guns has no relevance to the Tamir Rice shooting. His own mother warned him about playing with with guns for a reason. You said he was doing nothing wrong which is absurd. It is obviously wrong in today's world (not x amount of years ago when you were a kid) to take a black airsoft gun that is based on a real gun into a public place and aim it at people. But admitting he made a mistake doesn't mean the police who shot him were in the right or justified.

A month or so ago someone referred to Trayvon Martin as an unarmed teen. Which isn't wrong. But that description ignores that the unarmed Martin had bloodied Zimmerman in their fight and was on top of him when he was shot. Admitting that fact doesn't absolve Zimmerman his wrong doing.

People here ignore facts and context and some how expect to win arguments.

 

[Sithborg]

Yeah, I'm not entirely sure that is quite the case you want to talk about. Especially as more and more about Zimmerman came out.

 

[Holiday]

Don't talk about the facts of a shooting?

Even though he was unarmed, the larger and more athletic Martin was on top of Zimmerman when he was shot, and had bloodied Zimmerman's face and head. Those facts don't change because Zimmerman is a piece of ****.

 

[Sithborg]

In a confrontation most likely provoked by Zimmerman.

 

[Donner]

Zimmerman is a horrible anecdote to use for a justified shooting. Especially given the trouble he's been in since. That kid did not deserve to get shot.

 

[DarthSkywalker]

We're not talking about the Stephon Clark shooting, were talking about the Tamir Rice shooting where the object police mistook for a real gun was a gun.

What you or anyone else did as a child with toy guns has no relevance to the Tamir Rice shooting. His own mother warned him about playing with with guns for a reason. You said he was doing nothing wrong which is absurd. It is obviously wrong in today's world (not x amount of years ago when you were a kid) to take a black airsoft gun that is based on a real gun into a public place and aim it at people. But admitting he made a mistake doesn't mean the police who shot him were in the right or justified.

A month or so ago someone referred to Trayvon Martin as an unarmed teen. Which isn't wrong. But that description ignores that the unarmed Martin had bloodied Zimmerman in their fight and was on top of him when he was shot. Admitting that fact doesn't absolve Zimmerman his wrong doing.

People here ignore facts and context and some how expect to win arguments.

When one is doing nothing wrong, they are doing nothing wrong. A kid playing is doing nothing wrong. A kid protecting themselves from someone who is actually following them is doing nothing wrong. It is the excuses made to justify violence done to black kids.

 

[Aximili86]

As a little kid? Yep. In our town little kids played around like that all the time. Ran around the park doing it. It wasn't atypical at all. And why would it be? Toy guns were everywhere when I was growing up.

I had a cap gun similar-looking to that as a pre-teen too. And looking back on it, that's ****ing insane and of course shouldn't be allowed in this environment. The fact it was okay then is the issue, rather than letting it be okay now.

Growing up in a less-than-awesome part of L.A., yeah, if I pointed that at an officer and got shot it...I'd hesitate to say it'd be my fault, that's too strong with a kid that age, but the cop'd certainly be justified in doing it. It'd be nice if the world was all hugs & puppies and gang members under legal age weren't a thing, sure, but that's fantasy land. If you want to pretend teens don't shoot at cops in dangerous parts of cities, awesome.

But yeah, heh, to the guy regarding Zimmerman as justified, maayyybe get a better example. Yeah, Martin was beating the **** out of him, that's all true. Zimmerman's also a proven desmonstrable pr*ck as we've seen in the time since, and chances are he instigated it all. This stuff isn't all one or the other, there's nuance. Just because most of these situations with actual cops are justified, doesn't mean we jump to "see Zimmerman as legit self defense".

 

[Aximili86]

I can't find the numbers. for the last few years. But unless the numbers sky rocketed, that doesn't exactly seem the most likely scenario.

List of New Zealand police officers killed in the line of duty - Wikipedia

Also one might consider that the murder rate has gone down the last decade.

New Zealand at lowest murder rate in 40 years - police

Which is all true, and also totally beside the point. Violent crime's relatively smalltime in New Zealand, no duh. That doesn't mean you don't prepare your people in harm's way for the worst case scenario.

Again, it's all well and good to say "yeah, but they can call a special response team who can show up with guns if necessary!" That's the way the UK works too. And that's great if you have the time, can wait the 10 minutes or whatever. That's just a luxury that cops aren't always going to find themselves with, in any major populated area. People are people are people, the world over, you're not just suddenly a more evolved & peaceful population because you're on a little island backwater with less of an issue than in big countries.

Mace and tasers and batons are great with the small stuff, you're going to be able to contain most lone individuals with a knife with something like that. A group of out of control people though? Or hell, even with a lone individual wielding a knife most cops in the western world (not just the US, talking Canada, Australia, wherevere here) aren't going to risk it. They're not necessarily going to fire the weapon unless the guy actually makes a lunge, but they're sure as **** going to draw it. And that's just fine, you want that option for these people doing this sort of risky work.

 

[KRYPTON INC.]

Don't talk about the facts of a shooting?

Even though he was unarmed, the larger and more athletic Martin was on top of Zimmerman when he was shot, and had bloodied Zimmerman's face and head. Those facts don't change because Zimmerman is a piece of ****.

Point blank, if someone were to attempt to stop you from going to your place of residence and they were not in any way a legitimate authority like either a law enforcement officer or private security would you just be all "Why yes completely unknown person with nothing to back them up what so ever, I'll do as you say and allow you to dictate where I can go and what I can do."

You know the answer but seem to still want to make some case to either sully Martin or decrease the responsibility of Zimmerman. What nuance is there in trying to somehow exonerate Zimmerman? Whenever this argument is made anyone with a sense of morals need to point out the simple fact that if Zimmerman didn't attempt to stop Martin from going home, there would be no altercation.

If a person is walking down the street and someone out of the blue says "Hey, I'm going to keep you here against your will" very few of us are going to become Buddhist saints and just allow that. If the situation as likely happened then escalates to the person physically trying to stop you from going on your way, well a fight is gonna break out. But the person in the wrong isn't the one that was being stopped.

I think it's often telling that even with placing caveats like "Yeah, sure, Zimmerman was a piece of crap... BUUUUUUT..." there's still some attempt to justify the shooting. Oh, Zimmerman was bloodied? Did that happen out of nowhere? Or did it happen because he accosted a person who was going home, whom he had zero evidence to contain? We all know how we would view that on a personal level if that was us or someone we loved like a girlfriend, wife or family member. Because I guarantee you if someone stopped you from going to your home, you ignored them as you should and then they laid a hand on you to stop you, you'd fight back. And you'd be in the right.

Your's isn't a nuanced reading of the situation. It's giving cover to Zimmerman who instigated a situation that ended in the killing of a teenager who was guilty of nothing but trying to go home and then his shooter was allowed to go free. Zimmerman put himself in harms way for no good reason by stopping a person he had no real authority to stop. Martin's reaction to that is the reaction of 99.9% of the people in the world. Someone tries to physically stop me from going to my home is asking to get into a fight, and there should be no surprise if I react with violence to being physically stopped from going to where I'm going. BUT... for SOME reason Martin is not allowed to have reacted to this the way we all know in our heart of hearts we all would have. I wonder why? I wonder why still to this day people feel the need to make some kind of excuse for Zimmerman's actions?

 

[Holiday]

In a confrontation most likely provoked by Zimmerman.

It was definitely provoked by Zimmerman. But it was also escalated by Martin. Admitting that though doesn't mean Zimmerman was right.

Zimmerman is a horrible anecdote to use for a justified shooting. Especially given the trouble he's been in since. That kid did not deserve to get shot.

That's not what is being said. What is being said is that describing Martin as an unarmed teen is ignoring the reality that he was attacking Zimmerman when shot.

 

[Aximili86]

The Zimmerman one's such a weird one. Legally I think they may have made the right call on the actual shooting, but surely they could have got Zimmerman on something to do with the escalation. Reckless endangerment or something. I guess under Florida law the stand-your-ground the trigger-pulling threshold was technically met, but he should have done time all the same.

A little frustrating how so few people are willing to acknowledge that Martin had him down on the street pummelling him, though. Not sure that excuses the shooting given it's also pretty clear Zimmerman was harassing the guy without any basis, but on a purely "in the moment was your life at threat?" level I suppose it going the way it went isn't totally unreasonable.

Like Krypton said though, Zimmerman's totally a bad ****ing apple, you wouldn't hold that guy up as an example of anything positive. It's pretty much a situation of "yeah, Zimmerman was being a jumped-up militant ****-head, and yeah, Martin was probably capable of - even inadvertently - killing him in the following moments." Gotta make a judgement call & find the lesser of two ****ty legal determinations.

Agreed on the "unarmed teen" descriptor being a problem in some of these scenarios though. While true, "unarmed" doesn't necessarily equate to "not a mortal threat" like people tend to jump to as a lazy conclusion, especially in an instance like with Brown. You're a guy that size, you're trying to grab a cop's gun? At a certain point unarmed is a pretty useless fact, even though it's a fact. If you succeed in getting that cop's gun, you're suddenly a threat not just to him but everyone around. You need to go down.

 

[Sithborg]

Of course, a white guy would be totally justified in attacking a black man that was following him.

Then of course, there is also the problem with how much more of a threat people perceive black people.

 

[Donner]

19-year-old fatally shot after knocking on a door he thought was home

There used to be a psycho on this forum that loved defending her right to own a gun and even said that if someone was on her property in the middle of the night, she would shoot them. Regardless of the reason why they were there (like going to the wrong house).

The US scares me.

 

[Holiday]

Point blank, if someone were to attempt to stop you from going to your place of residence and they were not in any way a legitimate authority like either a law enforcement officer or private security would you just be all "Why yes completely unknown person with nothing to back them up what so ever, I'll do as you say and allow you to dictate where I can go and what I can do."

You know the answer but seem to still want to make some case to either sully Martin or decrease the responsibility of Zimmerman. What nuance is there in trying to somehow exonerate Zimmerman? Whenever this argument is made anyone with a sense of morals need to point out the simple fact that if Zimmerman didn't attempt to stop Martin from going home, there would be no altercation.

If a person is walking down the street and someone out of the blue says "Hey, I'm going to keep you here against your will" very few of us are going to become Buddhist saints and just allow that. If the situation as likely happened then escalates to the person physically trying to stop you from going on your way, well a fight is gonna break out. But the person in the wrong isn't the one that was being stopped.

I think it's often telling that even with placing caveats like "Yeah, sure, Zimmerman was a piece of crap... BUUUUUUT..." there's still some attempt to justify the shooting. Oh, Zimmerman was bloodied? Did that happen out of nowhere? Or did it happen because he accosted a person who was going home, whom he had zero evidence to contain? We all know how we would view that on a personal level if that was us or someone we loved like a girlfriend, wife or family member. Because I guarantee you if someone stopped you from going to your home, you ignored them as you should and then they laid a hand on you to stop you, you'd fight back. And you'd be in the right.

Your's isn't a nuanced reading of the situation. It's giving cover to Zimmerman who instigated a situation that ended in the killing of a teenager who was guilty of nothing but trying to go home and then his shooter was allowed to go free. Zimmerman put himself in harms way for no good reason by stopping a person he had no real authority to stop. Martin's reaction to that is the reaction of 99.9% of the people in the world. Someone tries to physically stop me from going to my home is asking to get into a fight, and there should be no surprise if I react with violence to being physically stopped from going to where I'm going. BUT... for SOME reason Martin is not allowed to have reacted to this the way we all know in our heart of hearts we all would have. I wonder why? I wonder why still to this day people feel the need to make some kind of excuse for Zimmerman's actions?

I'm not making an excuse for Zimmerman's actions. I even said that acknowledging Martin was hitting Zimmerman and on top of him when shot doesn't absolve Zimmerman's actions. I just disagree with the label of "unarmed teen" as if that means he couldn't harm Zimmerman with his fists, which he did. It doesn't strengthen the argument against Zimmerman to ignore that.

Do you have a source for the claim that Zimmerman accosted Martin which led to the fight?

 

[Teelie]

19-year-old fatally shot after knocking on a door he thought was home

There used to be a psycho on this forum that loved defending her right to own a gun and even said that if someone was on her property in the middle of the night, she would shoot them. Regardless of the reason why they were there (like going to the wrong house).

The US scares me.

I know who you are talking about and this is the very reason that kind of person is dangerous.

 

[DarthSkywalker]

I'm not making an excuse for Zimmerman's actions. I even said that acknowledging Martin was hitting Zimmerman and on top of him when shot doesn't absolve Zimmerman's actions. I just disagree with the label of "unarmed teen" as if that means he couldn't harm Zimmerman with his fists, which he did. It doesn't strengthen the argument against Zimmerman to ignore that.

Do you have a source for the claim that Zimmerman accosted Martin which led to the fight?

Why was he following Martin? Because he was a black kid. That in and of itself tells the whole damn story.

And it is ridiculous to mention he had his fist. So does every victim who is stalked. If that is such a valuable weapon, there is no argument that anyone needs a gun. All they need to do is use their fist to protect themselves.

 

[Aximili86]

Look, if he'd shot Martin over Martin just throwing a punch at his jaw, or a few punches, I'd be 100% with you.

Thing is, it's legitimately a little murkier than that. Is an unarmed 6-foot teen who's successfully wrestled a far smaller guy to the street and is banging his head on the curb a potentially-fatal threat?

Err, yes. Yes he is. If Zimmerman hadn't been needlessly tailing him and verbally harassing him and Martin lashed out that way, it'd be pretty clear cut.

That's the murk-factor here, Zimmerman instigated it. That doesn't mean his life wasn't at risk once things got to the point they did, because pretty clearly it potentially was. And that's the Florida law, "if you're legitimately in mortal danger you can pull the trigger". That bar was determined to be met, and they were probably right in that call.

I just think you also need to put Zimmerman away for 5 years or whatever over the ****ty reckless judgement and harassment which put both of them in that position, if you're going to clear the shooting as legitimately self-defense. But that's different to "Zimmerman bad, Martin good".

 

[Holiday]

When one is doing nothing wrong, they are doing nothing wrong. A kid playing is doing nothing wrong. A kid protecting themselves from someone who is actually following them is doing nothing wrong. It is the excuses made to justify violence done to black kids.

A kid can be "playing" with innocent intentions but in reality act irresponsibly. His mother warned him not to play with guns so even if he has just playing by your definition he was doing wrong by hers.

You describe Trayvon Martin as a kid protecting himself so I'll ask you like I asked Krypton for a source or evidence he was acting in self defense as opposed to commiting assault.

Why was he following Martin? Because he was a black kid. That in and of itself tells the whole damn story.

And it is ridiculous to mention he had his fist. So does every victim who is stalked. If that is such a valuable weapon, there is no argument that anyone needs a gun. All they need to do is use their fist to protect themselves.

Zimmerman followed Martin because he was black. Okay. We know this based on what evidence, him having a lighter skin tone than Martin?

It's not ridiculous to point out people use their fists in attacks. You're in denial if you think people don't have physical advantages over other people using only their hands.

 

[KRYPTON INC.]

I'm not making an excuse for Zimmerman's actions. I even said that acknowledging Martin was hitting Zimmerman and on top of him when shot doesn't absolve Zimmerman's actions. I just disagree with the label of "unarmed teen" as if that means he couldn't harm Zimmerman with his fists, which he did. It doesn't strengthen the argument against Zimmerman to ignore that.

Do you have a source for the claim that Zimmerman accosted Martin which led to the fight?

Ladies and gentlemen we have it right here. The truly obtuse.

Having hands now is the same as being armed with a weapon. Because hands can become fists. So saying someone who got shot who had no weapons as unarmed is now somehow mischaracterizing a situation.

That's silly as an opinion and deserves no respect. It shows that no matter how ya cut it people like you and others will always find a way to justify the killing of a teenaged American citizen.

 

[KRYPTON INC.]

I'm not making an excuse for Zimmerman's actions. I even said that acknowledging Martin was hitting Zimmerman and on top of him when shot doesn't absolve Zimmerman's actions. I just disagree with the label of "unarmed teen" as if that means he couldn't harm Zimmerman with his fists, which he did. It doesn't strengthen the argument against Zimmerman to ignore that.

Do you have a source for the claim that Zimmerman accosted Martin which led to the fight?

Do you have a legitimate source that says Zimmerman was merely the innocent victim of an unprovoked assault?

 

[DarthSkywalker]

Do you have a legitimate source that says Zimmerman was merely the innocent victim of an unprovoked assault?

Thing is, we know this is BS. That is exactly what the 911 call shows us. He was following Martin for no reason.

 

[Teelie]

And 911 told his stupid ass not to instigate anything which is exactly what Zimmerman did.

 

[Donner]

A little perspective on what going to school as a kid feels like in America: