Texsquatch wrote:I personally don't believe Martin deserved to die........
Neither did George Zimmerman; and yet, that's where the whole incident was headed when TM repeatedly smashed GZ's skull into the cement, telling GZ, "you're going to die tonight".....before GZ regained his senses long enough to go for his gun and shoot the assailant who was on top of him doing this to him......nevermind that the assailant also tried to get control of the gun when GZ went for it.
GZ is an idiot, and TM was a violent drug abusing thug. These two judgements are more than amply demonstrated by the facts that are already on record for both of them. I'm not a GZ fan by any means, but I AM a fan of the right to self-defense EVEN IF an act of self-defense results in the death of the assailant.
It's not a case of "
deserve." Zimmerman wasn't
punishing Martin, he was
defending himself. "
Deserve" had nothing to do with it, and that's where such arguments go terribly wrong. The
facts of the case are what they are. A court, the trier of fact, affirmed the facts and ruled that GZ had a valid defense to prosecution. So when you say that TM "did not deserve to die," you
have to also arrive at one of two conclusions in order to evade the consequent cognitive dissonance that statement: either A)
somebody ELSE deserved to die (since that would have been the outcome), but since it wasn't TM who deserved to die, it must be GZ who deserved it; OR B) the facts as found by a court, even with a judge who was demonstrably prejudiced against the defendant and a prosecution which is being sanctioned for their violation of court rules and the law, were not true. . . . even though neither of us was a witness to the events.
Since we
weren't witnesses, and since a case prosecuted by a corrupt prosecutor and conducted by a biased judge
STILL found GZ innocent—
based on the facts of the case as determined by the trier of fact—then your statement that TM "didn't deserve to die" implies that GZ
did deserve to die. You're certainly entitled to your opinion in the matter, but I find that particular conclusion to be repellent. Since when did "self-defense" become "the other guy didn't deserve to die?"
HERE IS A FACT: If you carry a gun, you
might have to use it to defend yourself; and if you
have to use it to defend yourself, there's
a risk that you
might kill the person you shoot with it. If you're a responsible CHL holder, then you didn't draw your gun except to defend yourself against use of deadly force or a threat of use of deadly force.
That means that you thought
YOU might die if you didn't draw the weapon and use it. In that case, are you saying that your attacker "deserves to die," or are you saying that "you are defending yourself"? You should get yourself clear on this distinction because if you don't, you are going to be subjecting yourself to a whole lot of heartache and unnecessary guilt if, God forbid, you should ever have to shoot someone and they die. GZ wasn't trying to kill anyone. He was trying to keep from being killed. So to say that TM "didn't deserve to die" is to attach a moral equivalency that invalidates the use of deadly force in defense of self. If that's what you think, then you should let your CHL expire and stop carrying a gun. That way, there will be NO chance that you will kill someone "who doesn't deserve to die" in defense of your own life. I submit that, no matter GZ's being an idiot, or TM's being a thug, if you are in GZ's shoes, on your back, getting your head smashed into the concrete and receiving an "MMA-style" butt-whoopin' (as described by an eye-witness to the events), then you will try to get to your gun and defend yourself if you can.......not because your assailant "deserves to die", but because
you want to live.
That said, I agree with you that a nativity scene commemorating the birth of my Savior was perverted into a political scene somehow enobling the death of a teenaged assailant.
