Showing posts with label Florida. Show all posts

Monday, July 27, 2015

Pissing Match, with Bullets

Our problem with gun violence is that the people who defend unfettered access to, and carrying around, guns in this country, across the spectrum of society, far too often seem to believe that it is acceptable, EVEN DESIRABLE, to shoot people who, in their minds, scare them in some way or otherwise don't adequately conform to how they think someone else should behave.

Far too RARELY are these shootings genuinely and unavoidably life threatening when the escalation to lethal force occurs. The very essence of the problem, however much some of the gun huggers deny it, is the desire to escalate violence and force because they WANT TO DO SO, their very identity, including sometimes their gender identity as masculine, manly men, depends on it.

Just having a gun with you, on you, or in your hands, messes with your perception and increases your paranoia and sense of threats, which in turn fuels the escalation, in addition to the other factors fueling escalation - like conservative authoritarianism.

From a 2012 Notre Dame University study, via ZDNet, demonstrating that having or holding a gun makes you see bad things that aren't there:

Study: Carrying a gun can make you more paranoid
...the researchers subjected volunteers to a series of five experiments in which they were shown multiple images of people on a computer screen and determined whether the person was holding a gun or a neutral object such as a soda can or cell phone. Subjects did this while holding either a toy gun or a neutral object such as a foam ball.

The researchers varied the situation in each experiment — such as having the people in the images sometimes wear ski masks, changing the race of the person in the image or changing the reaction subjects were to have when they judged the person in the image to hold a gun. Regardless of the situation, the study showed that responding with a gun created a bias in which observers reported a gun being present more often than they did responding with a ball. Thus, by virtue of affording the subject the opportunity to use a gun, he or she was more likely to classify objects in a scene as a gun and, as a result, to engage in threat-induced behavior, such as raising a firearm to shoot.

The researchers showed that the ability to act is a key factor in the effects by showing that while simply letting observers see a nearby gun didn't influence their behavior, holding and using the gun did.

The science tells us that those who carry guns around, legally or otherwise, get into more conflicts and confrontations. From the most recent study on gun ownership and aggression by Jeffery Swanson by way of the Huff Po:

Study: People Who Own a Lot of Guns Are More Likely to Get in Fights, Carry Guns Outside the Home
The new study compares rates of impulsive, angry behavior with access to guns. Swanson and his research colleagues asked 5,653 respondents to answer questions about their own behavior, and also asked these same research subjects if they owned and/or carried guns. The subjects lived in cities, suburbs and rural areas throughout the United States, and roughly one-third stated that they owned or had access to firearms, which seems to be what we consider the national firearm ownership rate to be today.

Every respondent was asked whether they had tantrums or angry outbursts; broke something in anger; lost their temper and got involved in physical fights. These are classic indicators of impulsive, angry behavior, with the tantrums/outbursts being the least serious, the fights being the most serious and the breaking of some object in between. Both the owners and non-owners of guns reported engaging in all three types of behaviors, with tantrums being three times as common as physical fights for both groups, and the percentage of gun owners and non-gun owners engaging in any of the three anger indicators being about the same.

What struck me as I read the survey results was that overall, there was not a great difference between gun owners and non-gun owners regarding to what degree they admitted engaging in any form of impulsive, angry behavior. Where the difference was clearly pronounced was among the 5 percent (roughly 290 people out of 5,600) who admitted to owning 11 guns or more, which was the only gun-owning group whose penchant for getting into fights was significantly higher than people who owned no guns at all. For that matter the percentage of the 11+ gun-owning group to get into physical altercations was substantially higher than gun folks who owned fewer guns.

Where the number of guns owned by individuals seemed to be a real risk issue can be found in the correlation between number of guns owned, engaging in any of the three anger indicators and carrying a gun outside the home. The good news in this survey was that less than 5 percent of the respondents reported that they walked around with a gun. The not-so-good news is that folks who owned six or more guns and carried a concealed weapon reported that they engaged in at least one of the three impulsive behaviors four times more frequently than persons who owned five or fewer guns.
This is the first study I have seen that finds a correlation between numbers of guns owned and a propensity to carry one of them around. As such, it undercuts the usual pro-CCW argument that people carry guns to defend themselves against crime. ...

Here's another observation: aggressive, combative, ANGRY PEOPLE, WITHOUT GUNS, DID NOT SHOOT, or THREATEN TO SHOOT OTHER PEOPLE, whatever else they did.

We have a failed gun culture, fueled in large part by right wing glorification of vigilantism, glorifying people taking the law into their own hands rather than leaving law conflicts and disputes to the courts and law enforcement. Criminal activity emulates and mirrors that thinking and authoritarian social structure of coercion and conformity.

We saw that failure of gun culture in action this past week, in the shooting in a Lafayette, Louisiana theater and in a case of Florida road rage that escalated and ended in an unarmed man being shot in the back three times, in front of his wife, child and grandchild, and then held them hostage at gun point. The shooter was the kind of gun owner the NRA and other pro-gun groups tell us is safe and law abiding; he had a concealed carry permit. This was emphatically an avoidable shooting;the shooter could have turned the conflict over to law enforcement. The shooter instead drove PAST a police station, and like George Zimmerman who killed Trayvon Martin, ignored the directives of the 911 operator about engaging in further escalation of the conflict.

In the same week as the mass shooting in Louisiana, there were five other mass killings that did not receive extensive media coverage. Only one of them involved stabbings; the others were all shootings.

Individually or as a group, the right embraces as a part of their ideology taking the law into their own hands, as noted in this article from the Examiner looks at this as not only a modern phenomenon, but as an historic one to present:

Armed and dangerous: Right wing vigilantism in American history
...Contrary to the popular phrase, an armed society is not always a polite society. American history is full of examples of the perils of allowing armed citizens to take the law into their own hands. Vigilantism has an ugly history in this country. The fact that the loudest advocates today for arming the populace come from those on the political far right, should give us pause for concern. The tradition of vigilantism in this nation is a history of upholding xenophobia, racism and white privilege by lethal force. From lynch mobs to riots to extrajudicial executions, that history undermines the logic for unqualified support for the second amendment.

It extends not only to matters of personal conflict, but to issues of imaginary personal honor and insult, and to political disagreements. An example of the latter would be the numerous failed revolutions of right wing crazies that believe they are going to rise up and overthrow the government for imaginary wrongs, particularly the lunatic militia movements. When they are angry, the gun nuts, the right wingers, want to empower themselves with lethal force when they are unable to get their way through persuasion.

This right to coerce and compel anyone who violates a right wing norm is a core facet or characteristic of Right Wing Authoritarianism.

Right-wing authoritarians are people who have a high degree of willingness to submit to authorities they perceive as established and legitimate, who adhere to societal conventions and norms, and who are hostile and punitive in their attitudes towards people who don't adhere to them. They value uniformity and are in favor of using group authority, including coercion, to achieve it.

One of the components of Right Wing Authoritarianism is aggression:
Authoritarian aggression — a general aggressiveness directed against deviants, outgroups, and other people that are perceived to be targets according to established authorities.

Combine that with poor cognitive abilities associated with RWA, and you have a recipe for disaster when you arm them with lethal force:

According to research by Altemeyer, right-wing authoritarians tend to exhibit cognitive errors and symptoms of faulty reasoning. Specifically, they are more likely to make incorrect inferences from evidence and to hold contradictory ideas that result from compartmentalized thinking. They are also more likely to uncritically accept insufficient evidence that supports their beliefs, and they are less likely to acknowledge their own limitations

Sadly, too often the gun huggers embrace vigilantism over the authority of law enforcement. We see that thinking expressed by the Louisiana movie theater shooter, who targeted liberals, mostly women, watching the Amy Schumer movie. We saw it in January of 2014, with the fatal shooting of a man by a retired police captain, for texting briefly to his young daughter during the previews of a movie theater in Florida. The victim of the shooting didn't do what the gun carrier wanted him to do as quickly as he wanted him to do it. We see it in the recent road rage shooting in Florida, where a concealed carry permit holder shot an unarmed man in the back as he was trying to leave, and threatened three other people. We see it in the higher rates of gun violence in states with more guns and with more lax gun control. Gun violence is endemic to gun possession without sufficient regulation and restriction.

Time to end our gun culture, before it puts an end to any more innocent or mostly innocent people. Our gun culture is an epic failure, a destructive and dangerous social force, that looms large -- as large as the GOP elephant in the room. Time for the guns AND the GOP which enables and facilitates the gun violence as part of their political exploitation of the worst elements on the right, to GO.

Tuesday, July 7, 2015

Right Wing Flag Propaganda 6 & 7: Old Glory and Florida

Actual flag of the United States: note the size (approximately 1/3 of the long axis, and 1/2 of the short axis), and position of the blue square relative to the stripes; note the number of rows of stars and the pattern of stars in alternating rows; note the number and width of the stripes.

Conservatives are angry all the time. The further to the extreme right, the higher the sustained anger level.

Fact and reason have nothing to do with this anger level. The anger is real; the causes are not.

The condition of perpetual free-floating rage on the right is the result of careful and deliberate priming - read LYING - by the right wing propaganda machine. They tell their gullible little stooges that things are BAD BAD BAD, and without a thought to fact checking a word of it, the right wingers fall into line and foam at the mouth on command.

You tend not to see these stories in the mainstream media, because they don't survive the fact checking process. Tell the truth about these ginned up incidents, no one gets angry. It takes lies to anger the base. It takes lies to unite the base in support of bad candidates as well. There is so much of this propaganda, that the right cannot fully identify why they are so angry - they just know they ARE.

To move on to the latest of these manipulated anger political dramas, specifically about the flag (there are entire separate persistent right wing propaganda themes, memes, or genres, although they do sometimes overlap - black people are thugs, homophobia, Islamophobia, etc.), here are a couple of the more recent ones. The flag propaganda series posts illustrate qualities common to all of the different propaganda themes.

Nothing says patriotism like cars made in Korea........or not. Hey, I'm all for trade, so long as we have an even playing field to compete, but it is an issue in the TPP that we are suffering from some bad provisions of past trade agreements with South Korea, and Kia is just one of the imports that contribute to those problems of lost jobs and trade imbalance.

So in that larger world economics context, I was equal parts angry and amused at the latest two examples of right wing propaganda that usurps legitimate patriotism and hijacks the flag for purposes of propaganda. Both take place in Florida, one in Sunrise, one in West Palm Beach.

Note that there is no upper (viewers) left hand corner of blue (technically a canton) with 50 stars representing 50 states, but rather the blue takes up slightly less than half of the flag. The number of stars in each row, and the arrangement of stars in each row also appear to be incorrect.

photo of the so-called 'American Flags' being flown at the Kia dealership in West Palm Beach.

Moving on to the 'stripes' of the flag, they are the wrong width, and there are more than the 13, representing the original colonies, that appear on our American flag.

These are NOT AMERICAN FLAGS.

This is a form of bunting, which is prohibited by local ordinance, apparently intended to keep dealerships from unduly junking up the municipality.

In contrast, here is what comes out of the right wing propaganda machine to orchestrate the outrage against "evil flag hating liberals":

"The Kia dealership general manager Mike Wangle is definitely a patriot. The whole dealership is standing its ground against some bureaucratic fascists in Florida who evidently hate the American flag. They have cooked up some random, stupid code-enforcement violations to try and strong-arm the dealership into taking down the American flags they are displaying for the Fourth of July. Get this, they are not considering them ‘flags.’ You guys need glasses and a brain enema. These Marxist thugs just don’t want anything displayed that shows a love for America or her history. That’s Progressives for you. Fortunately, the Kia dealership has told them to pound sand. And I hear there’s a lot of sand in Florida.

BizPac Review wrote:

The Kia dealership in West Palm Beach faces penalties of up to $1,000 per day for a code-enforcement violation it received from Palm Beach County for displaying six American flags on its property, WPTV reported.

The county said the dealership is violating a[n ordinance] that prohibits the display of pennants, balloons, banners and other signs made of lightweight fabric, plastic or similar substances. (added emphasis mine - DG)

“We’re just trying to show our patriotism,” dealership general manager Mike Wangle told WPTV.

Gosh, that sounds terrible.......until you realize these are not actually American flags, and this is a fairly identified violation of municipal ordinances, reasonably regulating local commerce, and the right wing nuts own pictures prove the municipality is correct.

Real patriots fly real flags. Real patriots know what a real U.S. flag LOOKS LIKE.

On social media where I first came across this story, NOT ONE CONSERVATIVE realized this was not a correct US flag. But every single one of the people who commented was OUTRAGED at how liberals HATE America, blah blah blah blah blah. Anger! Outrage! Factually false, but no one notices, because the emotion has replaced reason before reason can get a start.

Our next case of flag porn /propaganda is another Florida Kia dealership, this one in a town called Sunrise.

This one is from May of this year, via the Sunrise Sentinel.

New car dealership in Sunrise aims to fly American flag high

...Car dealer Rick Case, who is in the process of building a new Kia dealership in the city and moving his corporate headquarters from Plantation to Sunrise, wants to fly an American flag on the 5.5-acre property.

The problem is that the city code allows only a 25-foot flag pole, while Case wants to put up a 120-foot flag pole to match the size of some of his other dealerships, like in Davie and Weston.

"I am so proud of [being in America] that I want to fly an American flag in my new dealership on Sunrise Boulevard, the entrance to this wonderful city off the Sawgrass Expressway," Case said to commissioners at a City Commission meeting. "I would like [the city] to consider letting me fly an American flag, as I do in all my other dealerships around the country."

..."I have no problem with anyone flying an American flag; as a veteran, I support that principle 110 percent," Assistant Deputy Mayor Don Rosen said, "but I don't want to run into a competition where you put a flag so large or a pole so large that it now forces [other car dealerships] into a back and forth… but I think it's something that can be worked out."

Commissioners agreed to have city staff evaluate options for allowing a larger flag pole, including finding out what other surrounding dealerships would do if they also had the option for a larger flag.

"It wouldn't be fair to just allow [Case] to have a flag on the property," Commissioner Joey Scuotto said. "If this is something we [allow], we'll have to allow it [for everyone else]."

Blah blah blah : liberal marxist socialist communist anti-Americans, blah blah blah - government overreach and political correctness. Consider the conservative outrage over flag flying as read. Not fair, not accurate, not legitimate or justified, but it is there and making the right wing nuts mad as hell; mad as hell over NOTHING.

Thursday, June 26, 2014

Proving Pen's Point

Earlier this week, there was another mass shooting, no surprise - in lax gun law state Florida, haven of ammosexuals.

This quote from seems to sum up the problem with allowing weapons with large capacity magazines and which can fire a great deal of ammunition very quickly, for the purpose of wounding or killing large numbers of people.

From the Miami Herald:

...two men had pulled up in a dark SUV around 2:15 a.m. Tuesday as more than a dozen people were hanging out, talking and drinking. The men climbed out lugging high-powered automatic weapons, and took aim.

...When the shooting stopped, more than five dozen shell casings littered the parking lot, sidewalk and street. Two men were killed and seven people were wounded in one of the worst mass shootings in Miami in decades.

But sources say the two men, carrying an AK-47 and an AR-15, were firing at an intended target who might not have even been in the crowd. The shooters had not been arrested or identified by Tuesday night. Police were tagging beer bottles and other paraphernalia around the crime scene hoping to find DNA matches or other evidence that might help identify the shooters.

“The motive at this point is still unknown. We’re still investigating,” said Miami police spokeswoman Frederica Burden.

The scene was so chaotic that when reports circulated that three men had been arrested in connection with the shooting, police immediately said it wasn’t true. The reality: Three men were detained after tossing a Sponge Bob Square Pants bag that contained weapons.

As noted in supporting a ban on large capacity weapons and assault-style weapons in Washington D.C., back in 2011, from the New York Times, quoting the findings of the presiding court:

This ruling underscores a principle set forth in the 2008 Supreme Court decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, which held that the Second Amendment allows individuals to keep handguns at home for self-defense. The Supreme Court said in that case that the right is “not unlimited” and doesn’t protect guns “not typically possessed by law-abiding citizens for lawful purposes.” And it specifically suggested that jurisdictions could ban the possession of the military’s M-16 rifle because it is “dangerous and unusual.”

The District’s firearms law defines “assault weapon” to include rifles like the AR-15, which the Supreme Court once called “the civilian version of the military’s M-16 rifle.” The appeals court suggested that the only place where assault weapons, which are designed to spray bullets at a rapid rate, are necessary for self-defense is on a battlefield or the equivalent for police. Anywhere else their presence is an invitation to mayhem and puts police officers and all around at high risk.

It also concluded that “the evidence demonstrates a ban on assault weapons is likely to promote the Government’s interest in crime control in the densely populated urban area that is the District of Columbia.” The court reached the same conclusion about banning magazines with more than 10 rounds of ammunition. Those magazines increase the dangers of semiautomatic guns: they result in more shots fired, people wounded and wounds per person. The appeals court’s ruling is careful and convincing on this heated topic.

To date the SCOTUS has not in any way disagreed with this ruling that :

1. Specifically sets limits the kind of weapon guaranteed under the 2A; and

2. Restricts that right to the home, not on the street or in/at/on any other public or private place;

Shootings like this underline why we need stricter gun control laws and enforcement, and fewer and different guns in our population.

Tuesday, July 10, 2012

What Right Wing Small Government Extremists Forget or Ignore: the lessons of the Florida TB outbreak

Florida has a Tuberculosis problem, and it is getting worse, fast, as the Florida Republican legislature, signed into law by the Republican Governor, drastically curtailed their state Health Department funding, and closed the hospital that for the past 60 years had dealt with treating tuberculosis. Those who are on the extreme right favor privatizing everything, and cutting government to nothing other than our military.

They are wrong.

One of the most clear cut examples of what is wrong with that point of view is that it assumes that our relative freedom - and I use that word deliberately here - from disease epidemics is a result of public health funding and activity by government. One of the moves of the Republicans is to reduce funding - and therefore staff and other resources - at the Center for Disease Control by 25% in the Republican budget. Prevention is alwas cheaper than treatment or correction, whether the problems are medical, or environmental, or maintaining our infrastructure.

Cheap on the front end invariably ends up more expensive in the long run, on the bottom line. If cheap really worked, we'd have done it before now. Here is an excellent source on the situation in Florida. Tuberculosis like other illnesses where people have begun to stop vaccinations (but shouldn't) are beginning to be a threat again because we are no longer doing what works. People take our safety, our comparative freedom from disease, too much for granted in forming their political opinion. This outbreak of TB shoujld be the poster for what happens when you cut government, the reality versus the ideology. from newsfeedresearcher.com

The closing of A.G. Holley was a political move that put politics and profits before public safety. You will find in a very short time the sale of the hospital property will be fast tracked and that those involved will have a link to Representative Hudson and/or Governor Scott. The hospital treated the worse cases of TB, those that were extremely drug resistant and those individuals who because of non-compliance with treatment had to be court order to be an inpatient at the hospital. As usual, by the time that it is realized that the closure has created a severe public health threat, those who championed the closure will have made their profits. [19]

From Cenk Ugyer 'The Young Turks' on Current TV

The Tuberculosis outbreak that is antibiotic resistant reminds me of the classic Edgar Allen Poe story, the Mask of the Red Death, about the epidemics of Bubonic Plague in medieval Europe and elsewhere - it effectively went world wide. So here is a favorite; nothing like a little Vincent Price to round out the post. Like the protagonist in the Mask of the Red Death, perhaps Governor Scott believes he
and his rich donor friends are going to be safe somehow behind the walls of their gated communities. They fail to understand how we are all connected; this is more of the right wing ruining our nation, playing a giant game of Jenga wth our society, our security, our safety incluing public health safety. They are penny wise an pound foolish; they embrace a failed ideology that embraces fictonal conspiracy theory fears while ignoring any objective reality dangers they don't want to face - or pay to address.

Wednesday, May 2, 2012

Shot Himself in the Foot?
George Zimmerman,
Bigotry,
and his past Social Media

computer monitor
of social media
with smoking gun?

George Zimmerman's attorney has taken the controversial step of waging his client's defence not only in court but using social media.
That may not entirely work in his favor, and one can only wonder how well he knew his client before undertaking that effort.
Much has been made of the fact that Zimmerman's mother is from Brazil, and by that definition a Latina or Hispanic. Some assert that if Zimmerman self-identifies as Hispanic, it is not possible for him to be racist / bigoted / biased towards black Americans, which is of course bogus reasoning.
Apparently it is even quite within Zimmerman's capacity to be racist towards other Hispanics, which is where his previous social media history comes in to the issue. I wonder if that information will impede the flow of cash from Latino Floridians who might otherwise have been sympathetic? Zimmerman has apparently been using the internet to extract a lot of change from the gun nut chumps on the right... which he conveniently omits mentioning in court where it would be a significant detail.

It clearly was, and presumably is, true that George Zimmerman has no problems with making the most derogatory conclusions about entire groups of people rather than treating them as individuals, including assuming criminality where none may be present. This would seem to go to the heart of the matter of George Zimmerman appearing to make inaccurate and racist assumptions about Trayvon Martin. It continues to amaze me that people can be terribly concerned that George Zimmerman is not being give every possible benefit of the doubt and presumption of innocence, while they fail to give either the benefit of the doubt or innocence to Trayvon Martin for no better reason than he was a black male teen in a hoodie. That is insufficient information about anyone for a presumption of criminal misconduct. It is the assumptions which lead to fear on the part of shooters to justify self defense homicides under the Shoot First laws that is the essence of its fundamental flaw.

From MSNBC.com :

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

By M. Alex Johnson, msnbc.com

George Zimmerman's attorney defends his move to the Web as a counter to fake sites. Cara Moore of NBC station WESH of Orlando, Fla., reports.

By M. Alex Johnson, msnbc.com

George Zimmerman, who's charged with second-degree murder in the shooting death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, was the owner of an old Myspace page featuring slurs against Mexicans, his lawyer has confirmed to the Miami Herald.
Posting under the pseudonym "Joe G,"Zimmerman wrote about "mexicans walkin on the side of the street, soft a-- wanna be thugs messin with peoples cars when they aint around" and "gettin knifes pulled on you by every mexican you run into!"
Read the full story at The Miami Herald
The discovery adds another social media element to a case that came to national attention largely through Twitter and Facebook. After initially having ordered Zimmerman to scrub his social media history, his lawyer, Mark O'Mara, has embraced a controversial social media strategy to keep the defense side of the case in the spotlight, complete with its own website.
Msnbc.com's Suzanne Choney has examined the ramifications of attorneys using social media to make their cases in public:
The American Bar Association's standards of professional conduct does not deal with social media, a spokesman for the ABA told msnbc.com, but "it's certainly going to be on everyone's radar screen" now.
Stephen A. Saltzburg, a member of the ABA's governing body, the House of Delegates, and former chairman of the ABA's criminal justice section, said "generally speaking, lawyers are not supposed to be making public statements that could compromise a fair trial."
Whether the Zimmerman social media effort will do that would be up to a judge, Saltzburg said.
*********
I appreciate the way in which commentary cartoons can reflect more eloquently than mere words in getting to the essence of issues sometimes. In that context, I found these to be exemplary instances of that clarity and focus.

Friday, March 23, 2012

Every Person George Zimmeran Reported to Police as Suspicious Was a Black Man

Race plays a major role in how Stand Someone Else's Ground laws play out, as does gender to a lesser extent. It is one of the reasons that the use of deadly force by ordinary citizens rather than police presents a spectrum of problems, especially when those citizens operate under less accountability for their decisions to use deadly force than law enforcement does.
I found this paragraph in the Florida News Journal about the many 911 calls to the Sanford police to be interesting, although I would prefer the slur quoted below to be verified by lab efforts to make it more clear if the words quoted are what is really being said, as that part of the recorded speech is muffled, before representing it as conclusive:

Zimmerman has a long history of calling police on "suspicious people", in fact each of his calls over the last year were to report someone who was black. In his recent call to police over this incident he was record using the words "F***ing Coon" while describing Trayvon Martin.

The Sanford PD released this 47 page report of the calls made by George Zimmerman confirming Zimmerman's odd obsession with black males.
When one of the news stations inquired if the reports of crimes being committed by blacks claimed by Zimmeran in the gated community where the Martin shooting occurred were accurate, the local police department did NOT support that claim made by Martin and his fellow neighborhood watch co-captain.

Statistically, there are greater problems, as was noted in this New York Times article for black males than for example, black women as a group. As a sometime student of criminal justice studies, Zimmerman may have felt that this gave him the justification for his suspicion of all black males. The problem of course is that people are individuals, not statistical aggregates. What is true of a group is not automatically true of every individual who has something in common with a group. There are as many false representations of facts about groups as there are accurate ones; a case in point is the notion that there are more black men in jail than in college. This is false, as documented at African American Demographics, quoting U.S. Department of Justice data. That is the problem with belief and assumptions, that a person's information may be incomplete or inaccurate, in addition to a generality not being true in the specific. Zimmerman wouldn't be the first person to be suspicious of black men, but that is precisely why arming people and giving them a greater rather than lesser license to use those weapons violently is not safe.
But the greater problem lies in the ambiguity that is at the core of the Stand Your Ground, Stand Somebody Else's Ground, Chase Somebody Down Ground, Shoot First, Make My Day law, which only requires someone reasonably believe they were in danger, not that they in fact objectively WERE in danger. The wording was intended only to separate out those who acted in the heat of the moment from those who acted in a premeditated fashion. The law was intended to remove the second guessing of people who were not there, and to give effective carte blanche to people to act with little if any accountability. The problem is that with that wording, objectivity is removed, and people are unfairly put at risk because of someone else's belief, someone's subjective reaction.
It SHOULD be a decision when you use deadly force that you can support with objective criteria. It should be a decision you make with the greatest trepidation. You SHOULD be concerned that you will be in trouble if you make the wrong decision that injures someone or ends their life. Removing that concern has resulted in an increase in homicides, mostly in shootings, and in many of the victims being found to be unarmed.
Further, we are too quick to give the benefit of the doubt that people exercise good judgment when carry permits for guns are issued too easily. Clearly, good judgment is, like common sense, not so common. The judgment of people who carry is affected by bias, prejudices, and inaccurate assumptions like the false assumptions about black males attributed to George Zimmerman. Other people's lives should not be at risk because of that judgment, particularly when there is not a good justification or necessity for the carrying of weapons.
We do NOT live in a country with a crime rate out of control. There is no justification for vigilanteism. There is no necessity for every person to go armed in fear of their lives.
Some residents of the gated community who were black noted that they themselves resembled the stereotype description of suspicious individuals that George Zimmerman circulated in an email to community members, and claimed that Zimmerman's assumptions about black people in that regard made them uncomfortable. This would suggest that despite the assertions that George Zimmerman, the vigilante who shot Trayvon Martin, believed in a stereotype in which black males were consistently viewed as criminals. While Zimmerman may not have regarded black children in a racist way, or black women, the fact that he appears to have regarded all black males in this way does suggest a type of racism in the unfair assumptions he appears to have held about blacks, if only towards adult male black individuals.
The prevalence of anti-black beliefs was not unique to George Zimmerman. That there is racism among the pro-carry gun crowd was documented in the comments made by pro-gunners in response to the Trayvon Martin shooting on the blog of NRA election coordinator Keith Milligan of PA, and the Koch Brothers Cato Institute Clayton Cramer's blog, shown with screen captures of the comments
:

Commenting on a post at "Shall Not Be Questioned" (a blog authored by NRA Election Coordinator Keith Milligan of Langhorne, Pennsylvania), several pro-gun activists expressed thoughts which speak for themselves. First up was "mobo," who wrote, "OMFG, not that this has anything to do with anything really, but 'TREYVON' was this kid’s name? What on Earth is the matter with people? How is a kid supposed to get a respectable job when he grows up when the first thing the employers see is 'Treyvon' on the top of the resume?" He couldn't even be troubled to spell the deceased young man's name correctly. But "Heather from AK" didn't care. She replied, "That’s actually one of the more normal names, these days." Mobo added that no name "scream[s] 'ghetto' like Trayvon ... I guarantee you at least one juror will be inclined to aquit the shooter in part because of the victim’s name."

"dustydog" then suggested that Trayvon Martin got what he deserved, writing, "Kids, it is wrong to beat up armed people. As the unofficial motto of DS [Defensive Shooting] says, “The defenseless victim deserves what he gets.” Whether or not Martin "beat up" Zimmerman is unknown. Regardless, the notion that Martin deserved to be killed because he was not carrying a gun is grotesque.

Pro-gun activist "emdfl" was also quick to blame the killing on Martin, writing, "IIRC from the story, that poor, innocent, (17yo)chillin was visiting his stepmother/father(?). Probably from up north where it’s perfectly acceptable to smart mouth/attack older white people asking you what you are doing in their neighborhood. Unfortunately, Treyvon forgot he wasn’t in the disarmed-victim zone he is used to working in." Martin was actually from Miami, Florida and had no criminal record. Zimmerman, on the other hand, has been arrested for assaulting a police officer.
Next up was the following comment from "Moshe Gintel": "I think the young negro was stopped by Zimmerman, and the kid strong-armed Zimmerman. The kid probably took off on Zimmerman’s race and if he was alive, the kid should be charged with a ‘Hate Crime’ Horrid case of anti semetism. Jews should congratulate the Sanford police chief for not arresting Zimmerman." One of the many problems here is that George Zimmerman is not Jewish.

"Sage Thrasher" made it clear what his "gut reaction" was to the shooting: "You’re right about state of mind. If you’re walking in a strange neighborhood and a car starts shadowing you really slowly on the sidewalk is your first thought going to be 'neighborhood watch' or 'drive by'? Same if you see a teenage walking through your neighborhood: kid buying snacks or mugger? No matter how open minded you are, your reaction is going to depend partially on both your race and the race of the other person; much of that driven by statistics, probability and your own life experiences. (Personally, if I’m minding my own business walking back from a store and car starts following me, my first thought probably isn’t going to be 'somebody wants directions' unless it’s a very nice neighborhood.) In the same way, many of our (and I’ll admit, my) gut reactions to this story are based partially on the age and race of the two participants in trying to decide who the actual 'victim' was in this case."

Finally, Clayton Cramer, the author of a new report for the CATO Institute entitled, "Tough Targets: When Criminals Face Armed Resistance from Citizens," drew the following conclusion on his blog: "Zimmerman, the shooter, had a bloody nose and blood on the back of his head. Based on what the witness said, it sounds like he was getting hit pretty hard by the 17 year old. Regardless of how bad a decision Zimmerman made in confronting Trayvon Martin, once it reached this point, shooting was the right decision."

The deplorable and mistaken assumptions in these comments, by those who carry guns and are eager to use them without legal impediment illustrates precisely why both of those things must be more difficult. We can't outlaw stupidity and hatefulness, but we certainly don't need to arm it or make it easy for those who engage in it to shoot people.
It will be interesting to observe if the statements from neighbors who were black and felt that Zimmerman targeted people like themselves, prior to the shooting of Trayvon Martin, in conjunction with the reporting of only black men as suspicious will be sufficient for the threshold of a violation of Trayvon Martin's civil liberties.
It should also be a contributing factor to repealing the problem law in Florida and other states that emulated Florida, and a good argument for more restrictive gun laws, particularly as relate to open and concealed carry. It is better to err on the side of fewer trigger happy well intentioned killers.

Told You So, from Politifact.com

For those who say now that they warned the gun nuts in Florida then, Politifact.com checked the tapes of the legislative hearings. The people in the legislature who warned about the problems, the avoidable killings, they were right.

Sorting out the truth in state politics

Democrats warned about 'stand your ground' in 2005

By Katie Sanders, Times/Herald Tallahassee Bureau
In Print: Friday, March 23, 2012

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The possibility that Florida's "stand your ground" law could protect a neighborhood watchman who shot and killed an unarmed teen last month has lawmakers who opposed the measure saying told you so.
"When we passed the law, we said it portends horrific events when people's lives were put into these situations, and my worst fears came to fruition," Sen. Arthenia Joyner, D-Tampa, said this week. "A young life was snuffed out."
Joyner was in the state House when "stand your ground" passed in 2005 and fears the law — which allows people to use deadly force in cases of self-defense when they believe their life is at risk — could save 28-year-old shooter George Zimmerman from prosecution.
Zimmerman killed 17-year-old Trayvon Martin in the Orlando suburb of Sanford on Feb. 26, police say.
As the investigation unfolds, it's worthwhile to look back to the origins of the "stand your ground" law and the concerns legislators like Joyner had at the time.
The measure passed the Senate 39-0 seven years ago Friday and the House 94-20. It was signed into law by Gov. Jeb Bush. Joyner and 19 other House Democrats voted against the bill.
To check her claim, we went to the video archives to see what was said during House debate on April 5, 2005.
"For a House that talks about the culture of life, it's ironic that we would be devaluing life in this bill, which is exactly what we're doing," said Rep. Dan Gelber, a former federal prosecutor from Miami Beach who later was elected to the Senate.
Gelber said Floridians already had the right to defend themselves in their homes and offered an amendment that would restore a person's duty to retreat from a confrontation in public places. Rep. Eleanor Sobel, a South Florida Democrat who now serves in the Senate, said Gelber's amendment would reduce "chaos on the street."
Republicans defeated Gelber's amendment on a voice vote. The bill's sponsor, Rep. Dennis Baxley, R-Ocala, called an obligation to retreat "a good way to get shot in the back."
Members debated another unsuccessful amendment from Rep. Jack Seiler, a Democrat who is now mayor of Fort Lauderdale. Seiler's proposal would have allowed for rebuttal to a person's claim of self-defense.
"We are going to give blanket immunity to criminals when they commit crime," Seiler said.
Other voices from the hour-long debate:
• "What would happen if I presumed that there was a threat when actually there was not a threat? I would hate to think that I would react and take someone's life, or do bodily harm to someone, who actually only looked a little different than I looked," said Rep. Priscilla Taylor, D-West Palm Beach.
• "When you give a person the right to use deadly force anywhere they're lawfully supposed to be, then we open Pandora's Box, and inside the box will be death for some persons," Joyner said.
• "In a few years, you will be back trying to fix this bill," said Rep. Ken Gottlieb, D-Hollywood.
The House debate stands in contrast to the Senate.
Sen. Steve Geller, D-Hallandale Beach, tried changing the bill before the vote so that it would not apply to public places. The Senate voted down his amendment in minutes. The vote to pass the bill was then unanimous, with Democrats, including Sen. Rod Smith, currently chair of the Florida Democratic Party, voting yes.
"We'd be seen as Democrats soft on crime," Geller explained, according to an account from the Associated Press.
Overall, the warnings comprised a slim opposition to a very popular law. But they were there. We rate Joyner's claim True.

The statement
"When we passed the law, we said it portends horrific events when people's lives were put into these situations."
Sen. Arthenia Joyner, D-Tampa, March 20, in an interview
The ruling
Joyner, who was in the House in 2005 when the "stand your ground" law passed, accurately summarizes the debate back then. We rate her statement True.

An Open Letter to the Proponents of Stand Your Ground Laws, Especially Legislators

When you expanded the laws to apply to other places than people's homes, these laws have NEVER worked. There has never been a genuine NEED for these laws. Even in the case that you used to justify the creation of this law, where a homeowner used deadly force, and then had to wait to have confirmed that he would not be prosecuted, the original law which covered home self-defense worked better than the NRA and ALEC written Stand Your Ground Law.
Have the sense, have the courage, to admit that your legislation not only does not work as you say it was intended, it is an unmitigated disaster. It has racked up dead bodies and injured people who should never have been harmed. What it has not done is to make anyone safer.
Every time you state that you did not INTEND for it to work the way it has, REMEMBER that law enforcement in your state warned you it would work exactly this way, and Prosecutors in your state warned you as well.
It is not true only of your state; it is true in the same way in every state that has emulated your legislative failure. In every state where that imitation has occurred, the hand of special interests which profited were behind it. That is corruption.
There is no surprise here for you other than people finally noticed on a large scale, at the same time, what has been perfectly clear. Your special interest gun nut legislation is a clinker, a very deadly flop.
Repeal it. Don't 'tinker' with it, don't try to make stupid cosmetic improvements. Changing the color of the lipstick you put on the pig won't materially change the fundamental truth that it's still just lipstick and still the same old pig.
The gun nuts were wrong. The ideologues were wrong. Governor's like Minnesota's Mark Dayton were right not to go along with the right wing on this.
Man up, admit the failure, and fix the mistake; get rid of your Stand Your Ground Shoot First Make My Day law. Your gun nuts aren't as safe as they told you they were going to be. While you're revisiting the Shoot First debacle, your gun carry permit laws could use some work as well. If you're not sure, take a look at the number of people who get shot in your state. If you don't look for yourself, I can promise you people will be pointing it out to you for the foreseeable future and beyond.
If you don't get it NOW, you can be removed in November, and probably will be.
In Florida you won't be in legislative session again until March 2013, unless there is a special session, other than for your problems with redistricting. Maybe it's time for one of those special sessions before November, to fix this problem by getting rid of your bad legislation. Otherwise a lot of other people will be dead between now and March 2013 who would not be dead if it had not been for your bad law.
There are ghosts lined up; Trayvon Martin is just the newest one, that is going to haunt your conscience, if you have one. He's the one in the Hoodie.

Thursday, March 22, 2012

The New York Times (and other reports) on the Larger Violent Pattern :
Unarmed Shooting Victims of
Stand Your Ground Law in Florida
This pattern IS exactly what the NRA and ALEC intended

We have seen the legislator who was responsible for the Florida Stand Your Ground - more properly termed Shoot First or Make My Day legislation - claim that the law was never intended for gun carrying civilians to instigate conflicts.
I would argue that it has always been the intent of the authors - the NRA and ALEC, not the legislator - to function exactly as it has. It has functioned to protect shooters similar to Zimmerman, but those cases haven't drawn the attention that the Trayvon Martin case has; THAT is the only significant difference. The law has consistently protected the shooter of unarmed individuals, especially black teens, who were not doing anything wrong, and who were the party being threatened, not threatening anyone.
It is only the uncomfortable massive national pushback that is causing any consideration of change, and even then, not much. Baxley is wrong when he says that his legislation wouldn't protect Zimmerman; it has protected people who decide to execute others and claim self-defense without the kind of threat that was previously required to justify deadly force. It has happened over and over and over again in Florida, and it has happened repeatedly as the norm not the exception in every other state that has similar cookie-cutter NRA/ALEC drafted legislation like Florida's. To claim otherwise appears either ignorant or dishonest, or both on the part of Baxley. Trayvon Martin's shooting is only the most recent in a long list of similar violent acts. The responsibility lies squarely at Baxley's doorstep, and squarely at the doorstep of ALEC and the NRA. There are fundamental problems with the legislation that can only be remedied by repeal, and by other states repealing it where it exists, and by rejecting it where it does not currently exist.
From CBS News:
CBS News correspondent Jeff Glor reports the law at the center of the shooting was co-sponsored in 2005 by State Representative Dennis Baxley. The legislator says he doesn't have any regrets about creating the law.

"I think it's been a great protection for our people," Baxley said.
The intent of the law was to expand the right to claim self defense beyond the home. It allows a person to "stand his or her ground and meet force with force," "including deadly force" if there's a reasonable belief it's needed to "prevent death or great bodily harm," even if there's a chance to escape.
"We thought the self defense measures that we were talking about really should apply to any law abiding citizen who was doing nothing to harm anyone else," Baxley said.

From Slate, on how the law has functioned prior to Trayvon Martin to allow innocent people to be murdered, and for the killers consistently to get away with their crimes.

Why Trayvon Martin’s Killer Remains Free

Florida’s self-defense laws have left Florida safe for no one—except those who shoot first.

By Emily Bazelon|Posted Monday, March 19, 2012, at 5:29 PM ET

Trayvon Martin was shot and killed in a gated community in Sanford, Fla., by George Zimmerman. Zimmerman has not been charged.
family handout

The story of Trayvon Martin’s death is heartbreaking. If you have missed the facts: The 17-year-old, who is black, was walking to a friend’s home in a gated community in Sanford, Fla., when a neighborhood-watch volunteer*, 28-year-old George Zimmerman, spotted him. Zimmerman, whose father says identifies as Hispanic, called the cops to report a suspicious person. They told him not to follow. “They always get away,” Zimmerman told dispatch in a 911 call released Friday, and he kept tracking Martin. Zimmerman had a gun. Martin was carrying only an ice tea and the Skittles he’d just bought at the store. The two had a struggle that no one saw. Hearing shots, neighbors called 911. In one call that’s hard to listen to, a woman anxiously says she can hear someone calling for help while in the background, a terrified, wailing voice pleads, "No! No!"

Zimmerman shot and killed Martin, but he said he did so in self-defense. The shocker of this case so far is that the Sanford police say they don’t have enough evidence to dispute Zimmerman’s claim and arrest him. Martin’s mother told the Today show Monday morning that her son was killed “because of the color of his skin,” and his parents want the FBI to investigate. With these facts, you can see why. UPDATE, March 20, 2012: On Monday evening, the Justice Department announced it will investigate Martin's killing.

How did we get to a place where Zimmerman’s claim of self-defense, which seems barely plausible, could prevent his arrest? The answer starts with the “Stand Your Ground” law that Florida passed in 2005. The idea was to give people who think they are being threatened the right to use force: They can protect themselves without first trying to retreat. The history behind that controversial idea is actually about gender, not race. It involves the intersection between the fight against domestic violence and the agenda of the National Rifle Association.

Let’s back up, with the help of Jeannie Suk, a Harvard law professor who wrote an article in 2008 that I’ll rely on for the next few paragraphs. In the 17^th century, English common law held that people whose lives were threatened in a public place could use deadly force to defend themselves only after retreating as far as possible. It was up to the king and his men to keep the peace, and everyone else was supposed to stand aside. There was only one exception: If someone broke into your house, you could kill him without retreating.

Suk says, some courts expanded it. Now someone under attack could "repel force by force" if he was attacked "in a place where he has a right to be." That’s how the Supreme Court put it in 1895. This is amazingly called the “true man” doctrine, from a line in an 1876 case: “A true man, who is without fault, is not obliged to fly from an assailant, who by violence or surprise, maliciously seeks to take his life or do him enormous bodily harm.”

Not all the states adopted the true man doctrine. And 100 years later, courts and legislatures faced a new problem: What to do with women who said they were victims of domestic violence and had killed their husbands to save themselves? Did you have a right not to retreat if the person coming after you lived under the same roof? At first, the answer was no, to the fury of feminists. Then in 1999, the Florida Supreme Court said a woman who shot and killed her husband during a violent fight at home could successfully call on the Castle Doctrine to argue self-defense. “It is now widely recognized that domestic violence attacks are often repeated over time, and escape from the home is rarely possible without the threat of great personal violence or death,” the court wrote.

Suk calls this revision of the true-man rule to encompass domestic violence transformative, and you can see why. The new rules made for more shooting and less retreating. And they set the stage for Florida to ditch the duty to retreat entirely, which the legislature did in passing the nation’s first Stand Your Ground law in 2005.

Florida’s new law did three things: It further loosened the restrictions on using deadly force at home. It scrapped the duty to retreat in public places. And it gave people who use self-defense civil and criminal immunity. Pushing for these changes, NRA President Marion Hammer focused on women and their need to protect themselves. “You can’t expect a victim to wait and ask, ‘Excuse me, Mr. Criminal, are you going to rape me and kill me, or are you just going to beat me up and steal my television?” she said.

Prosecutors opposed the Stand Your Ground law, and they still complain about it. "It is an abomination," former Broward County Prosecutor David Frankel told the Sun Sentinel in January. "The ultimate intent might be good, but in practice, people take the opportunity to shoot first and say later they had a justification. It almost gives them a free pass to shoot." The quote comes from a story about a former sheriff’s deputy, Maury Hernandez, who killed an unarmed homeless man in a Haagen-Dazs shop on a Saturday afternoon. Hernandez, who was with his children, said the man aggressively asked for money and then tried to assault him. Witnesses said Hernandez warned the man several times before taking out his gun and firing multiple times. The police said they wouldn’t charge Hernandez for the shooting because he claimed he was under attack.

It’s that decision not to press charges that makes Stand Your Ground laws, which a bunch of other states have adopted, a crazy departure from the past. It’s one thing to raise self-defense at trial. It’s another to have what the Florida Supreme Court calls “true immunity.” True immunity, the court said, means a trial judge can dismiss a prosecution, based on a Stand Your Ground assertion, before trial begins.

At least there’s supposed to be a hearing before that happens, at which the defendant has the burden of proof. And yet as the Hernandez and Martin’s case shows, Stand Your Ground laws often lead prosecutors to decide against so much as bringing charges. According to the Sun Sentinel, “In case after case during the past six years, Floridians who shot and killed unarmed opponents have not been prosecuted.”

Now the death of Trayvon Martin is the latest in that line. Maybe this is the kind of case that is so sad and so tinged with racism that Florida will think hard about the very scary place where their self-defense laws have taken them. Maybe.

*Correction, March 20, 2012: This article originally stated that George Zimmerman is white, but his father says he identifies as Hispanic.

From the New York Times:

Trevor Dooley testified last month that he killed a man in self-defense, invoking Florida’s so-called Stand Your Ground law.
Trevor Dooley stood his ground, brandished his gun and killed a man after an argument over local skateboarding rules in a Florida town.
He argued in court last month that he had a right to do so under the state’s Stand Your Ground law.
Outrage over the death of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, killed by a crime watch volunteer, has focused new attention on the law, which permits those in Florida “to meet force with force, including deadly force” when attacked. As my colleague Lizette Alvarez reports, the Justice Department is pursuing an investigation into Trayvon’s case.
As that investigation goes forward, the law is currently being invoked as a key defense by Mr. Dooley.
The man he killed, David James, had been playing basketball with his 8-year-old daughter in September 2010 when he and Mr. Dooley began arguing over whether a boy on a skateboard had a right to ride on the court, according to an account in The St. Petersburg Times. There was a “physical confrontation,” the police said, during which Mr. Dooley fired the weapon he was carrying, killing Mr. James in front of his daughter.
“You agree you do not want to go to prison for killing David James?” he was asked at the trial, according to televised footage from the courtroom.
“I don’t think I should,” responded Mr. Dooley, who has been charged with manslaughter but says he feared for his life during the altercation with Mr. James.
His lawyers are seeking to have the case dismissed by a judge on the grounds that the Stand Your Ground law permitted him to defend himself with deadly force.
The law extends what has been called the Castle Doctrine — that a person has the right to defend his or her home with force — to apply to people outside of the home, removing the so-called “duty to retreat.” The Florida law explicitly states that no such duty exists in the state. The provision appears as part of the Florida law on the justifiable use of force by citizens.

A person who is not engaged in an unlawful activity and who is attacked in any other place where he or she has a right to be has no duty to retreat and has the right to stand his or her ground and meet force with force, including deadly force if he or she reasonably believes it is necessary to do so to prevent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another or to prevent the commission of a forcible felony.

The National Rifle Association lobbied strongly for the change to state law, which was adopted in 2005 and signed by Gov. Jeb Bush. Mr. Bush said at the time that he supported the measure because, faced with a serious threat one’s life, “to have to retreat and put yourself in a very precarious position defies common sense.”
In the years since the law was amended in 2005, there has been a surge in the number of cases like Mr. Dooley’s and that of Trayvon Martin, killed by the neighborhood volunteer, George Zimmerman, last month. A 2010 review by The St. Petersburg Times found that rates of justifiable homicide tripled since the law was passed and that “twice a week, on average, someone’s killing was considered warranted.”
The paper reviewed press accounts of 93 cases involving 65 deaths in confrontations in which the new law could be applied and found that 57 of them resulted in no criminal charge or trial. In seven others that went to trial, the defendants were then acquitted.
In these cases, the Florida Supreme Court recognizes something called “true immunity.” That means, according to Emily Bazelon in Slate, that the assertion of the Stand Your Ground law can be enough for a judge to dismiss a case before trial even starts.
A columnist writing in The Orlando Sentinel said the law made Florida feel “more and more like the Wild West.” But it is far from unique; more than a dozen states have similar Stand Your Ground provisions.
The Orlando Sentinel published a primer on the law last weekend, answering some frequently asked questions including:

Q: How did law enforcement respond to the law?
A: Prosecutors across the state opposed the law before it was enacted Oct. 1, 2005. In the following five months, there were at least 13 shootings in Central Florida where self-defense was claimed. Out of six men killed and four more wounded in the cases, only one was armed. Some Orlando-area police agencies simply stopped investigating shootings involving self-defense claims and referred them directly to state prosecutors to decide.
Q: Can an unarmed person legally pose a deadly threat?
In case after case during the past six years, Floridians who shot and killed unarmed opponents have not been prosecuted. Former National Rifle Association President Marion Hammer, a major force behind the law’s passage, cited her own size and age in 2006 interview with the Sentinel about what she would do if confronted by a younger and larger aggressor.
“I’m 4-foot-11. I’m 67 years old,” she said. “If you came at me, and I felt that my life was in danger or that I was going to be injured, I wouldn’t hesitate to shoot you.”

The law may explain why local police did not charge Mr. Zimmerman for killing Trayvon. But further details may cast doubt on the circumstances of their encounter and whether it would fall under the law’s provisions.
A female friend of Trayvon talked to him by cellphone moments before he died. “He said this man was watching him, so he put his hoodie on. He said he lost the man,” the girl told ABC News. “I asked Trayvon to run, and he said he was going to walk fast. I told him to run but he said he was not going to run.” A call to 911 by Mr. Zimmerman also appeared to indicate that he followed Trayvon.
Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote on his blog for The Atlantic magazine that “the more I see of this, the less I think ‘Stand Your Ground’ will save Zimmerman.”

If Coates is correct, it will only be because the law doesn't stand up well to the kind of scrutiny it is currently receiving. The outrage is long past overdue.

Vigilante Shoots Vigilante: Utah Incident and Stand Your Ground Law

A 2009 shooting in Utah demonstrates the problems with Shoot First laws, as drafted and promoted by ALEC and conservative Republican legislators that expands the ability to shoot upon belief of threat off the premises of one's own property. This was exactly the kind of incident that law enforcement, prosecutors and opponents of the Minnesota Shoot First law described, and which the ALEC legislators and their associates disregarded. It exemplifies why opponents call these Shoot First, because the questions are only asked and answered after someone has either been shot or shot at.
This incident points up a number of the problems with Shoot First laws, including vigilanteism, the lack of authority or official recognition for some of these self-appointed neighborhood watches that operate contrary to the directions of police, and the failure of the shooters to identify themselves, as well as their lack of authority to act to demand others explain themselves and their actions to them.
One of the aspects of the Trayvon Martin shooting that has intrigued me, but has received relatively little attention in the media storm of attention so far, is the claim by Zimmerman and his neighbor and fellow self-appointed co-captain of their neighborhood watch is the claim that previous crime was committed by black teens. So far, there is no evidence that I can find that supports that claim, and the Sanford PD does not support that claim when queried by local media. The mistaken assumptions of self-appointed vigilante civilians on patrol figure significantly in this Utah shooting, and in the Treyvan Martin shooting.
So far as I can tell at this point, in the Trayvon Martin shooting and in this Utah shooting there were in each neighborhood watch ONLY the two self-appointed captains, but not a larger group of people from the neighborhood. On that basis I challenge whether two guys, in either instance, legitimately constitutes all by themselves a valid group that really is representing a neighborhood.
In both cases, the individual doing the shooting does not appear to have identified themselves as acting on behalf of a group. In both cases, the local police do not appear to have given either pair of men official recognition, and in both cases the local police specifically direct such watch members not to engage people, and not to carry guns while patrolling.
In both cases, people who knew the shooters - and the victims - describe them as nice people. In both instances there is a misguided effort to make a location safe where the vigilantes each overreached any right or authority they had, and the vigilantes end up making the areas LESS safe, one putting a kid in the morgue, and one putting a man in the hospital. I would argue further, that both of these situations with a distraught shooter were cases where there was no authority for the vigilantes to challenge anyone, where no person who they followed, criminal or not, had any obligation to answer their interrogations, to stop or to change what they were doing. Vigilantes mistakenly think they can act as if they were police. They have no training, they have no authority, they have no accountability - for example, they are under no obligation to identify themselves (and don't). We do not allow cops to act like this, and we should not allow these deluded if well-meaning citizens to do so. They are clearly dangerous - to innocent people, and to each other.
Both sides in the incident were involved in protection shootings involving what they believed was an incident of self-defence. In Utah, this resulted in one man arrested, and another in the hospital. Had the same event occurred under the authority of the Shoot First law as it exists in Florida and a number of other 'red'/ conservative lax gun regulation states, no arrest or prosecution would have occurred. The shooting of a man who was not a criminal and who was not committing a crime would have been completely legal under the expanded territory provision. This is what is wrong with extending the Castle doctrine to public places, to any place outside one's own actual home or 'Castle'. The second amendment under the Heller decision ONLY recognizes a right to a firearm in one's home; to go beyond that as the Shoot First / Stand Your Ground laws do clearly is not a second amendment right, and just as clearly these laws resulted in a pattern of abuses, the same abuses that law enforcement and prosecutors predicted.
Here is a local news account of the incident from KSL TV and Radio in Utah (the original story has video and a link to the audio of the 911 call after the shooting):
Bluffdale man shot while on neighborhood watch

BLUFFDALE -- A late night altercation left one man fighting to survive. The shooting happened Tuesday night in a Bluffdale neighborhood. The victim, authorities say, is a member of the local neighborhood watch; the shooter is a resident of the neighborhood.

Over the past few weeks there have been a number of vehicle burglaries and vandalism to vacant properties in the Bluffdale neighborhood. Tuesday night, 36-year-old David Serbeck and the homeowner's association president decided to patrol the neighborhood to see if they could find anyone involved.
Sometime before 11 p.m., the HOA president and Serbeck, who was driving the vehicle at the time, came across four teenage girls walking down the street near 1570 West and 15500 South (Iron Horse Boulevard).
The two men drove next to the girls, trying to question them about the crimes, thinking they might be involved. Their vehicle matched the description of a car used in the earlier burglaries.

Reginald Campos was arrested for attempted murder by the Salt Lake County Sheriff's Office.

The girls got into the car and drove away, but SerbeckHOA president followed. Police say they never identified themselves as members of neighborhood watch.

"The SUV does some funny maneuvers with the car, gets behind them, starts following them. This freaks them out because they think the older men are stalking them," said Salt Lake County Sheriff's Lt. Don Hutson.
The girls became upset and of them called her father, 43-year-old Reginald Campos, and said the men were stalking them.
When the girls arrived home, Campos sent three of the girls inside and he and his daughter went looking for the two men and found them in an SUV a few blocks away.
Lt. Don Hutson said, "They both got out of the vehicle. They were both armed with handguns ... words were exchanged, there was a verbal altercation, and unfortunately Mr. Campos, who is the father of the young lady, fired two rounds, possibly three rounds, at Mr. Serbek."
Authorities say Serbeck was hit with one of the bullets in the left shoulder and it traveled near his spine.

"We received the initial call, and essentially it was a 911 call from a gentleman who said, ‘I've shot somebody, I need the police,'" Hutson said.

"I just had someone chasing my daughter. And when I confronted them, they pulled out a gun and I shot him," Campos tells the 911 dispatcher. "He's down on the ground. He needs an ambulance. He's hurt. He's down."
Serbeck was flown by a helicopter to Intermountain Medical Center in very critical condition.
Neighbors say Campos was just protecting his daughter.
"Reggie is a decent, loving husband; loving neighbor, a good guy, always looking out for, in particular, our little street," said KanaMarie Poulson.
Neighbors close to Campos say they knew nothing about a local neighborhood watch.
Serbek's friends say he'd been patrolling the last few months because of recent burglaries. He has a military background, but mostly a calm demeanor.
"It's going to be very debilitating for the neighborhood to have such an all-star person like that be hurt this way, and his family," said Sheryl Babcock.
The Salt Lake County Sheriff's Office arrested Campos for attempted murder. The Sheriff's office says Campos did not have a concealed weapons permit, but Serbeck did.
The Salt Lake County District Attorney will screen the case.
Also from the same news media in Salt Lake Utah, in a related story, another parallel to the Sanford Florida police department's position:
SLCO Sheriff's Office: When on neighborhood watch, leave guns at home

SALT LAKE CITY -- Salt Lake County sheriff's deputies say they have no record the man shot Tuesday night while paroling a Bluffdale neighborhood was part of a neighborhood watch group in the area.

Though neighborhood groups can organize on their own, law enforcement agencies say they don't sponsor the kind of program it appears this neighborhood had.

Neighborhood watch is a valuable program, but deputies say weapons have no place in it.

Salt Lake County Sheriff's Office Crime Prevention Deputy Levi Hughes said, "We recommend you do not. As a matter of fact, we tell you, you should not carry firearms."
He continued, "If you have a gun, sometimes people will feel more empowered. Problem is they don't have the training, knowledge or experience to handle a confrontation that would require a gun."
The Salt Lake County Sheriff's Office sponsors neighborhood watch groups and offers training for members.
"We come to their homes. We meet with them. We talk to them about the things they need to watch out for, things they need to do to protect themselves," Hughes said.
He says the man who was shot, 36-year-old David Serbek, was not part of a sponsored program. The sheriff's office stopped sponsoring mobile patrol about 10 years ago after a shooting and chase involving mobile patrol members.
The sheriff's office says the situation Tuesday night could have been handled differently by Serbeck and the shooter, 43-year-old Reggie Campos. They say a cell phone, not a gun, is the best weapon.
"This is an example of what's happened before and could happen to you if you take the law into your own hands," Hughes said.
Investigators say Serbeck had a concealed carry permit; Campos did not but legally owned his gun.
Gun lobbyist Clark Aposhian says gun training emphasizes disengagement techniques. He says that's always the first step.
"Your first thought should always be, when faced in an encounter like this, is to disengage. Try to step back try to move away. Even if you have a firearm, you don't always win," Aposhian said.
Other law enforcement agencies do sponsor mobile patrol programs. Salt Lake City Police started theirs in 1993 and say it's been very successful. Their policy prohibits any weapons.
If you are interested in learning more about neighborhood watch programs in your area, click on the links below. If your area is not listed, contact your local law enforcement agency for more information:
The outcome of the Utah shooting was not decided until the summer of 2010; had this case gone to court in Florida, under their more expansive Castle Doctrine law, the outcome would have been different, based on similar case decisions in Florida courts, both before and since 2010.
From the same KSL station in Utah, in an op ed piece at the conclusion:

Campos and Serbeck

August 16th, 2010 @ 5:21am

A recent highly-publicized trial offers a sobering reminder to those who choose to carry guns of the responsibility they have to keep their emotions in check when a weapon is at hand.

There they were, two armed men facing each other on a Bluffdale street in July 2009. Only they know exactly what happened that night. In the end, a jury convicted Reginald Campos who was portrayed as a respected family man of attempted murder. He fired a bullet that severed the spine of David Serbeck who was on a neighborhood watch patrol. Campos claimed he did it in self-defense. Serbeck said he didn't provoke what he got.
Our intent is not to rehash details of the trial. Again, only those involved know who said what and how events unfolded. Sadly, one man is headed for prison, while the other will spend his life confined to a wheelchair.
These men were not criminals, but generally respected citizens not unlike thousands of other Utahns who legally own and carry guns.
The story of Campos and Serbeck is cause for contemplation by those who choose to arm themselves. Indeed, each has a responsibility to become properly trained along with having an understanding of the potential consequences of carrying a gun.
******
States like Florida, and any other states that either have laws like Florida or are considering adding them should learn the lessons of these incidents, in order to stop repeating them. Apparently we do not as yet have a high enough body count from gun toting shooting-eager vigilantes yet to get rid of these shoot first laws. It begs the question, when is it enough, when will the NRA and ALEC instigated legislators decide to stop taking blood money for this kind of legislation and admit it is a failure.

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