I have been thinking about Stand Your ground. I’m not a lawyer so I may not have this 100% right. Martin pushed Zimmerman. Zimmerman felt threatened; he felt he may not be able to stand his ground. Therefore he was legally justified in shooting Martin. Since he was not a police officer he was not held to the higher standard that an officer would have had to meet to justify a shooting. The jury judged that, according to the law, Zimmerman was justified. The Stand Your Ground law worked exactly as its proponents intended. But suppose it had worked out slightly differently. Suppose Martin would have had a legal concealed weapon permit. When Zimmerman, a man without any police authority, confronted him, and told him to leave, he surely knew that he would be hard put to stand his ground. If he saw that Zimmerman had a gun, he surely would have felt threatened. And if he had shot Zimmerman it seems like it would have been a justifiable application of Stand Your Ground. The supporters of Stand Your Ground would have been obligated to defend his actions. I’m not a lawyer so I may not have this 100% right, but I am pretty sure that this is one crazy law.
Posted on: Tue, 23 Jul 2013 17:18:53 +0000
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