Off-Topic

Time for a thought experiment.

Let's imagine two people get involved in an altercation...let's call the original aggressor person A and let's call the original target person B. Person A hates Person B with a burning passion. He walks up to Person A with a loaded gun and takes aim at him and fires, but misses.

EXAMPLE 1.
Person B happens to be carrying a weapon. Should Person B have the right to shoot Person A dead? [I assume everyone will say yes.]

EXAMPLE 2.
Person A misses and is jolted back to reality as the shot rings out...he freaks out, drops his gun to the ground, puts his hand to his face and says "oh my god! I'm so sorry!" Should Person B have the right to shoot Person A dead?

Suggests they should amend the law, doesn't it?

Was he being followed at the time of the attack? Was he being cornered? Unfortunately There were no witnesses who saw what led up to the attack and Zimmermans story is that he was returning to his car after the kid ran away and then was attacked.

To me it makes zero difference of Martin was beating the shit of Zimmerman because I think it's effed up that you can respond to non lethal force with "murder your ass" force.

i don't know whether i'm more bothered by baldwin's blind defense of zimmerman or his blind defense of edsall until that saga reached it's tipping point.

Except that that DA's office didn't think he should be charged either based on the state of the evidence ...

The DA could have empaneled a grand jury and sought out testimony/evidence. Any murder case would have to get indicted by a grand jury anyway.

It may have been the wrong call to make, but it seems pretty evident that at the time, even the DA didn't think this case required a murder charge.

Ok, assume he throws his weapon down, panics, turns around, and starts running away. Can you shoot him dead then?

my gun is on his back the whole time until he is out of sight

Alpha/Danny,

Neither of those two responses really answer the question. Would/should it be legal to shoot the person dead in those two examples? And I'm not just being argumentative when raising these examples. A failure to engage in this type of analysis is what leads to really badly-written laws.

(This issue arose when I stated that being an initial aggressor does not necessarily mean you lose your right to self-defense and the other person can use deadly force whenever he wants. I'm exploring that point a bit.)

Let's pretend we are lawmakers for a second and can write a law to cover those examples. Can person B legally shoot person A dead if person A raises his hands up or turns around and runs away etc.?

Yeah the problem i see with florida law is the initial aggressor can use deadly force if he starts losing the fight and has a subjective fear of being hurt.

We are beating a dead horse here, but every time you start a fight, SOMEONE is going to get busted up. a bully hopes it is the smaller guy, gay guy etc. But when the bully discovers

1: he sucks at fighting

and/or 2. he picked on the wrong person,

he is the one getting busted up instead of his victim. Under Florida law he is entitled to use deadly force if he has a legit fear not of death, but getting busted up.

It seems to me when you start a fight-YOU ASSUME THE RISK OF GETTING BUSTED UP IF YOU LOSE. you have no right to a guaranteed victory. And that is what zimmerman had.

interesting development if you believe you should have the right to smoke an unarmed, minor after you provoked him into a fight in which you were gettin' whooped.

Stand your ground does not permit use leathal force to stop non leathal force. Also, If you punch some one in the face, it doesn't give the other person the right to kill you, just because 'you struck first'. You still have to prove beyond reasonable doubt there was intent to kill or inflict perilous bodily injury before you lose culpability for causing death or serious injury in self defense. An assualt against a person without any kind of weapon would be hard to defend as reasonable for requiring a potential leathal response unless the beating was beyond complete demonstrated submission by the victim, ie curled up in fetal position while being kicked, punched etc.