When "Neighborhood Watch" Gets Out of Hand

[brianwspencer]

Originally Posted by Rupert Pupkin

In all seriousness, what I'm saying is true. You're not allowed to punch a guy in the nose and bang his head against the ground just because you think he's following you. You can't take the law into your own hands like that.

No, the point is that I am not even taking issue with your (ridiculous) idea that you think Zimmerman is a neato neighborhood watch guy just doing great justice for all of America and your false assertion that anyone is trying to talk about how Trayvon Martin is a model citizen -- whether he is or isn't matters not even the tiniest of bits.

I don't even care to have that tired argument. It's stupid.

In all seriousness, the point actually is that what Trayvon Martin did or didn't do in the years before that day are completely irrelevant to the one day that matters, because George Zimmerman had no way to know any of it, and therefore didn't consider him a threat because of those things. "Oh, but he's a bad kid" doesn't change anything about the fact that he wasn't being a bad kid that day.

His history before that is irrelevant. That's all.

[Rupert Pupkin]

Originally Posted by brianwspencer

No, the point is that I am not even taking issue with your (ridiculous) idea that you think Zimmerman is a neato neighborhood watch guy just doing great justice for all of America and your false assertion that anyone is trying to talk about how Trayvon Martin is a model citizen -- whether he is or isn't matters not even the tiniest of bits.

I don't even care to have that tired argument. It's stupid.

In all seriousness, the point actually is that what Trayvon Martin did or didn't do in the years before that day are completely irrelevant to the one day that matters, because George Zimmerman had no way to know any of it, and therefore didn't consider him a threat because of those things. "Oh, but he's a bad kid" doesn't change anything about the fact that he wasn't being a bad kid that day.

His history before that is irrelevant. That's all.

I agree with you that whether Martin was a bad kid or not was irrelevant to the shooting part of the incident. I think the shooting part of the incident happened because Zimmerman was getting the crap beaten out of him by Martin.

The thing that keeps coming up in these debates is the question of why Zimmerman was suspicious of Martin in the first place. I would say there were two reasons. The first is that Zimmerman knew most people in the neighborhood and he didn't recognize Martin. The second was because Martin looked like a suspicious character to him.

You can argue that you don't think Martin is a suspicious looking character. It's just a matter of opinion. As I have said in previous posts, I think we all have come across people of all different races (white, black, hispanic, asian) that look suspicious to us. I think it's usually based on their demeanor. Age and sex are obviously factors too. Not too many of us would view a 75 year old woman as suspicious and/or dangerous.