Trayvon Martin, Vigilante Justice

[RandFan]

When I hear another straight-pipe harley headed my way I do need to talk myself out of dragging out the deer-rifle.

jk.

I'm going to agree with this. We have 2 stroke cycles going back up and down the street all much of the day on the weekends. I would think it would get boring but apparently not.

 

[Giz]

We know that the person who was shot had not been doing anything illegal.

According to GZ, the person who was shot was committing assault.

Hopefully forensics and further analysis of the screams can either confirm or deny that claim with reasonable certainty.

 

[This is The End]

None needed, we are entering the middle of life six of the thread.

I notice you have been bringing this up during the course of this thread. Are you joking? If not, could you please let me know what you are basing the beginning and the end of each "life" on?

 

[Noztradamus]

Originally Posted by PhantomWolf
Interestingly if you crunch to the figures, on average 1 in 31 gun owners in the US will have their weapon used to cause a death or an injury each year. Seems a tad high to me, though admittedly this includes self inflicted one.

Do you have links to where you got that?

What links? that's what you get if you crunch the numbers.

Now if I crunch the numbers, I get:

100 million households in the US, an estimated 40% have guns in them. Assuming only one gun owner per household gives a mininum of 40 million gun owners.

Relying on figures from VPC/Brady Center of an annual 30,000 deaths 100,000 injuries and dividing into 40 million yields 307.7

oops! Crunch your numbers again, your misplaced decimal has misled PhantomWolf.

 

[Travis]

I think I have sufficiently demonstrated that under the definitions provided by neighborhood watch groups, GZ was perfectly justified in calling 911 to report 'suspicious' activity.

You were there and saw the same thing that GZ did then?

It doesn't matter. You should not report something that is merely suspicious.

Example: is a stranger standing out in front of your house at 3:00 AM suspicious? Sure. This happened a few months ago. This guy just stood in front of my house for over an hour in the dead of night. I sure as heck thought it was "suspicious" but I never called the cops. Because I reserve that for when I actually see a crime being committed. Which is what you are supposed to do.

And that guy turned out to just be waiting for a friend to pick him up. Now what if I had gotten the cops to come down and harass him for the night because I got suspicious?

When you are getting the cops to chase down "suspicious people" you are really having the cops chase down your own prejudices.

When you end up acting on "suspicion" you end up like my Uncle Richard. What did he do? Oh he shot three kids (they all lived) in front of his house. Why? Because he thought they were suspicious. Why were they suspicious to him? Because they were too Mexican looking.

Richard is currently serving a twenty year sentence.

 

[curi0us]

...it's one thing to take a cheap shot.

It's quite a number to double down on it and insult everyone's intelligence by claiming you actually had a legitimate question. No, no you don't.

Gee, while you were having an another egotistical meltdown triforcharity actually had a reply where he thought of partial explanation that I hadn't considered. Apparently my communication style of using question marks upsets you somehow but to me it is just a way of furthering a discussion without making absolute statements that I can't be certain of.

I really have no idea what your problem is here. I thought one of the coolest things about the Amanda Knox threads was the way people would share ideas and information even when they were on opposite sides of the guilt/innocent divide and this thread seems like it should be similar to me. Challenging questions can be fun in that regard.

Asking why a critical witness did not come forward to the police in a timely matter is an absolutely valid question! It's ridiculous for you to suggest that it was the equivalent to me saying "does anybody know if Trayvon was making a drug deal?" or "Anybody know if Trayvon was trying to find a stashed gun?"

My questions were rooted in commonly reported facts and I posted links for info. I didn't just make them up out of (racist) thin air like you did. If you really can't see the difference then you have major problems.

 

[RandFan]

Gee, while you were having an another egotistical meltdown...

I edited my post and apologized 46 minutes ago. In any event, it doesn't change the fact that my original complaint about your question stands. Tri demonstrates my point.

 

[RandFan]

My questions were rooted in commonly reported facts and I posted links for info. I didn't just make them up out of (racist) thin air like you did. If you really can't see the difference then you have major problems.

Being "rooted" in facts doesn't change the fact that your questions do not serve any purpose other than to cast aspersions on innocent people.

I don't know honestly, but maybe she didn't know where he lived exactly? That would seem plausible to me.

But, who knows.

No one knows. No one can know. Though he was kind enough to answer you he illustrates my point. No one need to defend them.

 

[triforcharity]

What links? that's what you get if you crunch the numbers.

Now if I crunch the numbers, I get:

100 million households in the US, an estimated 40% have guns in them. Assuming only one gun owner per household gives a mininum of 40 million gun owners.

Relying on figures from VPC/Brady Center of an annual 30,000 deaths 100,000 injuries and dividing into 40 million yields 307.7

oops! Crunch your numbers again, your misplaced decimal has misled PhantomWolf.

And how many of those are based on illegal gun ownership, and not from it being used on the good guy, as Phantom has claimed....

OOPS is right!

 

[Natural Born Skeptic]

Being "rooted" in facts doesn't change the fact that your questions do not serve any purpose other than to cast aspersions on innocent people.

The questions are good and perfectly legitimate ones and if we're interested in the truth then we shouldn't be playing games and avoiding them by suggesting they are off limit because they question casts aspersions on someone that is innocent.

1. She was told by Trayvon someone was following him. She says she heard the beginning of a confrontation, so she had enough information to know this was not just a possible situation, but it was an actual situation that had escalated to an encounter. Then she says she heard the phone go dead and assumed TM was pushed. If this is not after the fact embellishment and things transpired as she reports, the natural reaction would have been to go into a panic. Then you'd call the person back likely more than once hoping they'll answer so you can know they are OK. And if they didn't answer the next reaction be to go into a panic and call the family or police. In fact many people might skip directly to the last step.

Speaking of which, if I was the defense attorney's I'd not only be getting those cell phone records for TM, I'd be trying to subpoena her phone records, in order to see what happened after the call with TM. That might help to see what she believed happened at that moment based on her subsequent phone conversations, if any, as opposed to how she interpreted it the conversation after she knew what happened.

2. The moment she learned that TM was murdered why wasn't she on the phone to the police about her conversation with him?

As with so much in this case these questions may end up being easily answered, but at the moment they are highly relevant and good questions.

 

[Moss]

Asking why a critical witness did not come forward to the police in a timely matter is an absolutely valid question! It's ridiculous for you to suggest that it was the equivalent to me saying "does anybody know if Trayvon was making a drug deal?" or "Anybody know if Trayvon was trying to find a stashed gun?"

If I remember correctly it was suggested that the girlfriend is yet another minor and was somewhat traumatized. I also faintly seem to remember that her family played a role in when she gave her testimony, but what exactly no idea yet. I think it should be in the reports around the time the Martins's attorney went public with it.

 

[curi0us]

Being "rooted" in facts doesn't change the fact that your questions do not serve any purpose other than to cast aspersions on innocent people.

I have just been trying to figure out what really happened.

I previously had assumed Trayvon's girlfriend's (DeeDee) was honest but I had a really hard time reconciling her version of events with things that we know happened during GZ's 911 call. Basically her version has been presented as; TM tells her a guy is following him, TM puts his hood up, she suggests he runs, but he instead just walks fast, but still manages to lose GZ, but somehow GZ reaappers and corners TM, and they exchange words and there is a push and the call ends.

That sounds reasonable except if you look at the map and where the fight happened, it just isn't possible with that description since the fight would have happened much closer to TM destination if it were true.

And there is another problem. All the records I have seen suggest DD called TM at 7:12 (7:12:00-7:12:59). 7:12 is definitely after when GZ describes TM running. So now what DD described starts seeming even more implausible since she would have had to have called a minute earlier for her statements to be truthful. Which is why I think it is significant if DD never made an effort to contact the police. It fits very well with what a person who had heard TM acting the aggressor would do and doesn't make any sense if she really thought TM had been wronged.

No one knows. No one can know. Though he was kind enough to answer you he illustrates my point. No one need to defend them.

I know you don't know that no one can know.

I'm pretty sure it will come up in court there may be enough information for us to know with great certainty.

 

[Dcdrac]

All we know for certain is an idoit based on suspcion alone and with no indictaion of criminal behaviour at all as stated in the transcript of the GZ 911 call, acted and took a life and has destroyed the life of a family.

 

[Dcdrac]

Also looking at he CTV footage of when GZ was at the Police Station for someone whose head was suppoedly battered against the pavement he looks very unmarked, unbloodied and unbruised.

 

[Dancing David]

Perhaps I'm strange but I'm not sure what is particularly scary about a man in a truck stopped on the side of road talking on a phone, but then I'm strange and see people in concealing non-wet weather clothing walking about in the rain on dark cold nights looking at houses as suspicious when it's obviously the guys in the trucks talking on the phone who are the ones that I should be worried about.

You repeating your argument does not make it any less specious, it was cold and rainy, not cold by Illinois standards, but cold.

You keep saying 'concealing', which is really ignorant.

It was cold, he put his hood up. Where do you live?

What do people do when it is cold and rainy, take their head covering off?

No one would say Trayvon responded to GZ in the truck, it was when GZ followed him which is suspicious. So that is a false dichotomy and a straw man.

So we have established you don't know how people behave in the rain and cold and that you don't know how 17 yos talk on the phone with their girlfriends. Or how they text on an IPhone, with a headset.

 

[Dcdrac]

http://news.sky.com/home/world-news/article/16198475

I cannot see any head injuries in this footage at all.

 

[Dancing David]

By that measure if you saw someone breaking into a car you should do nothing, after all sometimes people do lock their keys in the car, so how do you know that this isn't one of them?

More false dichotomy.

 

[Dancing David]

He accepts Zimmerman's "waistband" claim, but discounts it as meaning anything. That's funny to me. Why would he accept Zimmerman's claim? Why not just say Zimmerman made it up? There's no evidence for it, after all.

In fact, it's a street move to indicate that you have a gun, to get someone to back off of you.

Or it can mean you are hitching up your britches.

 

[Dcdrac]

Today, 06:51 AM #6617
Dancing David
Penultimate Amazing


Join Date: Mar 2003
Location: Central Illinois
Posts: 29,527 Originally Posted by PhantomWolf
By that measure if you saw someone breaking into a car you should do nothing, after all sometimes people do lock their keys in the car, so how do you know that this isn't one of them?

More false dichotomy.

And as the 911 call transcript does not mention anything like this or any criminal activity whatsoever, that statement is even more irrelvent

 

[Dancing David]

I'm also not suggesting that it's not legal to walk in a hoodie, even on a dark, cold, rainy night. I'm not even suggesting that it's not legal to look at houses on the way, just noting that if you do, you should be willing to answer questions from the police because doing that is suspicious behaviour.

Yes, and that has what to do with GZ?