Zimmerman was done. He was walking back to his truck. The kid jumped him. That's what the witnesses say. That's what the cops think. And that is why Zimmerman has not been arrested, or charged.
So in your version (Zimmerman)....ran up on him and began the actions that resulted in shooting and a death.
You are 180 degrees out. Zimmerman was going the other way when the kid ran up on him. The kid was 100 feet from his residence. He could have simply gone in. Had he done so he would still be with us. Instead the kid decked Zimmerman, the smaller man, was pounding him into the ground with his fists, and THEN got shot while Zimmerman was screaming for help. The survivor of the encounter says this. The witnesses say this. The 911 call corroborates this.
BTW, the MSM is calling Zimmerman, "A White Hispanic" the first use of that term in English, never mind journalism. Makes about as much sense as calling Obama a "White Negro."
Zimmerman was conducting surveillance on private property; doing a job he was elected by his neighbors to do. Yup. He might be a real jerk. But since neither do we try, nor convict people in the press, we'll just have to wait and see if he goes to trial. Until that point all we know is what you read in the papers and what I read in the police report. Perhaps we should switch?
We still shouldn’t be involved in this, even if Zimmerman was technically in the bounds of the law.
I suspect most of the people supporting Zimmerman here don’t have CCW permits and don’t carry, or they would view him differently. If you carry, you avoid confrontations. The second anyone with a CCW hears about a guy who carries and interacts with others like this, the CCW holder will assume they had a screw loose. When you actually carry a gun, you will avoid any chance of any confrontation. Guy cuts you off in traffic, you ignore it. No arguments over parking spaces, no turning around to curse out the guy who bumped into you at the mall. You instinctively make yourself inconspicuous, and keep your weapon as hidden as possible at all times. And you don’t call the cops to you on a crime unless you see a crime.
You get taught to do this in a carry course, but when you carry, it is actually due more to a psychological/instinctual thing. The gun is a burden, and you really don’t want to have to risk removing it from the holster, for any reason. Deep down you know, if that gun comes out something bad is happening. It may be less bad than you getting shot by a thug, but it is still going to be a huge headache. Moreover, you don’t want to be dealing with cops, even if you’re in the right. Meeting a cop who has been called to a scene, and saying you’re carrying a gun can go badly, no matter how inconsequential the call. Maybe the cop is an NRA member, and cool with it. Maybe he’s a hotheaded antigun jackass who is now going to bust your balls over anything he can pin on you. You never know.
When you see a guy carrying and freely interacting with others for any reason, especially a confrontational reason, you automatically assume he’s got some sort of problem, and shouldn’t have been carrying in the first place.
And all of that ignores the politics of this. How many Americans want an untrained guy with a gun acting as “Captain” of a one man neighborhood watch, and then going around armed, following other citizens, so he can determine if they are going about their lives in comportment with his ideas of the law? Even worse, this dude shot some inncoent citizen he started out following, with a gun. There wasn’t some active crime spree to warrant suspicion, his victim wasn’t armed, wasn’t engaged in a crime when he was first spotted, and was walking legally to his own home right down the street in the gated community. I’m NRA, I support all forms of carry, but this creeps me out. If I look shady, am I going to have some guy following me around with his gun? Do I now have to be able to figure out if the guy following me, with a gun-shaped bulge under his shirt, is a neighborhood watch “Captain?”
Conservatives will aggressively side with Zimmerman at great risk to our cause - he may be a full fledged jackass, for all we know. Just because Jesse Jackson and his crew are on the other side doesn’t mean it’s right for us to go on the offensive here, with this case, and this guy. We are in a political war, and tying our movement to the fortunes of a cop-wannabe is not going to help our cause.
Let the law play out, and see how it goes. If Zimmerman doesn’t get hit with any charges, which seems likely, let this one go. If he does get charged, let him defend himself. Either way, we won’t affect the outcome, so what is the point of getting involved? A dude with a gun doing his own patrols of his neighborhood, following a neighbor’s kid for walking in the rain, who ends up shooting the kid, shouldn’t be the face of the carry movement, or the Conservative cause.
All this just elevates him to a position he shouldn’t be in.