I agree 100%.
This has ZERO to do with SYG. It sure isn’t like Zimmerman was sitting in a coffee shop somewhere and Martin came up and cold-cocked him.
Zimmerman should have done what dispatch told him to do, at the very least, he NEVER should have left his truck armed.
Look - I could put a pistol under my coat, go into a biker bar, walk up to the biggest guy there and call him a queer.
Then, as he’s beating the livin crap out of me, I could put one through him.
That’s not SYG - something I DID helped precipitate the incident.
Lots of FReepers will beat me up on this, but IMHO Zimmerman isn’t exactly the brightest bulb in the pack, he went out loaded for bear, and got himself into EXACTLY the kind of situation that he shouldn’t have.
And it gives responsible gun owners a BAD NAME, and I am extremely pissed about that.
I would bet a very large sum Zimmerman wished he’d left his gun at home.
It is certainly possible he could have been beaten to death if he hadn’t been armed, but it is at least as possible that the intensity of the attack owed something to the presence of the gun.
No matter who started the fight, once both were aware the gun was there it became literally a life and death struggle over who controlled it.
Zim himself says (or so it has been reported) that he “had to shoot” to keep Martin from getting the gun. Martin, if he’d survived would no doubt be telling us he had to fight to protect himself against an armed attacker.
Any law that more or less vindicates whoever happens to survive is problematic. And I don’t mean SYG, which just doesn’t apply, for either side.
/johnny
Do you have any evidence that the situation between Zimmerman and Martin had any resemblance to your hypothetical?
And even if it did you are wrong. By your logic every time a police officer goes up to somebody, or pulls them over in traffic and asks them a question, or perhaps insults them, the police officer did something which precipitated the incident. So by your logic the police officer is at fault if they end up shooting some guy who is fighting with them during a traffic stop.
Sorry, but that logic is flawed.
That's not necessarily true. If you '[]Initially provoke[] the use of force against' yourself, then the regular stand your ground rules don't apply to you, at least not under the Florida Stand Your Ground Act of 2005.
If you provoke the use of force then you can only invoke the use of deadly force or force likely to cause great bodily harm if you meet either the requirements of Florida Statutes 776.041(2)(a) or (b). You can't immediately invoke the normal Stand Your Ground provisions of 776.012(1).
Instead, now you have to reasonably believe that you're in imminent danger of death or great bodily harm and then exahust every reasonable means to escape other than the use of deadly force or force likely to cause great bodily harm. Only then can you use the 776.012(1) force.
In the alternative, you have to completely withdraw from physical contact with the person with whom you provoked the assault and indicate clearly that you desire to withdraw and terminate the use of force, and the other party has to continue or resume the use of force such that it would otherwise entitle you to a 776.012(1) remedy.
Sound complicated? Well, it's because if you instigate that fight in the biker bar, you don't get the advantage of the regular Stand Your Ground rules, at least not in Florida.