Quote:
Originally Posted by CaptainCrunch
There's no science to that, one person's fear for his life is another persons another day another fist fight. Unless you can get technology to go back and read my brainwaves when my head's being based into concrete you can't really quantify it based on a rule book.
I'm sure that Zimmerman being straddled by a bigger taller person who's tagging him MMA style while wanging his head into the concrete enough to cause injuries might have felt to Zimmerman and a lot of people to feel like his life is in danger.
Unless your going to define by law that he has to have 6 inch lacerations and at least one fracture which would be stupid.
Your talking about a higher burden, does that mean that I have to have my intestines hanging out. OR I have to see my eye on the sidewalk, or I can't count to 10 before I'm allowed the notion of defense or a feeling that my life is in jeopardy?
To me training is relevant to the point, I'm probably a bigger gun control nut then anyone on this board, because I have a belief that either guns should be in the hands of actual true experts like the police and military who have to go through stringent background checks, mental health testing and training before they even get their hands on a gun. But under the current system, the chances of getting those changes are zero.
I've always thought that the way to get around it is for people to have to have fire arm insurance in order to buy a gun, and the premiums would be hideously expensive, but the payouts would be into the millions for causing death. To help with the flow, in order to buy bullets you would need to show your insurance card.
To me, that gets around the 2nd amendment, gives you a proper registry that could be privately funded and probably keeps guns out of a lot of hands due to affordability issue.
You can still buy weapons but you have to have insurance first.
Just my two cents.
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Of course there's no science to it, that's what I've been saying. You have to analyze the totality of the circumstances, and two situations will never be the same.
It's not necessarily a higher burden, but a shifted burden, and it can work both ways.
If we go on the assumption that Zimmerman, while armed, pursued and confronted Martin (admittedly no evidence of this so it's purely a hypo) I'd like to see the law force the burden of showing that the fear was reasonable onto the pursuer in some situations, in particular where there is no basis for believing that immediate pursuit or confrontation are needed to prevent injury/death of another. On the flip side, I'd welcome a law that allowed someone who had received extensive training to perhaps be given a decreased burden under certain circumstances.
I like the insurance argument, not sure it would clear the 2nd Amendment as it could be seen as being too big of a hurdle, but it's the kind of thing I wish would be implemented.