Bignugget

Who did you vote for in the last presidential election? No one, I don't vote. What bearing does that have on my question?

if it stemmed from people like you ignoring the law because you don't like it or understand it, yes. Correct me if I am wrong please. But I don't believe I have to give a list of reasons why I vote a certain way on a jury. Does the judge ask jurors to explain why they voted the way they did?

True enough, he asked what I would do.

Do you think they would still defend him if I came in the door with a couple of big, juicy steaks? You are starting to stretch a bit. This isn't Spike or FX, in reality killers hell bent on breaking in and murdering people for no real reason don't typically spend large amounts of time planning the targets. It would be pretty unusual for you to be carrying a bunch of steaks around. More likely is that you approach my house intent on coming and murdering me randomly, my dogs hear you outside, raise hell, and you run away to rape and pillage somewhere else.

but in more than a few instances, give a better life than the outside world. From a lifespan and species preservation perspective, zoos and zoo like structures have enable many animals to still exist today. we need to think beyond a simplistic notion of zoos equal bad. And there's little doubt that humans develop a greater level of 'giving a shit' about things they see in person. Stuff on TV has nowhere near the same impact. Well, in the 'Blackfish' documentary they talk about the lifespan of the killer whale. All of the seaworld spokespeople are saying its 25-35 years in captivity. And that they live SIGNIFICANTLY longer in captivity due to the vet care and all the great things they get. The reality is in the wild they live normal human length lifespans 60ish years, without stellar seaworld vet care amazingly enough manage to live 2x longer than in captivity. They also talk about how ~25% of all killer whales dorsal fins flop over. Truth is MOST captive males and some females have collapsed fins, while less than 1% of wild killer whales have collapsed dorsal fins, and those are normally caused by trauma, unlike the captive ones. That's sad shit. Generally I am not a fan of doing some evil to get some good done.

My personal opinion is different. While I do wish very much that zoos could have much larger habitats for most animals, I don't think that putting a six year old in front of a television to watch lions in the Serengeti instills the same awe and awareness in them that being 6 inches from a lion in the zoo does. I've seen that look of wonder many, many times because I visit my local zoo once a week or more. It's a nice place to take a walk. I think that the personal connection that zoo programs build for kids have value. It might make them interested in learning more from the discovery channel when they're a little older. Point taken. I grew up in Saint Louis, and my mom took me to the zoo a lot as a kid. Maybe that is where my love of animals developed, hard to pinpoint that sort of stuff for me. Where something started etc. but it is certainly plausible my zoo visits as a kid helped develop it. Now that I am grown and aware they are thinking creatures just like us, and see them just pacing back and forth like 'caged animals' ironically enough, it just makes me cynical and sad. Watching stuff that is just observation of them in the wild has so much more spirit and energy. At least for me. But I do see your point.

Absolutely not. I've avoided very many acts of aggression by walking away, been in only one fight and it wasn't directly related to me. I think fighting is stupid and a good way to screw your own life up. Having said that though, running out the back door isn't always an option...there's a good chance that someday you'll have to defend yourself or someone else and cannot run. What then? There is a good chance someday I will be in a life and death fight with someone? You watch too much SpikeTV if you truly believe that.

If you could come kill me with heart disease, smoking, or alcohol I would have a pretty big issue with those. Killing people while under the influence of alcohol or drugs I already have a problem with. As it turns out, other than drunken/drugged driving, you can't kill me using any of your mentioned means. You can come kill me with a gun though. That concerns me.

are you expecting to be single forever? Well, if the would be family knows how much (little) you feel for them, sounds like the answer is yes. The minute there are 2 people in the house, this run out the back door plan becomes woefully inadequate. A significant other could run out the door with me, its a normal sized door not a tiny doggy door. Maybe I just under-estimate the time it takes for 2 random burglars to fight 2 80 lb shepherds....but I think I can make it the 25 feet to the back door, could probably get a significant other there as well. Ill leave it to the imagination as to the sex of the significant other, since that seems to have some bearing for Gravitymaster.

Is that what you would do if you had a family in your house too? Run for the back door and let them handle themselves? Someday you might change your mind and want the right to defend yourself and your family instead of run like a little pansy. Hopefully by then, people like you haven't stripped us from that right. Maybe the problem is you consider avoiding violent conflict 'running like a pansy' and I consider it smart shit to do. We are coming from two different starting points.

That was JGooses idea....that the attacker can become the victim mid fight.....I like it though. It certainly makes self defense claims made by an initial attacker more reasonable.

So you are claiming the judge would have thrown out a guilty verdict?

Ok I'll ask. You are so set on finding someone to provide evidence that Zimmerman's story is true. How about you provide some evidence that his story isn't true? By the way, "maybe he lied" is not actually evidence. There's no hurry, we'll wait... He told his side of the story almost immediately, and guess how much of it was disproven by witnesses? That's right, absolutely none. Every detail he told was supported by witnesses that he didn't even know existed. We all know you don't give a fuck about the law, which is why no one can take you seriously. Good thing this is America and some random 29 yr old single financial grad dude doesn't decide what is legal or not. Umm...sure we do....what do you think a jury is made up of....random assholes like me....that's sort of the whole idea. My whole point is there is no evidence showing either way. The only evidence was witnessed after the fight started, or are self-serving statements of a defendant. Presumed innocent doesn't apply when you admit to the killing. So he admits to the killing, and no evidence either way to show that he was the guy who got attacked instead of the one doing the initial attacking. In reality it might boil down to what someone said in another thread. At one point the attacker can become the victim in the legal sense. So at the split second Zimmerman started losing the fight, EVEN IF he started the confrontation after chasing the kid down intending to capture and detain him, he is still justified in killing the kid once he starts getting beat up due to underestimating his adversary. That's pretty fucked up, but hey maybe that's how the law works. Not when they finally make me do jury duty though.

Wait, was Zimmerman asleep in his house while it was being broken into by Martin?!?! Fuckin mainstream media got me again. I thought he was outside playing super cop where simply calling 911 and sitting his apparently weakling (can't even win a fight against a 17 year old without a gun), killing ass in his car would have kept a young kid alive. but to answer Linebackers question. If some crazed person with a weapon broke my door down in the middle of the night hell bent on murderous rape and pillaging, and had the balls to fight their way past my 2 80lb shepherds....well I would just run right out the back door. If they launched some sort of NAVY SEAL attack where all my entrances and windows were covered by attackers...I would die....once the dogs did.

That's kind of like BP making safety their top priority in my mind. Protect the animals who are rare and at risk by capturing them and locking them in small pens? With protection of at risk animals as a top priority that is the best we can come up with? Rescue the animals who are rare and at risk from their at risk spots and shipping them around the world to be locked in pens, put on display, punished and abused? Best way to rescue them with it as a top priority? Preserve them by locking them away to be performance tools instead of captive breeding/release. Again, doesn't seem like its a top priority. In 'Blackfish' they show a lineage chart of Tilikum. Instead of breeding him and releasing killer whales into the wild, they breed him and ship his babies around to make money. I personally learn a lot more watching Discovery specials about the animal kingdom than I ever did visiting the zoo. I think they may have served a nice educational purpose 50 years ago, when without a zoo the majority of people would never see non-native animals. That is just not the case in 2013 when we can experience them in their natural habitat thanks to technology. And the St. Louis Zoo is supposedly one of the better ones in the US, usually ranked in the top 5 of any list I have seen.

6 tools to do the job a cordless drill could handle? That's inefficient. The complete opposite of what I said. So you think most people only have one drill bit? You think most people only have one way to make a hole? Have you ever heard of a saw? You are pretty funny in your desperation You have confused your own analogy. The cordless drill is the gun in your analogy. I think most people only have one cordless drill. The cordless drill is a versatile tool capable of multiple uses including drilling holes, screwing screws, sanding, grinding, apparently to end life, and I am sure many other things. Unlike the gun which is only capable of being used to end life. Thus, there is no need for a gun since the cordless drill can handle itself in a duel any day of the week. As you clearly asserted. Try to at least keep your own analogy flowing properly.

Thoughts? Found it equally as disturbing as "The Cove". Personally I think zoos in general are some of the saddest places you could ever consider to be attractions. Even worse when they are higher level intelligence animals. One of the most striking things to me about both this one and The Cove is that so many of the advocates for shutting these kinds of places down are former trainers/workers. That speaks more loudly to me than most things. The Cove had the former flipper trainer, this one has a BUNCH of former trainers at seaworld on it. I also had no idea so many trainers had been attacked and killed during the course of the history of seaworld. I guess good for OSHA in hopefully protecting the workers, but I say shut down the zoos and seaworlds, and let discovery channel and HDTV capturing them in the wild show us how they are. Then no workers get eaten, and no animals are stuck in prison.

6 tools to do the job a cordless drill could handle? That's inefficient. The complete opposite of what I said.

Negative. Get someone to drill a 9mm hole on your head. Then you can speak from experience. Let's have a duel at 20 paces. Me armed with a S&W 1911 .45. You armed with a drill of your choosing. Neither one of them are dangerous by themselves as neither can jump off a table and cause you harm. However, from close range, both are capable of inflicting similar wounds. So we agree. They are substitute goods. Will you now please turn your guns over? You can have all the cordless drills you want. Why do you want me to turn in my guns? I've never shot anyone. Efficiency. The guns could be melted down into more useful items. Right now they can only drill holes of a fixed size and are really obsolete if you think about it. You can accomplish all the gun does and more with the cordless drill. The gun doesn't accept multiple bits for lots of different purposes.

Negative. Get someone to drill a 9mm hole on your head. Then you can speak from experience. Let's have a duel at 20 paces. Me armed with a S&W 1911 .45. You armed with a drill of your choosing. Neither one of them are dangerous by themselves as neither can jump off a table and cause you harm. However, from close range, both are capable of inflicting similar wounds. So we agree. They are substitute goods. Will you now please turn your guns over? You can have all the cordless drills you want. I hope the range you normally go to practice at is really really short.

In your scenario, it all depends on how much "I start winning." If I am attempting to kill you, yes you have the right to do what ever it takes to preserve your own life. Kind of like in the Rodney King case, there is a point where force can become excessive, and the attackee can become the attacker. But if the above is how you perceived the GZ/TM case, I HIGHLY suggest that you get an unfiltered look at the tons of actual physical evidence that is available that the media does not report about after GZ got out of the car. TM confronted GZ. Open to it. Links to any of the physical evidence that shows who started the fight in that case would be appreciated. Since there is no video evidence of how the fight transpired in the Zimmerman case, and you are of the position that the victim can become the attacker at a point in the fight and so the original attacker can now be justified in using deadly force, that would bolster the argument that Zimmerman is innocent, there are reports that he wasn't winning the fight seconds before he killed Martin. I am of the opinion that if you started something you get the blame for it, regardless of if you can't handle it later on in the fight. In your original rape example would it work the same way? Man rapes woman, woman starts stabbing man, man is afraid for his life so he kills woman. Justified? I would say no. Start something, you get the blame. You can't kill her and claim it was self defense. I like the Rodney King comparison, wonder how differently his case turns out if there is no video. Kinda like Zimmerman/Martin. Do you think those cops story of self defense holds up if there is no video to refute it?

Say what now?I sense a "Hold my beer and watch this" story coming. Don Well, you see, Don, I've always found that when dealing with someone who has irrational fears of inanimate objects, it helps to get then to visualize it as something else. Something they are more familiar with and that they view as harmless. Then I find it helps to form a bridge from the fearsome object and link it to something they don't fear. A transfer of fear so to speak. I am not quite as afraid of a murderous person with a drill as I am of a murderous person with a gun, but it would still concern me. Once as many people are killed in the USA as are in Yemen due to murderous people using cordless drills as their weapon I will start to have major concerns with cordless drills. Until then....guns it is since we (Americans) use guns to murder people on par with Yemen and tons of other developing countries.....and like NO 1st world nation.

Uh, you acknowledge no evidence exists to support your notion of what happened, yet you insist the jury got it wrong. Did you study the criminal justice system in Mexico? Iran? I acknowledge no evidence exists of how the fight started. unless you consider self-serving statements of an accused killer evidence.... I also believe the jury got it wrong. Correct. Normiss is the closest to articulating my position, I don't care if the letter of the law said it was OK for Zimmerman to chase a kid down and kill him. I don't.

You claim a large majority of firearm owners are more proficient at firearm use than police? (the level of proficiency being the qualifications police maintain) I'm not scared of guns. I am scared of the 100+ million people that have guns, and are less qualified in How,When,Why, to use them than the police....who are obviously under-trained.

Well, then donate a bunch of money to the cops so that they can afford to train properly. It isn't cheap. Facilities cost money. Time for the trainers and the officers costs money. Ammunition costs a lot of money. I don't claim to be "supremely effective" compared to the cops. I know I'm nowhere near as good at conflict resolution. Or at confronting an adversary. Or even necessarily at deciding when to shoot or not to shoot. But I do know I'm far better with a pistol than most cops. Because I shoot a lot more. And because I've shot with them. The locals won't compete against me anymore (informal just for fun - loser buys the winner a soda). And I'm not the only one. There's a group of "usual suspects" who come out and practice on a regular basis. Fair enough. Pretty much sums up my concerns about guns. "I don't claim to be "supremely effective" compared to the cops. I know I'm nowhere near as good at conflict resolution. Or at confronting an adversary. Or even necessarily at deciding when to shoot or not to shoot. But I do know I'm far better with a pistol" I think the order of operations should be reversed. Maybe that's the issue with cops. Since they (hopefully) stress that using the gun is the absolute last resort, actually using it does not get enough attention. I don't need to donate money to their training. More than enough money to go around when we stop (ineffectively) policing the world.