Tag: Crime & Punishment

It’s Not Just the Zimmerman Jury That’s Messed Up; It’s Also the Stand Your Ground Law

Trish

For the people out there wondering what the Zimmerman jury was smoking, I have a partial explanation, thanks to former Florida state Rep. Dan Gelber.

As Gelber explained on his blog, before the Stand Your Ground (SYG) law was passed, convicting Zimmerman would have been a slam-dunk.

Under Stand Your Ground, the George Zimmermans of the world can get themselves into all kinds of ridiculous messes and shoot their way out under no penalty of law

In 2005 the Florida Legislature fundamentally changed the analysis used by juries to assign blame in these cases. When the legislature passed the Stand Your Ground law it changed the rules of engagement. It eliminated the duty to avoid the danger and it eliminated any duty to retreat…

Here is the actual jury instruction read to Florida juries prior to the legislature’s enactment of Stand Your Ground.

“The defendant cannot justify the use of force likely to cause death or great bodily harm unless he used every reasonable means within his power and consistent with his own safety to avoid the danger before resorting to that force.

“The fact that the defendant was wrongfully attacked cannot justify his use of force likely to cause death or great bodily harm if by retreating he could have avoided the need to use that force.”

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Manchin Not Afraid to Shoot It Out with the NRA

Trish

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Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) is gunning for the NRA, which recently urged West Virginians to pressure their elected official to get in line. Manchin, who supports extending background checks to buyers at gun shows and online, was previously supported by the NRA because of his voting record on their issues. Now he is on their public enemy list.

Manchin: ‘What other purpose do we have here? Why do we ask to be policy makers when we’re afraid to engage?’

On the Morning Joe show, Manchin debuted his own new ad, and explained he didn’t go to Washington to serve the NRA.

“What other purpose do we have here?” Manchin asked. “Why do we ask to be policy makers and be involved in the public process when we’re afraid to engage? I’m not. I’m not afraid to engage. The worst they can do is defeat me and send me home to my family and the state I love, West Virginia. That’s a pretty good consolation. What are we afraid of?”

Manchin added that the strategy of the NRA and Gun Owners of America is to use lies and innuendo to work up the gullible and keep those donations flowing in.

“The only thing they use against me is: ‘we just don’t trust government,” Manchin said. “Well, I’m sorry if you don’t like it. Get involved and make it better. Don’t just sit and curse the wind. But they don’t want to get involved, they just want to keep this paranoia going on.”

The Rightwing’s Obsession with Obama and Terror

Trish
Did we forget what the story is here?

Somewhere aliens are watching us from outer space and scratching their headlike appendages. Because before all the blood had even dried on the sidewalks, the rightwing dropped the subject of what happened at the 2013 Boston Marathon and got back to the subject they seem to care most about: hating Pres. Obama.

This tweet hints at the problem.

Fort Hood? Wait. What? Wasn’t Fort Hood a case of a wacko with a gun shooting up his fellow service members, like James Holmes shooting up fellow Batman fans, and Adam Lanza shooting up his fellow Newtown youth? What distinguishes Fort Hood from the other mass shootings that have become part of the landscape? Could it be that the gunman in Fort Hood was a Muslim? Now we’re getting somewhere, because any time you have a Muslim person involved, it’s de facto terrorism. Right?

But why are we slamming Obama for not labeling all three of those events as terrorism, straight out of the gate? Here, this tweet should clear it right up.

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The Answer to Too Many Guns is Always More Guns

Trish

NRA: “The only way to reduce the kinds of casualties seen at gun shows across the country today is more guns” #GunAppreciationDay

— @TheDailyEdge, a humor site, tweeting about the rash of negligent accidental shootings by “responsible gun owners” as they bought and sold guns on a day dreamed up by the gun lobby and rightwing extremists.

White “Nationalists” Try to Hide Behind Gun Appreciation Day

Trish
Petition smoking gun?

A couple of days ago, BuzzFeed’s Andrew Kaczynski (@BuzzFeedAndrew) tweeted this:

Is this the most racist White House petition ever created? https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/stop-white-genocide-halt-massive-third-world-immigration-and-forced-assimilation-white-countries/WVyzm59F

And here’s the petition:

WE PETITION THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION TO:
STOP WHITE GENOCIDE: Halt MASSIVE third world immigration and FORCED assimilation in White countries!
Africa for Africans, Asia for Asians, White countries for EVERYBODY?

These gun folks’ greatest wish seems to be that someday a (black) criminal will walk through their doors and give them the golden opportunity to kill a human being with no legal consequences

White countries are being flooded with third world non-whites, and Whites are required by law to integrate with them so as to “assimilate,” i.e. intermarry and be blended out of existence.

That’s genocide by United Nations Convention, Article II, part c:

“Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part.”

We petition the President to end White Genocide in the United States, and to call for the end of White Genocide in Europe, Britain, Australia, New Zealand and Canada.

Supporting White Genocide is not anti-racist. It’s anti-white!
—–
Signers: Please look for our three petitions each month that oppose White Genocide!

Let’s grow!

Thankfully, the petition had only 388 signatures when I first viewed it, and has only gained about 10 more in the days since.

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Record Numbers in Florida Locked and Loaded

Trish
Welcome to Florida

The news that nearly 800,000 people in Florida requested the background checks needed to purchase a firearm in 2012 gives the rest of the country one more reason to avoid the Sunshine State. If you come, keep in mind that one in every 24 people around you is probably armed.

A bulletproof Hawaiian shirt to go with those black socks and shorts might not be a bad idea.

Gun sales surged after Obama’s re-election, but really took off after the recent shooting with semi-automatic weapons in Newtown, Conn. killed 20 children and six adults (plus the shooter).

In December alone, there were 131,103 background checks requested through the [Florida Department of Law Enforcement] — the highest number the agency has recorded in any single month. That beat the previous record, set only a month earlier, when 84,745 background check requests were submitted in the same month that Obama was re-elected.

It doesn’t hurt that the NRA and Gun Owners of America keep telling people that Obama is going to take their guns and then turn the country into a socialist dictatorship.

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