Zimmerman To Face Arrest …

Or at least he should.

In a bizarre and alarming incident illustrating the stupidity of the US attitude to guns and gun law, George Zimmerman shot and killed Trayvon Martin in “self defence”. And then the police took his word at face value, and did not arrest him.

There a whole bunch of really strange about this issue :-

1. Zimmerman was apparently running around as a self-appointed “neighbourhood” watch guard. Now I’m not sure what the attitude towards people like that is in the US, but I would label such a person as a “vigilante” and say that his behaviour is a clear indication of his lack of fitness to carry a gun. That’s not to criticise real neighbourhood watch volunteers – just that someone who runs around who is not part of such an organisation but acts as though he is.
2. He wasn’t arrested. Whatever the legal situation is, it seems to me that anyone who kills someone – even a policeman who kills the neighbourhood serial killer in the act – should be arrested. Killing someone is always wrong; it may sometimes be less wrong than the alternative, but there’s no getting around the fact that killing someone is always wrong.
3. The self-defence argument is interesting because it is entirely possible that Treyvon Martin could also quite legitimately make a self-defence claim if he had killed George Zimmerman. After all from his point of view, he was followed and then apparent confronted by this “strange man” when he was going about his legitimate business. Perfectly entitled to some self-defence there.
4. The whole self-defence argument is a little weak though – it has been implied that in Florida killing is perfectly legal if the perpetrator believes it was necessary for his or her self-defence. Where is the “reasonable” in that ? To illustrate this, I might believe it is necessary for my self-defence to kill you because I’m unhinged – that does not make it reasonable however. Of course the sensible way of testing the self-defence argument is through the old-fashioned method of letting juries decide using their common sense.