Why does the unarmed boy not get the "innocent until proven guilty" treatment? Because Zimmerman has already executed him? How could that be right?

This is the problem with the SYG laws. Quite often the only witness to the incident is the person who got killed, and the only person left to testify is the person who killed them. Then it is all "he said/they said", and so the judge doesn't have much choice except to throw the case out. SYG is supposed to protect people who are defending themselves from a criminal attack from retribution lawsuits by the criminal or the criminal's relatives. They are not supposed to be used to deliberately provoke a fight with someone you don't like in order to kill or injure them.

The fact that this law was in place is going to make it almost a lock that Zimmerman is not going to be prosecuted. If Zimmerman's defense team comes out and says, "Zimmerman had legitimate reason to believe that he was in danger of great bodily harm because Treyvon Martin jumped him, broke his nose, and was pounding his head on the sidewalk" then what can a prosecutor say? There are eyewitnesses that at least superficially confirm Zimmerman's story. They have to prove beyond reasonable doubt that Zimmerman had no such fear, but in fact that he deliberately WANTED to instigate the fight. So far no such evidence exists. All we've got are conspiracy theories, rumors, innuendo, blog rage, and "ooo - he was related to a judge".

3 of these things turned out to be lies:

-Zimmerman was screaming, not the kid. (not a fact)
-Zimmerman had injuries to the head.
-Eyewitnesses say that Martin had Zimmerman on his back.

Then we'll have to have a same reward for the capture of anyone that harms Zimmerman.

of course I'm in the Zimmerman camp, over on ATS several eyewitness reports that Trayvon attacked Zimmerman, plus arrest records leaked by anon Trayvon not only a drug addict but a convicted rapist, attacked Zimmerman and cut him up pretty bad, Zimmerman was found bloody on the ground.

I've pulled a gun on a tresspasser before but never had to use it thankfully. But I support Zimmerman 100%

Course I also live in a state that has Castle Doctrine or Castle Law on the books, that gives citizens rights to use deadly force not only on house trespass but property if you are threatened.

Sorry for the reeeaaally long post @marinara but I was trying to be brief:

1. "Zimmerman was not part of any REGISTERED neighborhood watch group."

Zimmerman did indeed say that he was "captain" of his neighborhood watch, and I can't find any proof that he wasn't, do you know why? Because there is no documentation regarding his neighborhood watch program, because it was unregistered and existed only in the heads of two or three people. And, might I add, it was certainly not "official".

When a person forms a neighborhood watch, it might be important to take into account the community that they live in. What if the community doesn't want a neighborhood watch program? What if they do, but they feel they don't want you representing them, as some people in Zimmerman's community clearly felt?

The fact is that Zimmmerman's self-appointed title carried no legitimacy at all. If my friend Cletus and I want to call ourselves the neighborhood watch, we can. I can call myself "secretary treasurer" and he can call himself "supreme overlord". But it has no more meaning than when my friend Nick and I get together and call ourselves a "fourteenth level archer", and "Nargok, the dwarven battlemage" (respectively). Only, in the case of the neighborhood watch titles, one must consider the community they are attempting to represent. This is why most watch programs (like the one you linked to) register themselves with the National Sheriff's Association, or some other organization.

2. "Oh and I documented a procedure for neighborhood watches to arrest people and a simple google search will correct you of the idea that the watch should not carry guns."

What you documented on the "City of Oxnard, Police Department" website was that citizen watch volunteers (who are registered) are encouraged to make arrests when they have seen a crime being committed, in particular, when they see someone committing the crime of vandalism. All US citizens have the right to make a citizen's arrest, but no one has the right to arrest or detain anyone for "suspicious behavior", even if that person is walking down the street wearing a hoodie, and looking skeptically at the person following them.

As to the gun, the same Oxnard website you linked to, on the same page, advises that no one carry a weapon at all, except for a heavy-duty flashlight that might be used to defend one's self in an emergency. Unfortunately, a Google search relating to neighborhood watch organizations carrying guns is inundated with articles and polls regarding this tragic case. The fox news polls indicate that a minority of people questioned think neighborhood watch members should carry guns, but those people do not reflect the views of any actual organization (that exists outside of its member's heads) that I know of.

I'd like to refer you to the response to the NY Times from Curtis Sliwa, founder of the Guardian Angels. The Angels are one of the most prolific watch organizations in history, with chapters all over the world. They were founded in the late seventies in NYC when the areas they patrolled were considered wastelands. Despite several attempts on the founder's life, and the loss of a few of its members over the years, they still do not advise carrying guns.

3. "...why do you insist on saying martin was an unarmed child? This is absurd."

I say it for two reasons: the first is that Martin was unarmed. There are no eyewitness reports, or even statements from Zimmerman that I've heard, that indicate that Martin attempted to use his bag of Skittles or his can of iced-tea as a weapon. The second reason I say it is that according to the US legal system, Martin was still a child at the time of his death. If he were in the "Child Protective Services' program, he wouldn't have gotten out until he was eighteen, which is the age that US citizens officially become adults (unless they're insane). Some children are tried as adults in the US, but child-victims are never represented as adults.

I understand if you think it's more appropriate to refer to Martin as a teenager, or possibly an adolescent, or even a young adult. But I don't think so, and I'll tell you why: I'm thirty-one years old. I'm not much older by comparison, but when I see a seventeen-year-old kid, I rarely think to myself, "he's got everything figured out". In fact, I rarely think that about most adults. Sure, I think most kids are smarter than people give them credit for, but I don't think Martin was mature enough to know the law and develop an appropriate response to being pursued for no reason by a man armed with a gun. And the US legal system hasn't made a determination in his case yet anyway.

http://www.hlntv.com/article/2012/03/21/police-report-martin-death-details-scene-shooting
is dox for the holster and injuries,
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/national/witness_supports_self_defense_story_hJ7s3EBd9LtYlZaE41WzFP
for the eyewitness
http://abcnews.go.com/US/george-zimmermans-attorney-friend-speak-trayvon-martin-incident/story?id=15999256#.T3AonlQrs9Q
neighborhood watch commander documented above

Getting hung up on particulars is what the legal system is for. People all over the world expressing interest in this are losing site of the main point: Zimmerman shot an unarmed seventeen-year-old in his own neighborhood. The confrontation was a result of an unofficial neighborhood watch volunteer doing everything that a neighborhood watch volunteer should never do.

He should have been arrested, no question.

Oh, there was one eyewitness? Great, release the suspect pending trial and let the witness take the stand at the appropriate time. The actions of the police in sending a narcotics detective to a homicide scene, and their statement that Zimmerman (who had been arrested for assaulting a police officer previously) had a "squeaky clean record", are reason enough for officials to have listened to the pleas of the family to arrest the suspect.

No one here can disprove I have routinely entered shinyblurry's home and wanked off in their toilet, therefore, I have. To prove this however, I need to get together a few people to add it to Wikipedia, then, in a couple thousand years, it will be believed by millions because all the eyewitnesses would be dead and impossible to discredit. Anyone trying to prove otherwise will just have to take a leap of faith that I didn't.

Doesn't sound like it from the report... well certainly not the high speeds those cars are capable of...

""A group of cars was doing 140-160km/h (85-100mph)," an unidentified eyewitness told Japanese broadcaster TBS.

"One of them spun and they all ended up in this great mess."">> ^dystopianfuturetoday:

Were they racing?

Thanks for the quality!

In reply to this comment by Boise_Lib:
Sean Carroll a senior research associate in the Department of Physics at the California Institute of Technology has a blog on the Discover Magazine website--Cosmic Variance--this is his take on this.
Brutality

Includes links to petitions and open letters for the resignation of Chancellor Katehi. As well as eyewitness accounts.
Did you know that chancellors make almost $500,000 a year--and are calling for increased tuition on the students they are there to educate?
*quality

Sean Carroll a senior research associate in the Department of Physics at the California Institute of Technology has a blog on the Discover Magazine website--Cosmic Variance--this is his take on this.
Brutality

Includes links to petitions and open letters for the resignation of Chancellor Katehi. As well as eyewitness accounts.
Did you know that chancellors make almost $500,000 a year--and are calling for increased tuition on the students they are there to educate?
*quality

A *quality eyewitness.

A skyscraper falling into its own footprint at freefall speed. If you can provide evidence of this happening that wasn't the result of controlled demolotion then you might have a valid point. Until then you are arguing from incredulity which we have already established is a fallacy.>> ^shponglefan:

No, the NIST report claims there is no blast sound within certain parameters (i.e. loud enough to indicate a charge capable of destroying a column). I've watched various videos of the WTC 7 collapse and the sounds in them, whether explosions or not, do not sound like any controlled demo blast.
So again, where's the evidence of a controlled demo? "Loud noises" isn't good enough.
>> ^Fade:
Ugh, this really is going in circles. The NIST report claims that there was no blast sound and that nobody heard it. True. However, that is factually incorrect. There is video evidence of blast sounds before the collapse as well as eyewitness testimony. NIST ignored it. That's why there is the belief that there is a conspiracy. Do try to keep up.

No, the NIST report claims there is no blast sound within certain parameters (i.e. loud enough to indicate a charge capable of destroying a column). I've watched various videos of the WTC 7 collapse and the sounds in them, whether explosions or not, do not sound like any controlled demo blast.

So again, where's the evidence of a controlled demo? "Loud noises" isn't good enough.

>> ^Fade:
Ugh, this really is going in circles. The NIST report claims that there was no blast sound and that nobody heard it. True. However, that is factually incorrect. There is video evidence of blast sounds before the collapse as well as eyewitness testimony. NIST ignored it. That's why there is the belief that there is a conspiracy. Do try to keep up.

Ugh, this really is going in circles. The NIST report claims that there was no blast sound and that nobody heard it. True. However, that is factually incorrect. There is video evidence of blast sounds before the collapse as well as eyewitness testimony. NIST ignored it. That's why there is the belief that there is a conspiracy. Do try to keep up.>> ^shponglefan:

Yes, it is an insane idea. I've already outlined the extremely complex logistics in bringing WTC 7 down as part of a secret plot on 9/11. Am I being incredulous? You betcha! You're suggesting a secret conspiracy with little more than flimsiest of "evidence"; so what do you expect?
For example, you say "Eye-witness testimony mentions explosions" . So what? There probably were some explosions. Many things can explode, especially in the presence of a large seven hour fire: fuel storage containers, electrical transformers, etc. Plus other loud noises like falling debris may be misconstrued for explosions. To jump from "people heard explosions" to "secret plot to wire up WTC 7 for a controlled demo" is leaping several football fields worth of logic.
If you want to go the more complicated route, you need evidence of why that route is a more probable explanation and why it supercedes the more obvious explanation: that a debris damaged building burned for seven hours and then collapsed due to structural failure.
And if we're going to start trading things to look up, now you can look up Occam's razor.
You may also want to re-read the NIST report on WTC 7. They specifically mention that there is no evidence of a "blast event" capable of destroying a singular column in WTC 7. They discuss that such an event would be extremely loud (130 to 140 dB) and be heard from at least a half mile away, and that there were no witness reports of such an event nor such audio heard in any recordings of the WTC 7 collapse.
>> ^Fade:
It's not an insane idea in the slightest. NIST wont release any of the data that they used to come to their conclusions and the computer models they have released don't map to the observable video evidence. Eye-witness testimony mentions explosions. So test for explosions. The complexity of setting up demolitions doesn't rule them out. Argument from incredulity is a fallacy. Look it up

Exactly. And this brings to mind the main problem all conspiracy theories have to overcome - the size of the conspiracy. For the 9/11 attacks to have been a conspiracy, it would require so many people to be involved in the secret that it would be impossible to stop the information leaking out. Sooner or later, someone from within the conspiracy would blab. In the case of 9/11 it could be millions of people - journalists, politicians, scientists, firefighters, demolitions companies, the military, the police, the CIA and FBI, TV news reporters, office workers, cleaning staff, maintenance crews, NIST, eyewitnesses, plane pilots, camera crews, sound and video editors, the President and his staff, ambulance workers, the Pentagon staff, air-traffic control, explosives suppliers, airport ground crews... There'd almost be more people on the "inside" of the conspiracy than the outside.

>> ^Spacedog79:

NIST edited out explosions sounds from "a lot" of the footage? Really?
I mean seriously, really?? No I don't think so, even on the page you posted there is plenty of unedited audio, what possible reason would NIST have for editing some of it? Surely for an effective cover up you'd have to track down edit all of it, otherwise people would hear the explosions and not just the sound of skyscrapers collapsing.
>> ^Fade:
Funnily enough NIST did an incredibly good job of editing out the audio from a lot of the building collapse footage. Always at exactly the point one would expect to have heard explosions. Explosions that lots of witness claim to have seen and heard.
http://911blogger.com/n
ews/2010-08-31/international-center-911-studies-secures-release-thousands-photos-and-videos-nist
So if witnesses claim there were explosions, is it not a good idea to test for evidence of explosions?>> ^Spacedog79:
The controlled demolition theory is perhaps the most easily disproved. Explosions are really really loud, ask anyone who deals with these things, you'd expect to pick up the noise in audio from miles away. There was quite a few audio recordings of each of the collapses and none of them picked up any sort of explosion.
If you can explain to me how they set off enough explosives to bring down an entire skyscraper without making any noise, maybe I'd take the theory seriously.
This funnily enough is the reason NIST gave for not looking for explosives in the debris. Its pretty sound logic, its a shame it got drowned out in shouts of '9/11 was an inside job'.