For the last 6 - 7 years I lived in Elizabethtown, Kentucky.

Elizabethtown is a stand your ground state.

I am an anti-gun guy. My solution to the gun problems in the USA would be outlaw guns completely and make it an imprisonable offence to even have a gun in your house or building.

Now, the sun is going to transform into strawberry ice cream before that's ever going to happen in America. My best friend in the US was a massive gun guy, he had a concealed carry licence, was 100% responsible over gun ownership and knowledgeable about the laws.

I have confidence that my friend was responsible to carry a gun. My problem is that practically every other person who I knew had guns I had absolutely total confidence that they should never be allowed to own a weapon.

You might not know this, but I'm a bit of a dick. After each mass shooting I'd ask him if he felt guilty because he helped cause it. Most of the time it only peed him off slightly, but Newtown was different. He didn't want to talk about Newtown AT ALL and for a few weeks, was pretty much "Whatever Obama wants to do with guns over this I don't care."

That lasted about two weeks. After that it was pretty much forgotten about by my friend and the NRA. It was back to their default position of never giving an inch. And the eventual new laws brought in by Obama were just a waste of paper and time.

IMO shootings like Newtown and Columbine are just the price you pay for being a gun loving country with more guns than people. It's a tragedy that they happen, but it's the price of being a gun culture.

Now, on to stand your ground. An incident happened about 18 months ago at a gas station 1 1/2 miles from my house. It was a gas station just off the freeway. Two idiots had got themselves in a road rage incident over something stupid. The first guy pulled into the gas station to fill up his car. The second guy followed him, drove by and drew a gun. The first guy shot him and killed him.

I don't think the killer was even arrested. He did nothing wrong. The dead guy was a complete ******* moron for drawing his weapon when it wasn't warranted. The other guy had a legitimate stand your ground defence. If he hadn't been killed, the police would have arrested the dead guy and he'd have gone to court over drawing his weapon.

Another incident that happened was that Robert Tarraffa killed Sixfredo Mendez. Tarraffa is a low life trailer trash junkie POS.

I'm not sure of the details, but I think there was a suspicion that Tarraffa had stolen a playstation. Mendez, and five other close friends, broke into Tarraffa's trailer and were going to give him a slap. Tarraffa stabbed Mendez and Mendez died.

Again, no police action because 6 idiots were invading someone's home and that person had a right to defend himself. Even though he was a junkie, thieving POS who probably deserved to die.

Now, a couple of years ago Tarraffa and some other idiot got into a fight over a girl/drugs/who knows? I don't know who had the gun, but Tarraffa ended up shooting the other guy 9 times. One of those shots was probably legitimate. The other 8 were when the other guy was trying to run away. The fact that Tarraffa shot someone who was running away, and he shot him so many times, meant he's serving 20 years in jail now.

If I've punched you in the face and am walking away and you shoot me in the back, you're going to jail because you've shot me as I'm walking away.

If I'm going to attack you, then you have the right to shoot me because of stand your ground.

Now, if you shoot me once and I'm on the ground so you shoot me three more times, you're probably going to jail. You have the right to defend yourself, but shooting someone who is already down is not defensive.

Now, on to Zimmerman. Zimmerman had a clear concern that Martin was a criminal, up to no good. He had called the police to report that possible criminal and the police were on their way.

We don't know how the confrontation started, because we only have Zimmerman's side of the story, but what we do know is that Zimmerman received a broken nose, two black eyes and was bleeding from two wounds to the back of his head. There were no marks on Zimmerman's knuckles.

The only injuries to Martin were the gunshot wound and damage to his knuckles.

Martin was witnessed on top of Zimmerman giving him a beating "MMA" style.

There was recorded 911 calls where "someone" was screaming for help in the background. Now, the common sense evidence was that obviously it was Zimmerman who was screaming for help. But Martin's family lied and claimed they knew it was their son. Experts couldn't tell who it was.

The evidence says that Zimmerman was being beaten by Martin and he shot him while Zimmerman was on top of him. That's why he was acquitted, and that's why the cops were right to not even arrest him.

It wasn't a case of armed man follows and murders unarmed boy. It was a case of concerned citizen follows person he suspects to be a criminal. The suspected criminal then beats the crap out of armed man. Gets shot.

Zimmerman MIGHT have racially profiled Martin. But you don't have the right to beat the crap out of someone because you think they are following you.

It was the right verdict. And the media and America, and the Daily Show, are lying inciters who do not have a coherent argument. If they want to argue against gun ownership, argue against it. If they want to argue against stand your ground, argue against it. But the media are lying about basic facts which are plain and simple.

But the call continued and they were discussing where the suspect was. There was no indication whether Zimmerman had continued to follow or whether he had turned round.

It was a soft suggestion not to follow. It was not an implicit "Stop following" as has been suggested.

One of Martin Gladwell's books discusses a plane crash and the attitude of NY air traffic control. A plane was in traffic to come in to land and was virtually out of fuel. The pilot told ATC that he was low on fuel, but that was useless because virtually every plane coming in to land is low on fuel. The pilot needed to inform the ATC that they needed immediate landing because they were critically short of fuel. ATC would have them cleared him for landing, or it would have been their fault that he crashed. But saying "we're running low on fuel" meant they were ignored because nearly all of them were in the same position.



There was an argument. She left the room to get a gun. She went back into the room and shot into the ceiling.

If she was free to walk away from her husband, find a gun and then return to the room, then she wasn't under legitimate threat of attack.

I don't know the details, but one point is if they were in an apartment, there could have been someone killed because the bullet could have come through the floor.

20 years is ridiculous for that crime. But that was the statute. It wasn't a race issue.

She should have probably lied and said that her husband had threatened to beat the kids. But that's down to her defence, and they are not supposed to instruct her to lie.



Martin had a phone. He was okay telling his friend that a "creepy cracker" was following him, but it didn't occur to him to call 911 and report that he was being followed?

You don't know that Zimmerman did challenge Martin. No one does because there is only Zimmerman's testimony. Zimmerman claims that he was taken by surprise and Martin just started beating on him.

Martin was on top of Zimmerman and beating him.

Zimmerman received a broken nose, two black eyes, cuts to the back of the head and a "back injury".

Zimmerman claims that Martin told him that today was going to be his last day.

Zimmerman claims that Martin was hitting his head into the ground. The evidence supports this.

How much of a beating should Zimmerman have taken before he could legitimately shoot his attacker?

Ah, I hadn't realised that my voice carried that far.

The media keep saying he was explicitly told to stop following.

"Ok, we don't need you to do that" is IMPLICIT.

Explicit = "Stop following. Return to your car immediately"
Implicit = "Ok, we don't need you to do that. Where is he now? ...3 (?) more minutes of talking".

I know that feeling.
I know Coriolanus was supposed to be, erm, close to his mother ... but Charles Dance in that role (also at the RSC) was about as warriorlike as Paul O'Grady.
Some (very famous and successful) screen actors just can't command a live audience.

I have left at the interval rather than endure Derek Jacobi ac-TOR-ing his way through a second half (funnily enough that was Richard II too, at Bradford Alhambra, I think) yet he was spot-on on TV in [iLast Tango in Halifax[/i.

Nothing to Declare - I know drug smugglers are the bottom of the food chain and disposable. I know that they must have "issues" that mean that they are smuggling drugs up their butt or in their stomach. But FFS how can you go to Australia smuggling drugs and not think to get a convincing story for the immigration officer?

The Culture Programme - Anyone watch Yentob talking to Thomas Heatherwick? A very imaginative guy.

But I don't see the point of a(nother) bridge, this time from Temple to the South Bank, even if it is meant as a green, tree-ed space over the river.
Yentob reckons it would join Covent Garden to the South Bank and a green bridge is soooo original..
a) it wouldn't
b) Waterloo Bridge already does
c) Mile End Park goes over a green bridge, so let's drop the "original idea" idea.

I also don't know why they had to go to Noo Yawk to look at the High Line (a raised railway, converted into a linear park, not a new construction, unlike Mile End, which was)

Yentob's having a right lark at the BBC's expense lately, isn't he?

Not bad for someone who was disciplined over faking his involvement in interviews on Imagine.

They have had a plan to do the same in Birmingham for some years now and they have a similar plethora of now disused viaducts entering the city from all directions which nature has been left to reclaim - local residents in Deritend (for instance) have campaigned for a long time to be allowed up onto one disused viaduct in their district to reclaim it and allotment-ize it, to no avail at the moment, in the meantime nature is continuing with its job anyway and some decent sized young trees can now be seen on some of the raised railways

He's had a long career based on appearing to be the thoughtful man with his finger on the cultural pulse but, in truth, just sucking-up to whoever is the current hot-property, getting his own name up-front as the discoverer.
Don't know if you've ever read [i2 1/2 Men in a Boat [/i by Nigel Williams?
Yentob (although not named IIRC) was supposed to be the third man in the boat, following Jerome K Jerome's trip up-river, but they had to set off without him and even when he did eventually turn up he was on the phone all the time or asking his fellow boatees which way they thought was best to lean/jump these days ... an opportunist if ever there was one.
A non-renaissance, shallower version of Melvyn Bragg.

Seems to be doing a lot of programmes about architecture recently. I caught an oldish prog about Rogers last week and this week he was talking about Zaha Hadid. One thing I did notice is that he and architects talk a lot of guff.