The Second-Worst Possible Outcome
By Mitch Berg
Both times I went through Minnesota carry permit training, I had to absorb a massive amount of information, much of it potentially life-or-death.
One of the big ones, both times? Using a firearm in self-defense, even if it’s utterly justified in every way, is the second-worst possible outcome to a bad situation, at best. The worst, maybe, is that you die – and if you shoot an innocent person while trying to defend yourself, that’s even worse. Armed self-defense is incredibly fraught – legally and morally.
And that’s if you do absolutely everything right.
There was little to cheer about Saturday night at 9PM Central, as the jury announced its “not guilty” verdict.
For Trayvon Martin’s family? Having your child come to grief for no good reason is one of every parent’s worst nightmares. I’ve spent many a sleepless night wracked with worry about my own teenage kids. There but for the grace of God go many of us.
And that’s even if you leave the racial element out of it. Which I will do – because so did the prosecution in the Zimmerman trial. If it never came up at trial, it’s not an issue. It’s a mind-warping tragedy – but not a racial incident.
As to George Zimmerman? Even if you leave out all the threats against his life – most of which can be discounted as easily as testosterone-driven chest-pounding, but by no means all of it – his life is never going to be the same. It’s a rare, sick person that doesn’t feel some intense remorse over ending another human life, even if they did everything right.
As, as the court acknowledged, he did.
So I’ll pray for both Zimmerman’s and Martin’s families, and Zimmerman himself; the horror of this incident likely isn’t done spreading its destruction and misery. I urge you do to do the same via whatever means your worldview acknowledges.
If you believe the court verdict – and in our system, we are supposed to – then Trayvon Martin made a very bad choice, resolving whatever issues he had with being followed by attacking Zimmerman, who in turn chose to defend himself, because it was reasonable to assume that had he not, he’d be the dead one today (unlamented in the media). This fear he proved reasonable to a jury. You can second-guess it, but it’s all wind in sails.
Other people and institutions made choices – none of them of direct life or death import, but with implications that bear more directly on most of the rest of us who weren’t party to that shooting a year ago last spring.
Never Waste A Dead Kid: Barack Obama and his administration distinguished themselves by the depths of their cynicism. They politicized this case before the blood was dry – and they did it entirely to cement black support in the 2012 election. Is there a worse word than “cynicism?”
The Media: The mainstream media did, almost universally, an unforgiveable job in “covering” the case. They served as vehicles for the Administration’s narrative (NBC’s editing of Zimmerman’s 911 call to falsely make it sound racist), the prosecution’s disinformation (reading Zimmerman’s 911 call text as an angry outburst, where it was in real life more a resigned head-shake of disgust), and were universally as incurious about telling an accurate story as they were eager to exploit the tragedy into ratings (and political brownie points).
Ask yourself this; how many media and leftyblog sources did you see refer to Zimmerman carrying his firearm with the “hammer cocked and the safety off?” Zimmerman’s pistol had no safety; either does any revolver, or any of the Glocks your local police probably carry. And there’s no hammer to cock. And yet many media reports included that bit of tough-sounding but meaningless reporting.
Too gun-geeky? OK – how many times have you seen the media refer to this trial as a racial incident? Ask them – where in the case did the prosecution introduce race into the case?
They never did. Either, naturally, did the defense. It was a non-factor.
But that’s not sexy enough for the media.
The Entire American Left, Especially The Media And Political Classes, And That Means You Reading This, Whomever You Are: Also unsufficiently media-sexy, apparently, were the 11,106 other African-Americans killed since Martin’s death – 93% of them shot by other African-Americans. Be honest; if you can name one of their names, it’s because you follow North Minneapolis news (or whatever the blighted neigbhorhood near you might be). Most of them are teenage boys, a few years older or younger than Martin.
None of of those thousands of dead African-Americans was a sufficiently compelling stage prop for the Administration and the Media – pardon, as always, the redundancy – to exploit.
Leftyblogs: Virtually all of them had their minds made up the moment Media Matters told them what to think. The leftyblogs’ usual repetition of groupthink was the worst I’ve ever seen. And I thought I’d seen it all.
July 15th, 2013 at 8:43 am
Mr. Berg makes an excellent point that applies to many, if not all, situations which involve the use of deadly force. That is, they are dynamic; the circumstances evolve quickly and the justification for the use of force may cycle rapidly throughout the encounter. “Shoot/ Don’t Shoot” scenarios like those used for police training are only snapshots that usually cannot be generalized to the whole situation. It appears that this was certainly happening in the Martin shooting.
Unfortunately, those who carry guns, either professionally or for protection, often visualize any use of force situation they may become involved in as a clear-cut, unambigious, good guy vs. bad guy event. In the Martin shooting, those terms, like the justification to shoot, cycled rapidly; each participant in both roles, with varying degrees of certainty.
Post-shooting scenarios are also quite unpredictable and usually quite unlike those that people visualize or see on TV. However, that’s another topic. Indeed – use of force is definitely a close second place winner.
July 15th, 2013 at 9:08 am
If they were subjected to .005% of the scrutiny Zimmerman just endured, the prisons would be stuffed full of coppers.
July 15th, 2013 at 9:12 am
I wish that prosecutors were also prohibited from arguing points that are not required by law, i.e. the argument that Zimmerman was not injured enough to justify self defense, when, in fact, no injury is required.
July 15th, 2013 at 9:37 am
While I agree with everything that Mitch said, I think he was too kind to the administration and media. Oh, I guess that’s repetitiously redundant. No one had to give the public wrong information. They chose to do so. There’s a long list of examples, starting with “the police told Zimmerman not to get out of his car” – a civilian said something that could be interpreted as, “we won’t accept liability, but use your own judgment.” Zimmerman acknowledged and was headed back to his truck when attacked. Martin had a 4 minute lead – he was already to his father’s house and returned to attack Zimmerman. The prosecution’s own witness, Dee Dee, testified that Martin started the fight. The biggest lie was that Martin was unarmed. If I pick up a rock and hit you with it, I’m no longer unarmed. When Martin started hitting Zimmerman’s head against concrete, he was armed. No one in court disputed this, because they understood the legal definition. While I’d like to think people are ignorant because they didn’t watch the testimony, since HLN analysts were saying things that were not the testimony that I was reading/hearing, it is clear that they were deliberately disseminating false information.
Perhaps the biggest group Mitch omitted was the prosecutors. There is credible evidence that their wanton misconduct is sufficient for an investigation that could result in disbarment. In a Mike Nifong way, their zeal for a conviction rather than their sworn duty for justice exacerbated a sad situation.
July 15th, 2013 at 10:00 am
+100 for Loren. Quite frankly, muddying the waters with this really ought to be grounds for some disipline of a lawyer, up to and including disbarment/imprisonment.
Same thing with the prosecutor’s inane claim that Zimmerman was a serial liar in his closing arguments, when all the evidence supported Zimmerman’s testimony. OK, Adversarial system, I get it, but we ought to be able to expect at least a tenuous connection with reality.
And given that it took 16 hours of deliberation, and not just 16 minutes, I think the prosecutor did in fact get some “low information voters” on the jury.
July 15th, 2013 at 10:07 am
Just because the FBI has killed 70 and wounded 80 since ’93 and all were deemed ‘justified’ is no reason to be so cynical Swiftee.
July 15th, 2013 at 10:12 am
Perhaps the biggest group Mitch omitted was the prosecutors
So far.
More to come.
July 15th, 2013 at 11:51 am
And you mention the race hustlers. Barry Obama is considered very Black. Its like he is decended from slavery and Jim Crow. But as we all know, his skin has a dark due to his biological father being Kenyan (with some Arab blood). But he was primarily raised by his lilly-white bank president grandmother on the beaches of Hawaii.
Zimmerman is a Latino. But that fact is never metioned in MSM.
July 15th, 2013 at 11:59 am
Let’s not forget the use of photos to skew the narrative. Many papers chose to use a current picture of Zimmerman alongside a much older picture of the fresh-faced kid Trayvon Martin. And some of them still do.
July 15th, 2013 at 3:55 pm
I am waiting for the IT Director that the State Attorney fired to file a wrongful termination suit claiming status as a whistle blower. Isn’t it illegal for the prosecution to withhold evidence from the defense? These people shouldnt just be disbarred – they should do prison time.
July 15th, 2013 at 4:15 pm
I wish that prosecutors were also prohibited from arguing points that are not required by law, i.e. the argument that Zimmerman was not injured enough to justify self defense, when, in fact, no injury is required.
Apparently the prosecutors where confused about Stand Your Ground and thought that Zimmerman still had a duty to retreat even when someone was sitting on him and bashing his head. Perhaps they’ll call it the “Stand Your 6 Feet Under Ground” doctrine.