Massad Ayoob's Blog, page 127
July 13, 2013
THE ZIMMERMAN VERDICT, PART 1
Minutes ago as I write this, justice has triumphed in a courtroom in Sanford, Florida. I wish to congratulate six brave, honest, intelligent jurors. And two fine defense lawyers. And the honest cops and witnesses who testified, and the many who contributed to the defense fund for a wrongfully accused armed citizen.
Several blog followers have asked me why I haven’t written here (or spoken anywhere) on this, the most important armed citizen case of our time. The answer is this:
I did write on it once, on Friday, March 23, 2012. The following day, I received a phone call from Craig Sonner, George Zimmerman’s original legal counsel, to retain me on the case as an expert witness for the defense.
The weeks wore on. Attorney and client parted ways. I was subsequently contacted by Mark O’Mara, the new defense lawyer. Late in May of 2012, I met with him in his office, along with his co-counsel Don West. I also attended the bail hearing in which Zimmerman’s bond was revoked. During the hearing, TV cameras swept the courtroom. Some folks saw that, recognized me, and apparently assumed I was involved with the case.
In fact, I don’t take expert witness cases until I’ve seen all the evidence, and the prosecution was extremely slow in providing that. I wound up not being involved. However, having been retained by one of the defendant’s lawyers and consulted with another, I felt bound by confidentiality and did not think it would be professional to comment directly on the matter from then on.
I’ve been biting my tongue ever since, because there was much that I wanted to say.
The verdict is now in, and I’m gonna smooth those teethmarks off my tongue, and in the next few entries here will discuss some elements of the Zimmerman case which have been widely and profoundly misunderstood.
In the meantime, to get the commentary and analysis of the case that most of the mainstream media denied you, go to the excellent day by day writing of Andrew Branca, an attorney who specializes in this sort of case, at www.legalinsurrection.com.
Your commentary is more than welcome here.
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BACKWOODS HOME APPLESEED RETURNS!
While on verdict watch, let me take a moment to announce that Backwoods Home magazine is once again sponsoring an Appleseed!
Get all the details here: http://www.appleseedinfo.org/bwh-shoot.html. Be sure to check out the links.
I was at last year’s inaugural event sponsored by the magazine, and enjoyed heck out of it. I particularly enjoyed meeting so many of our readers.
Get there early and browse through the in-house bookstore at the magazine’s headquarters in Gold Beach, a town so picturesque it’s a destination community in and of itself.
Hope you can make it!
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July 10, 2013
ILLINOIS DOES IT!
Yee-haw! The Illinois state legislature yesterday overrode anti-gun Governor Pat Quinn’s ludicrous amendatory veto, and concealed carry is now law there.
It ain’t perfect, but it’s a whole lot better than it used to be.
Congratulations to all the civil rights advocates in Illinois – and elsewhere – who worked so hard to make it happen.
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July 7, 2013
COPS AND YOUR GUNS
I am so, so, SO sick of hearing the prohibitionists say that cops don’t want you good people to have guns.
If you haven’t seen it already, check out what I had to say on that in the current issue of Backwoods Home http://www.backwoodshome.com/articles2/ayoob142.html.
Enough said for now…
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July 3, 2013
HAVE A GREAT HOLIDAY
Some will be watching fireworks on July 4, and some will be releasing them. Mine will come from gun barrels. What better way to celebrate Independence Day and commemorate the armed citizens who gave us that independence?
Personally, I’m looking for some range time on the Fourth, and hoping to shoot a match over the weekend. The sounds will fit right in with the more traditional celebration.
Which reminds me: a few years ago I was on the board of directors of a gun club that had been established around 1950. Some folks who had knowingly built homes near an established shooting range wanted to shut down the club because of the noise. (We won.)
Amidst all that, the local anti-gun newspaper wrote about the controversy, sending their reporters around to talk with the neighbors. One of those neighbors told the reporter it didn’t bother him at all.
“It’s the sound of freedom,” he said.
I made a motion that we offer that neighbor a free membership. I don’t believe he ever took the club up on it, though.
Maybe he wasn’t even a shooter.
But he sure had his head in the right place.
Mas demonstrates that the sweet new Ruger SR45, introduced this year, is one kind of “fireworks” that works in the rain. Yes, there’s a solid backstop.
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July 1, 2013
THOUGHTS AND PRAYERS PLEASE
In the Prescott, Arizona area, a massive wildfire has claimed the lives of 19 firefighters. Their average age is 22. http://www.myfoxphoenix.com/story/22726613/2013/06/30/yarnell-hill-wildfire-grows-to-almost-1000-acres
This is said to be the highest death toll of firefighters since the Twin Towers.
Instinct tells us to run from fire. The brave men and women of the fire service run toward it instead.
Thoughts and prayers, please.
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June 26, 2013
THE MS. AND THE GUN, REDUX
A little while ago in this blog, I wrote about an anti-gun lady who did a strange and incredibly stupid thing for the MS magazine blog. You can find it here: http://backwoodshome.com/blogs/MassadAyoob/2013/06/17/false-flags-false-premises/#comments
Someone walking around carrying a gun she admitted she didn’t know how to use was so scary a concept that I still consider it both a false premise and a false flag. The lady in question did so because she is an avowed anti-gunner, and wanted to show the world how dangerous guns are.
Well, in hands like hers, they are.
Go to the links to her MS magazine blog, found in the link above, and also to the comments on both that site, and the above-linked entry in this Backwoods Home blog. You’ll see that in each, many people warned her of the danger she was presenting to herself and others.
Apparently, MS Magazine agreed: they have stopped her insane experiment, at least under their aegis, but it appears that the madness will continue in the Huffington Post.
Kudos to MS magazine for dumping it. I’d be very much interested in hearing the real story from those folks why they wisely aborted this obviously dangerous and doomed mission. I would particularly like to hear from Gloria Steinem on that.
There aren’t a whole lot of anti-gun people I can say I admire, but Gloria Steinem is one. Hers is the name most associated with MS magazine, and I well remember when she burst on the American scene. Her writing was one of the reasons I became an early and unlikely feminist. (Yes, I was in my early twenties then, and yes, she was “hawt” as they say today. She’s 79 now, but hell, I’m going on 65, so she’s still in my dating range.) But that’s not important: the important thing to me is that Gloria Steinem embodied an ethos that has served me well for my entire life: the realization that strong, capable, confident women are the most interesting and valuable women. (Funny thing: that works across both genders, doesn’t it?)
And, I strongly suspect, Gloria Steinem and her true heirs understand how embarrassing it is to everything they stand for when “a clueless woman with a gun” becomes a grotesque stereotype of hysterical incompetence. That is nothing less than anathema to everything they have spent their lives fighting for.
Ms. Steinem was a pioneer in what was called then the Women’s Liberation Movement. She was and is an avatar of female empowerment. At about the time she co-founded MS magazine in 1972, women were already past baby steps and taking long strides to penetrate previously male-oriented job markets. In the construction industry, they didn’t do it as manual laborers and hod carriers, they did it at the hydraulically-operated controls of Caterpillar tractors; in law-enforcement, they didn’t do it with fists but instead with guns and expertly-wielded batons. As one of the first police PR-24 baton instructors, I was able to point other cops to female officers like Missy O’Linn, who later became a great police defense lawyer, and petite Florida cop Pamela Miller because they could make that baton absolutely sing: pound for pound, a woman with more limber upper limbs and 30 degrees more flexibility in the pelvic axis could get more power into a properly-executed PR-24 strike than her brother the same height and weight.
FORCE MULTIPLIER was the operative term.
And it still is. Check out this video of a young mom being savagely beaten by a home invader – in front of her three year old child – recently caught on a “nanny-cam.” http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/watch_home_invader_savagely_pummels_hxiWhv2uYrbF0uIPD680BL .
Excuse me all to hell, but I would like to believe that any woman I loved would have been better off with a gun in that situation, explaining to her child how the big man’s white tee-shirt suddenly turned all red and he fell down and stopped trying to hurt decent people, and honey, it’s going to be all right now. It’s easier to explain than the horror the mom in the video will have to explain to her little one.
And, you know, I would like to believe that Gloria Steinem and the other pioneers of women’s empowerment can recognize that
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June 25, 2013
MORE ON ILLINOIS CONCEALED CARRY
We’ve discussed in this space the recent passage of shall-issue concealed carry in the last holdout state, Illinois. Alas, the victory is not yet locked in stone.
There is some good news, as seen here: http://personalliberty.com/2013/06/24... Thanks to the multiple blog readers who sent it along. J
But the “antis” don’t give up easily, and some are trying to pass various bans at the municipal level.
The last time Significant Other and I went over the Mississippi River going from Illinois into Missouri, she dug out her Glock and strapped it on as soon as we reached the free side. We couldn’t help but notice that when Huckleberry Finn and Jim crossed the same river to get to freedom, they were going the other way.
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June 19, 2013
THE TWISTED VALUES OF MAYORS AGAINST ILLEGAL GUNS
We’ve known for years that many of the “antis” inflated their “gun violence statistics” by including criminals killed by intended victims in self-defense. Now we see it starkly on the national stage as the Michael Bloomberg-funded Mayors Against Illegal Guns goes on a road trip.’
In Concord, New Hampshire, one of their minions was reading a list of “gun violence” victims and announced the name of the Boston Marathon terrorist bomber who died in a gunfight with police. Calling a terrorist a victim does not go down well in a patriotic state whose motto is “Live Free or Die.” Unpleasantness ensued: http://pjmedia.com/tatler/2013/06/19/bloombergs-real-agenda-self-defense-is-gun-violence/
The MAIG people are ferociously attacking Republican Kelly Ayotte, US Senator from New Hampshire. She voted – with good reason, I think – against the Manchin-Toomey universal background check bill that went down to defeat in Washington last April. Ironic… a former state attorney general, Ayotte is more credible on criminal justice and public safety issues than virtually anyone else in the United States Senate. But, those on the bus don’t seem to be looking very hard at logic or experience. http://www.unionleader.com/article/20130619/NEWS07/130619169
That’s a pretty large vehicle the MAIG crew is running around in, but judging by the intellectual horsepower on board, it’s still lookin’ like a “short bus” to me.
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June 17, 2013
FALSE FLAGS, FALSE PREMISES
More anti-gun strangeness. The anti-gun media salivates over the thought that a gun enthusiast might be trying to kill President Obama, Mayor Bloomberg, et. al. with ricin…until it is discovered that the suspect’s estranged (and just plain strange) wife is the culprit. And whaddaya know, there are indications that she’s vehemently anti-gun. See here: http://weaponsman.com/?p=9018&utm_source=feedly
Meanwhile, an avowed anti-gunner decides that she will arm herself, using all deliberate ignorance and irresponsibility, in hopes of showing that knowledgeable and responsible gun-wearers must be as ignorant and irresponsible as she. Follow the continuing saga of stupidity here: http://msmagazine.com/blog/2013/06/12/my-month-with-a-gun-week-one/
I haven’t checked the new DSM-5 to see if they’ve categorized neurofeces (shit for brains). However, we seem to already have a couple of poster children for a prevention campaign.
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