George Zimmerman arrested after threatened wife with a gun

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   IslandBitesposted 10 years ago

   George Zimmerman was arrested after a domestic altercation. Allegedly, he threatened his wife and father-in-law with a gun. His wife filed divorce papers a few days ago.
   
   Is this going to prove (not legally of course) that he was indeed guilty of Trayvon's murder?
   
   Is this other example to why gun control is needed?

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      John Holdenposted 10 years agoin reply to this

      What kind of man threatens his wife with a gun, even if they are estranged?

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      MG Singhposted 10 years agoin reply to this

      This is an isolated case and nothing to do with controlling guns. Even if Zimmerman did not have a gun he would have used a knife. The question is about the mental make up of Zimmerman. He is not normal and a clear pointer that he had decided to kill ravis, but nothing can be done as  there is no appeal against the verdict.

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      Brenda Durhamposted 10 years agoin reply to this

      We don't know enough to make a judgement on Zimmerman,  or really to even question it right now.
      There could've been many things that happened that would've caused this.   Public animosity toward Zimmerman (including death threats!)  could've caused huge controversy at home.    We just don't know......do we?

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   wildernessposted 10 years ago

   "Is this going to prove (not legally of course) that he was indeed guilty of Trayvon's murder?"
   
   Hardly.  Alleging someone did something is hardly proof they did something else they've been declared innocent of by a court of law.
   
   Neither is alleging Zimmerman threatened someone with a gun a reason for additional gun controls although there is little doubt that the gun control crowd will be all over it.  Reason is not something that crowd seems to appreciate, just emotional manipulation.
   
   Even if it were fact rather than a mere unsupported claim it won't change the very real fact that removing guns does not change the murder rate; hasn't anywhere in the world.

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      John Holdenposted 10 years agoin reply to this

      Your ideas on why the murder rate in the UK is only a fraction of that in the US.

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         wildernessposted 10 years agoin reply to this

         Thoughts only, John.  Suggestions, suppositions with no data to back them.  Questions.
         
         The laws on Marijuana, imprisoning people for using a drug a great many want.  Possibly other drugs as well - cocaine and it's derivatives or those associated with methamphetamines.  Unlikely IMO, but possible.
         
         A preoccupation with violence in our culture.  Movies, sports, shows - all are very often centered on violence.  Not merely a part of the movie or sport, but very integral and central to it.
         
         An acceptance of violence.  We pay lip service, but turn right around and worship those using violence as a way of life.
         
         Refusal to punish younger people (12-18) for violent acts.  Most get nothing more than a slap on the hand.
         
         Poverty
         
         Excessive free time for younger people.  Teens, mostly.
         
         An "entitlement" philosophy, where everyone is entitled to whatever they decide they want. 
         
         There are undoubtedly may reasons, primarily psychological, but none of them is a proliferation of guns in the country.  There is no correlation between homicide rates and gun ownership and thus no causal relationship.  And looking over these, they may apply to the US; I have no idea why the UK is lower.  I'm not familiar enough with the culture to make any call at all there.

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            John Holdenposted 10 years agoin reply to this

            The culture is very little different from yours except we do not have gun worship.

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               wildernessposted 10 years agoin reply to this

               Really?  Does your youth typically and commonly run in gangs, looking for people to kill?  Do you have a plethora of violent sports (boxing, ice hockey, football, MMA, etc.) with millions upon millions of fans?  Do you have a Dojo, teaching martial arts, on every other streetcorner?  When you go into the poorer sections of town, does everyone in sight carry a weapon of some kind?  Do you find kids dragging other kids to death behind a car because they're gay?  Do your people murder doctors over a religious disagreement? 
               
               Perhaps most important, what are the marijuana laws and how many people use it?  Judging by the historical homicide rates during prohibition (banning of ethanol) that could be a huge reason.
               
               I fear for my country and for it's people.  I fear for my children and particularly grandchildren; Sandy Hook left me with nightmarish feelings for weeks.  And a big part of the fear comes from the irrational insistence that taking away guns will solve the problem.  People have become so fearful of an inanimate chunk of iron that they have lost all sense. 
               
               There...is...no...correlation!!!  But people don't want to hear that; they want an easy fix and one that doesn't require they change themselves.  Only those crazies that like guns need to change.  Others point to the UK or other country, plaintively asking what other difference there is, as if that somehow proves a correlation when there is none.
               
               So we talk about more gun control; controls that been a utter failure everywhere they are stringently applied in this country.  We do nothing to actually stop the carnage, and that's what scares me so badly.  We won't even try, just make some worthless but PC laws until the next horrific slaughterhouse, whereupon we'll start all over again, with another round of worthless gun controls.
               
               Wish you'd tell me what's wrong with Americans, to be so murderous to their fellow citizens.  We have the most racially/ethnically mixed country in the world; is it simple intolerance of anyone else?

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                  psycheskinnerposted 10 years agoin reply to this

                  Honestly, having lived in both countries in depressed city areas--yes.  They are similar in all these ways.  in fact, the US has nothing on the UK in terms of hooliganisn.  As witness the recent riots.

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                     wildernessposted 10 years agoin reply to this

                     Hooliganism.  I've always thought of "hooliganism" as a rather mild vandalism, not leaving home specifically to search out a stranger to murder.  But that's what we see here - to become a gang member, you have to "get your bones". 
                     
                     But Psyche, I don't think the real problem is coming only from the ghetto. Yes, poverty breeds violence, but I think it goes far beyond that.  Into middle class houses and into the upper class neighborhoods as well.  Whatever it is, it's permeating nearly all facets of the US. 
                     
                     So, I'm seeing (I think) more and more irritation from Europeans as immigration increases and particularly Muslim immigration.  Europe is still far behind the US in the mix of races and ethnicities, but as it increases so does the violence.  Is that it?
                     
                     I thought smoking Marijuana was legal in most of Europe - am I wrong?  Or is that part of it?
                     
                     Europeans in general seem to be more laid back about governmental controls than the US.  Are our citizens having trouble with population density, even though far less than Europe?  Are they still so new as a country that they demand govt. stay out of their lives even as European attitudes move in and govt. grows ever more controlling?
                     
                     The US is a different ball game than Europe or even Australia.  So what differences are there that cause American homicidal tendencies to go unchecked?  It cannot be that gun in the closet except in a very small number of cases, so what IS it?

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                  John Holdenposted 10 years agoin reply to this

                  Yes, kids run in gangs but no, they don't look for people to kill. Yes, we have a plethora of violent sports including boxing, ice hockey, football, but I'm not sure what MMA is.
                  
                  
                  
                  Marijuana laws have been relaxed a little (and then tightened up again) but even at there hardest have never resulted in killing. Dealers in harder drugs occasionally get a bit het up and kill each other, but generally not their users.
                  
                  
                  
                  I sense a dichotomy here, Sandy Hook left you with nightmares but people have become so fearful of an inanimate chunk of iron . . .!
                  Taking away guns won't solve anything but controlling them and changing the pro gun mindset will.
                  
                  
                  
                  What makes you so sure there is no correlation?
                  
                  
                  
                  Do you remember how once everybody would smoke? Even food shops had ashtrays for the customers use. But not any more, even those who would once have happily smoked whilst food shopping will now throw up their hands in horror at the suggestion.
                  
                  
                  
                  Probably no more ethnically diverse than a lot of other countries, my own home town plays host to (at the last count) around 62 different languages.
                  Change your mindset.

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                     wildernessposted 10 years agoin reply to this

                     I know there is no correlation because I looked at gun ownership vs homicide rate for some 190 different countries in the world.  Graphed it, looked at the deviation of that graph.  Removed the wild countries, those with a war going on or some other reason for enormous homicide rates.  Still no correlation.  Looked at results in specific countries that made huge gun ownership laws all at once; no correlation.  Wrote it up into a hub, a hub that interestingly I see has the same conclusion as every other person studying homicide rate (NOT the gun homicide rates that gun haters want to look at) vs gun ownership.
                     
                     There is no correlation.
                     
                     I don't understand the causal relationship (if any) between prohibition and homicides.  Certainly there were some homicides directly related to the stills in the backwoods of Tennessee, but they were relatively few.  Nothing like the huge increase in general homicide rate the country saw during those years.  Don't know the cause, but do recognize an almost perfect correlation between the years of prohibition and a huge, temporary spike in the homicide rate.
                     
                     A correlation that is also seen, less firm, in the war on marijuana.  As laws (and enforcement of those laws) against usage rose, so did the homicide rate.  As enforcement backed off and some states allowed a small amount, so did the homicide rate.  Is one causal of the other?  I'd absolutely LOVE to know the answer to that.
                     
                     "Taking away guns won't solve anything but controlling them and changing the pro gun mindset will."  Sorry - don't see the logic of the statement at all.  With no correlation between guns and homicide rates, it becomes obvious that taking away guns means murderers will use other tools (and that is shown in that hub, too).  What evidence do you have that "changing the pro gun mindset" will decrease the homicide rate any more than taking away guns will and what changes do you propose would help?

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                        John Holdenposted 10 years agoin reply to this

                        How can you say that there is no correlation when the UK (for example) has a much lower rate of gun ownership and a much lower homicide rate?

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                           wildernessposted 10 years agoin reply to this

                           Because I can give you examples of a dozen countries with either a lower ownership rate and higher homicide rate OR a higher ownership rate and lower homicide rate than the UK.   
                           
                           It doesn't matter what country you choose, there are least some others that give the lie to the statement that their homicide rate is because of their ownership rate. 
                           
                           Because the graph showed no correlation; as gun ownership increased homicide rate did not.  It was up, it was down, it was up again and down again; the graph showed no way to predict one from the other.
                           
                           Here: England and Wales has a gun ownership of 6.2 and a homicide rate of 1.5
                           Australia is 15 and 1.2
                           India is 4.2 and 3.4
                           France is 31.2(!) and 1.3
                           Romania is 0.7 and 1.9
                           I could go on...and they all "prove" that more guns means fewer murders.  Only when they entire group is examined does it clearly show there is no correlation.  Otherwise, when a few countries are cherry picked you can show anything you want to.
                           
                           The US is a statistical anomaly; the gun ownership rate is far, far higher than any other country considered while the homicide rate is #7 on the list.  Were it not the country I needed to understand the most it would not have been included in the study simply because it is such an anomaly.  The question is why?  Not why the US has a gun ownership of 14 times that of the UK but a homicide rate of only 3 times that of the UK, but why it is 3 times at all with such similar countries?  It isn't that huge, huge gun ownership rate, so what IS the cause(s).

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                     wildernessposted 10 years agoin reply to this

                     MMA - Mixed Martial Arts.  Two guys, almost no rules, try to incapacitate the other or force them, through use of pain, to give up.  Probably the bloodiest sport I've seen yet and increasingly popular in the US.  I'd say far beyond boxing, hockey or even baseball.

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                        Zelkiiroposted 10 years agoin reply to this

                        Oh, please. It's just boxing combined with wrestling, with (somehow) even less sportsmanship credibility and more shameless product placement than the both of them.

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               Education Answerposted 10 years agoin reply to this

               Are you kidding?  Are drugs as prevalent in your country?  Do you have the number of illegal aliens we have?  America is known for our culture of violence, sex, and entitlement.  Are you really saying that the two cultures are that close?

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                  Zelkiiroposted 10 years agoin reply to this

                  The Netherlands has way, way more drugs than we do (per capita), while Japan has way, way more sex and violence in their media (total, not per capita). And I highly doubt a handful of illegal immigrants (as in, the extreme minority who don't pursue employment) account for the ludicrous amount of violent crime.
                  
                  And the worst part is, we're still on a downhill slide on our violent crime rate. From 1973 to 1994 (a.k.a. before the rise in popularity of violent video games), it was more than double what it is now.
                  

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                     Education Answerposted 10 years agoin reply to this

                     Drugs don't commit crimes.  People trying to acquire illegal drugs commit crimes.  Are there as many illegal drugs in the Netherlands?  We both know the answer.
                     
                     How do you quantifiably prove that there is more sex and violence in Japan's media?  I doubt you are correct, but when you can provide clear, statistical evidence, I will be happy to change my opinion on the matter.
                     
                     A handful of illegal aliens?  You must not live in Arizona, California, New Mexico, or Texas!  Americans are killed, every day, by illegal aliens.  It's a fact.  Tell the victims' families that it's okay, because there are only a handful of illegal aliens, perhaps as few as ten to twenty million.  Do you consider kidnapping a violent crime?  Phoenix is the second most likely place, in the world, to get kidnapped!  Guess where most of these kidnapped Americans are taken. . . Mexico.  Guess who's kidnapping Americans.  In Arizona, most of us know that it's that "handful of illegal aliens."  You see, an "extreme minority" of a massive number still results in significant violence.  What's 1% of our debt?  Is it a significant amount?

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                  John Holdenposted 10 years agoin reply to this

                  Drugs are prevalent and cheap in the UK.
                  By their very nature we don't know how many illegal aliens we have.
                  We have plenty of violence and sex too, look at football for examples of violence.

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                     Education Answerposted 10 years agoin reply to this

                     In a comparison between America and Britain, which country is better known for illegal drug issues?  Which country is better known for its violence?  Which country is better known for its obsession with sex?  Which country is known to have at least ten million illegal aliens and has porous borders?
                     
                     AMERICA
                     
                     This reality doesn't negate the fact that virtually every country in the world has some or all of these issues too.  It merely attempts to verify how intense the issues are, and you and I both know they are very intense in America.
                     
                     By the way, your football is entirely different too, and if you are truly going to say that one of the areas where you have violence is on the football field, then you have truly missed the point.

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            Zelkiiroposted 10 years agoin reply to this

            Japan has more violent media than we do. Civilians are absolutely forbidden from owning guns, and violent crime is almost nonexistent. Meanwhile Finland, Denmark, The Netherlands, et al, have decriminalized most drugs as well as enforced strict gun control laws, and their violent crime rate is even lower than Japan's.

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               wildernessposted 10 years agoin reply to this

               Japan has a gun ownership rate of 0.6 and a homicide rate of 0.5.
               
               The numbers for Austria are 30.4 and .05
               The numbers for Germany are 30.3 and .09
               
               I'd have to say that your insinuation that Japan proves low gun ownership results in a lower homicide rate is a dismal failure.  In round numbers, both Austria and Germany have 50 times the guns and 1/10 the homicides.  Looks very much as if Japan needs to let more guns in.  Yes?
               
               On the other hand, I cannot speak for a correlation between media violence or drug legalization.  It is possible that either is a causal factor in the homicide rate.  I do notice that Denmark has 20 times the gun ownership rate of Japan but only 1/7th the homicide rate.  Again indicating that Japan needs more guns in the hands of civilians.

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   John Holdenposted 10 years ago

   Wilderness, hooliganism is not mild vandalism, mild vandalism is spraying graffiti on buildings and upsetting dustbins. Hooliganism ( and rioting) is the destruction of property, burning down shops and houses, vehicles trashed and general mayhem - but generally not killing.
   And it isn't just kids from the ghetto either.

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      wildernessposted 10 years agoin reply to this

      Gotcha.  Guess that's what happens when language mutates and travels; the word...sounds...childish and innocent, so the meaning must be, too.  Live and learn.
      
      I haven't looked, but wonder what the comparison of "violent crime" rates would be between the two countries.  Such things as burning down shops, trashing vehicles, beatings (but excluding homicide), etc.  I doubt there are any real stats on it, simply because of varying definitions, but it would be interesting.
      
      Does the UK have just as much violence as the US, even if it doesn't quite make it to the homicide level?

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         John Holdenposted 10 years agoin reply to this

         Anecdotal only but below homicide level I would say not much difference at all, possibly even a little higher in the UK.

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            wildernessposted 10 years agoin reply to this

            See now, that could be important information and change the entire picture if it could be documented over many countries.  If the US is no worse than anywhere else in violence less than homicide, why do Americans cross the line so much more often?
            
            Or, if it's not generally true, we're back to the same question of why Americans are so much more violent than other nationalities.  Two very different questions.

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   maxoxam41posted 10 years ago

   Everything condemned him but a jury of his peers did not. It is the sad reality of justice.

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      wildernessposted 10 years agoin reply to this

      I guess the jury of peers was a little more honest than the crowd that claims "everything" condemned him.  Perhaps holding another's life in your hands makes people more honest, or at least more willing to be objective.

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         John Holdenposted 10 years agoin reply to this

         Or more dishonest!
         When we still had the death penalty in the UK there were several cases where the accused was blatantly guilty but the jury returned a not guilty verdict because the jury felt that the accused did not deserve the death penalty.

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            Silverspeederposted 10 years agoin reply to this

            I still of the opinion that banning guns does not take them out of the hands of the criminals.
            In the UK the fact that guns are not readily available and haven't been for some time does make a difference but it doesn't actually stop gun crime.
            The US has a major problem, that is how do you control guns when there are 300 million in circulation, if the US banned the sale of weapons tomorrow there would still be 300 million for people to use.
            Maybe as Chris Rock jokingly said maybe they should tax the ammunition so its $5000 a bullet.

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               John Holdenposted 10 years agoin reply to this

               Who's talking about banning?

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                  wildernessposted 10 years agoin reply to this

                  That's at least half the suggestions.
                  
                  Ban anything with a semi-automatic action
                  Ban anything with a folding stock
                  Ban anything that will hold more than X rounds, usually around 5 or 6
                  Ban anything painted black to look scary
                  Ban anything constructed of metal framework rather than wood
                  
                  All from otherwise apparently reasonable people.

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                  Education Answerposted 10 years agoin reply to this

                  There are plenty of people who are trying to ban guns.  Nancy Pelosi wants to ban guns.  Do I really need to provide the quotes AGAIN?

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               Education Answerposted 10 years agoin reply to this

               I know somebody who was at a large gun show.  He watched as a man with multiple security guards walked up to the Winchester dealer and put a briefcase on the table.  The man opened the briefcase and slid it towards the Winchester representatives.  I can't recall how much money was in the briefcase, but it was in the millions.  The man asked to purchase as much ammunition as he could.  The Winchester representative pushed the briefcase back and stated that he would be unable to sell any significant quantity of ammunition until 2015, as the American government was purchasing all Winchester could produce.  Have you recently tried to purchase ammunition?  Who needs to increase ammunition prices when the government is purchasing mass quantities?

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   Stacie Lposted 10 years ago

   His wife seems to be gunning for him(excuse the pun) Isn't George a victim of his own celebrity?
   According to news report, the police didn't arrest him because the allegations from his wife and father-in-law  are unsubstantiated.
   They are in the middle of a divorce proceedings and his wife has been accused of perjury in his curt case.
   This story doesn't add up.

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