idiggory, King of Bards wrote:
How many times have you insisted that Martin jumped Zimmerman from behind and immediately started slamming his head into the ground?
Zero. What I have said repeatedly is that we don't know how the physical fight began, but that it doesn't matter because we do know that just prior to Zimmerman shooting Martin, Martin was seen to be on top of Zimmerman, pinning him to the ground, and punching him in the face. My argument has consistently been that this position gives Zimmerman the right to use his weapon in self defense by default.
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It would be shocking if he managed to grab his gun, get it to chest-level, and shoot Martin in the chest in that scenario.
Not really. The entire point of having your concealed weapon holster on the back side of your hip is so that you can get at it while minimizing the odds that someone else can see it or get to it first. It's just not that hard to pull a pistol from the holster in that position, even when someone is on top of you. It's not "easy", but hardly impossible. Most people can manage to pull their wallet out of a back pocket while sitting in a car just fine. This is considerably easier in terms of actual reach and only made more difficult because of the whole "guy punching you in the face" bit.
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It only makes sense if he was already holding it.
No, it doesn't. There's a whole list of possible ways they could have ended out that way. However, the fact that not a single witness who saw the men fighting saw a gun would tend to poke big holes in the theory that he had it out the entire time. If there was even the slightest evidence of this having been the case, you can bet the prosecution would have found someone to say it. Yet, even they realized this was an impossible thing to even suggest, let alone prove.
There's just no evidence to support that theory.
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Sorry, you can't have it both ways.
Er? What both ways? I have never argued that Zimmerman was so harmed in the first instant of the fight that he had no ability to do anything. So I'm not sure what kind of false dilemma you're building here.