Trayvon Martin

[EvilMonkey]

???

 

Unless Florida is completely different than most jurisdictions I do not believe there is a "loser pays" law. So unless you think there is some sort of counterclaim its likely Zimmerman would merely be the defendant and the best case would be summary judgment based on the law that has been previously cited in this thread that suggests Zimmerman may not have civil liability if he was found to be using self defense.

Yes, in Florida the loser pays. And all the bad stuff about Trayvon gets to come out as well, which will just make things messier as well, whether it matters or not.

[Soxbadger]

Okay I had to look this up because there has to be more to it, and there is.

 

http://www.adelmanlawyers.com/law-articles...t-in-litigation

 

http://phonl.com/fl_law/rules/frcp/frcp1442.htm

 

Basically Zimmerman would have to make an offer to settle before the "loser pay" kicks in.

 

(edit)

 

And I had no clue about this so learn something new.

Edited July 30, 2013 by Soxbadger

[Jenksismyhero]

Okay I had to look this up because there has to be more to it, and there is.

 

http://www.adelmanlawyers.com/law-articles...t-in-litigation

 

http://phonl.com/fl_law/rules/frcp/frcp1442.htm

 

Basically Zimmerman would have to make an offer to settle before the "loser pay" kicks in.

 

(edit)

 

And I had no clue about this so learn something new.

 

Federal court has the same offer of judgment stuff. It's a way to "force" parties to settle by adding another layer of risk to losing.

Edited July 30, 2013 by Jenksismybitch

[Soxbadger]

Federal court has the same offer of judgment stuff. It's a way to "force" parties to settle by adding another layer of risk to losing.

 

Yeah I dont really consider that loser pays. IMO "loser pays" generally refers to a court where the loser of the litigation (regardless of offer etc) pays the other court costs/attorney fees.

 

This is more comparable to a situation to where the judge basically tells you to settle or else hell do something bad to whatever party fails to.

[DukeNukeEm]

Zimmerman got pulled over for speeding in Texas, he had a gun in his glove compartment, and was let off with a warning.

 

Obamaloons must be inconsolable. Brilliant.

[Jake]

Who knows, Zimmerman may one day be the governor of Texas. He would probably not be the dumbest nor the most racist of Texas governors.

Edited July 31, 2013 by Jake

[pettie4sox]

Duke and his bulls*** again. No one cares about Zimmerman and his gun yo.

[Jenksismyhero]

New study (by Harvard, are they reputable?) finds that fewer guns and more regulations =/= less gun deaths and that more guns and less regulation =/= more gun deaths, at least when discussing and comparing other nations.

 

http://www.law.harvard.edu/students/orgs/j...auseronline.pdf

 

Interesting nugget:

 

More than 100 million handguns are owned in the United

States84 primarily for self‐defense,85 and 3.5 million people have

permits to carry concealed handguns for protection.86 Recent

analysis reveals “a great deal of self‐defensive use of firearms” in

the United States, “in fact, more defensive gun uses [by victims]

thancrimes committedwith firearms.”87 Itis little wonderthatthe

National Institute of Justice surveys among prison inmates

find that large percentages report that theirfearthat a victim

might be armed deterred them from confrontation crimes.

“[T]he felons most frightened ‘about confronting an armed

victim’ were those from states with the greatest relative

number of privately owned firearms.” Conversely, robbery

is highest in states that mostrestrict gun ownership.88

Concomitantly, a series of studies by John Lott and his coauthor

David Mustard conclude that the issuance of millions of permits

to carry concealed handguns is associated with drastic declines in

American homicide rates.89

Edited August 28, 2013 by Jenksismybitch

[StrangeSox]

1) That article is several years old, not new.

 

2) It's published in a self-described "Tri-annual student law review for conservative and libertarian legal scholarship." It's not a peer-reviewed research paper, it's an article by two anti-gun control lawyers.

 

3) They got Luxembourg's murder rate wrong by a factor of 10. This is notable because they repeatedly hold up Luxembourg in the text as an example of why gun control is so wrong.

 

4) Their other main comparison is Russia. As we all know, Russia is a pretty f***ed place for many, many reasons. A simple correlation of gun control and murder rates isn't particularly useful.

 

5) There are numerous, actually-peer-reviewed papers that have come to the exact opposite conclusion. e.g. http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hicrc/firearms...guns-and-death/

Edited August 28, 2013 by StrangeSox

[Jenksismyhero]

1) That article is several years old, not new.

 

2) It's published in a self-described "Tri-annual student law review for conservative and libertarian legal scholarship." It's not a peer-reviewed research paper, it's an article by two anti-gun control lawyers.

 

3) They got Luxembourg's murder rate wrong by a factor of 10. This is notable because they repeatedly hold up Luxembourg in the text as an example of why gun control is so wrong.

 

4) Their other main comparison is Russia. As we all know, Russia is a pretty f***ed place for many, many reasons. A simple correlation of gun control and murder rates isn't particularly useful.

 

5) There are numerous, actually-peer-reviewed papers that have come to the exact opposite conclusion. e.g. http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/hicrc/firearms...guns-and-death/

 

So apparently Harvard ISN'T reputable.

[Jenksismyhero]

Did that peer review discredit the nugget I posted? And that article is from 2007 while the other ones you cited were much older. I'd say that's kind of important since gun ownership is going up as crime is going down.

 

Edit: though i guess by the same logic the facts they are using are even older. Crap in, crap out.

Edited August 28, 2013 by Jenksismybitch

[StrangeSox]

So apparently Harvard ISN'T reputable.

 

It's a newsletter published by conservative Harvard students. It's not something published by Harvard University and it's not a reputable independent journal.

[StrangeSox]

Did that peer review discredit the nugget I posted?

John Lott's studies, which that "nugget" references, have been heavily questioned.

 

The rest is a series of assertions which may be factually accurate (I don't know) but don't really tell me much. Even if it is true that states with the strictest gun control measures have more crime than states with the laxest gun control measures, we need much more than one paragraph to examine the causality and other contributing factors. This newsletter article doesn't do that.

[Jenksismyhero]

It's a newsletter published by conservative Harvard students. It's not something published by Harvard University and it's not a reputable independent journal.

 

Published in the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy.

[StrangeSox]

And that article is from 2007 while the other ones you cited were much older. I'd say that's kind of important since gun ownership is going up as crime is going down.

 

Edit: though i guess by the same logic the facts they are using are even older. Crap in, crap out.

 

So, if there's not even a strong correlation between gun ownership rates and crime rates (more guns=more crime sometimes, more guns=less crime other times), what does that say about possible causality versus other contributing factors (e.g. there's been a lot of research on the effects of lead exposure, it's correlation to increased aggression, and substantial drops in crime rates as lead exposure levels have dropped over the decades).

[Jenksismyhero]

John Lott's studies, which that "nugget" references, have been heavily questioned.

 

The rest is a series of assertions which may be factually accurate (I don't know) but don't really tell me much. Even if it is true that states with the strictest gun control measures have more crime than states with the laxest gun control measures, we need much more than one paragraph to examine the causality and other contributing factors. This newsletter article doesn't do that.

 

I could quote you a study saying gravity is real and if you didn't believe gravity is real you'd find something to complain about in the study. Science is very much like law in that respect. I can interpret and discredit any case I want depending on what side I want to argue.

[StrangeSox]

Published in the Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy.

Which is, as I said, an independent newsletter published by conservative Harvard students. I quoted their self-described ideological viewpoint above.

 

Here is their wiki:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard_Journ...d_Public_Policy

 

The Harvard Journal of Law and Public Policy is a student-edited law review of conservative and libertarian legal scholarship. It was establisheded by Harvard Law School students Spencer Abraham and Stephen Eberhard in 1978, leading to the founding of the Federalist Society, for which it is the official journal.

 

It's the publication of the Federalist Society, which is a hardcore conservative group. It is not actually affiliated with Harvard beyond the name.

 

Here is their own website:

http://www.harvard-jlpp.com/

The Harvard Journal of Law & Public Policy is published three times annually by the Harvard Society for Law & Public Policy, Inc., an organization of Harvard Law School students.

 

The Journal is one of the most widely circulated student-edited law reviews and the nation’s leading forum for conservative and libertarian legal scholarship.

[Jenksismyhero]

So, if there's not even a strong correlation between gun ownership rates and crime rates (more guns=more crime sometimes, more guns=less crime other times), what does that say about possible causality versus other contributing factors (e.g. there's been a lot of research on the effects of lead exposure, it's correlation to increased aggression, and substantial drops in crime rates as lead exposure levels have dropped over the decades).

 

I think everyone accepts that. We all know economics is the biggest factor for crime. They admit that in this study. I think this is much more defending against the baseless "more guns will mean more people die" arguments made by Balta and others, not "less regulations and more guns means less crime." They point that out and then almost immediately state that it's not really shown one way or the other in the data they were looking at.

[StrangeSox]

I could quote you a study saying gravity is real and if you didn't believe gravity is real you'd find something to complain about in the study.

 

This doesn't actually say or mean anything.

 

John Lott's work is highly controversial. That snip you posted cited his work unconditionally without noting that it is not anywhere near universally accepted.

 

Science is very much like law in that respect. I can interpret and discredit any case I want depending on what side I want to argue.

 

No, not really, and this isn't really relevant to the point about correlation and causation. This newsletter article does not investigate or establish causation in any way. It notes murder rates in a handful of countries, gets one of their two main examples spectacularly wrong, and assumes that differences in murder rates are due to differences in gun control policies. Huge amounts of work would need to be done to establish a strong correlation, develop plausible causal mechanisms and examine other contributing factors before you could conclude what is really driving the crime rate difference. Again, this article doesn't do that.

[Jenksismyhero]

Shocking, you didn't even read it (proving my point about a study about gravity):

 

89.LOTT, supra note 11; John R. Lott & David B. Mustard, Crime, Deterrence, and

Right‐to‐Carry, 26 J. LEGAL STUD. 1 (1997); David B. Mustard, Culture Affects Our

Beliefs About Firearms, But Data are Also Important, 151 U. PENN. L. REV. 1387 (2003).

These studies are highly controversial. See Kates,supra note 29, at 70–71, for discus‐

sion of critics andcriticisms.

 

Edit: and my point was YOUR interpretation of studies that YOU don't agree with generally, not this one study specifically. The facts could be 100% accurate, the methodology could be 100% acceptable, and you'd still complain that one of the authors is a leading conservative in X field and therefore has no credibility. I've seen your respond/defend studies a million times on this board and not once have you ever agreed with a study concluding something positively for conservative issues and vice versa for defending liberal ones.

Edited August 28, 2013 by Jenksismybitch

[StrangeSox]

I think everyone accepts that. We all know economics is the biggest factor for crime. They admit that in this study. I think this is much more defending against the

baseless "more guns will mean more people die"

arguments made by Balta and others, not "less regulations and more guns means less crime." They point that out and then almost immediately state that it's not really shown one way or the other in the data they were looking at.

 

But that argument isn't baseless, it's fairly strongly supported in the research and data. There are differing views (John Lott etc.) and it's far from universally agreed, but it definitely isn't baseless.

 

This newsletter article isn't really much of a counter argument. Again, they hold up Luxembourgh as a main example, but the cited murder rate (9.0) is 5-10 times higher than any other published murder rate for Luxembourgh. They looked at a handful of countries and only looked at one dimension.

[Soxbadger]

I still contend that the amount of gun violence in a society with 0 guns is 0, thus lower than any amount of gun violence in a society with guns.

 

Some people try and change their fate, instead of just accepting it. Maybe it will never happen, maybe its a complete fantasy, but Im not going to accept that gun violence is a part of human society and that it cant be put back in the box.

 

I just dont accept that premise.

[StrangeSox]

Shocking, you didn't even read it (proving my point about a study about gravity):

 

No, I didn't read every footnote. I responded to your original post which had numerous mistakes.

 

 

 

Edit: and my point was YOUR interpretation of studies that YOU don't agree with generally, not this one study specifically. The facts could be 100% accurate, the methodology could be 100% acceptable, and you'd still complain that one of the authors is a leading conservative in X field and therefore has no credibility.

 

Where have I done that here? You asked, with snark, if Harvard was reputable. You called this a new study. This isn't a study and it wasn't published by Harvard. That it was an article in an ideological newsletter lessens its credibility regardless of viewpoint.

 

I've seen your respond/defend studies a million times on this board and not once have you ever agreed with a study concluding something positively for conservative issues and vice versa for defending liberal ones.

 

I've pointed out flaws in studies that come to conclusions I like before, I'm sure of that. I think you're missing the point I'm making about correlation here. It has nothing to do with the ideology or conclusions of the report. It's ridiculous to look at Country A Murder Rate versus Country B Murder Rate and then assign any difference to gun policy.

Edited August 28, 2013 by StrangeSox

[StrangeSox]

Related to at least one of the authors, Mauser, is a pretty thorough takedown of an editorial he wrote that got a lot of very basic facts wrong:

 

http://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2004/06/23/mauser/

[Balta1701]

BREAKING: George Zimmerman's wife calls police, saying he threatened her and her dad with a gun, police say

— The Associated Press (@AP) September 9, 2013