Today in Trayvon: The More You Know, The More You Don’t Know

From ABC News:

George Zimmerman, the neighborhood watch crime captain who shot dead 17-year-old Trayvon Martin, originally told police in a written statement that Martin knocked him down with a punch to the nose, repeatedly slammed his head on the ground and tried to take his gun, a police source told ABC News.
Zimmerman had claimed he had called police about Martin, whom he found suspicious, then went back to his car when Martin attacked him, punching him.

In addition, an eyewitness, 13-year-old Austin Brown, told police he saw a man fitting Zimmerman’s description lying on the grass moaning and crying for help just seconds before he heard the gunshot that killed Martin.

Classic. Emphasis mine, by the way.

@Tommmcatt Be Fat, And That Be That: Post updated. Our Epistemological Adventure continues.

And so: We still don’t know shit.

You can’t witness a fight in progress and know how it started. You can’t extrapolate backwards from a moment when the eventual loser has the upper hand. You also can’t, midway through, judge whether the eventual loser was using undue force.

For that matter, without knowing more, you can’t really prosecute the eventual winner. Not under Florida’s law.

@Tommmcatt Be Fat, And That Be That: Trying to take the gun = trying to disarm one’s attacker?

It is possible to make a semi-auto pistol misfire by grabbing its slide, btw:

“The death weapon was a Kel-Tec PF9 semiautomatic 9mm pistol. It has been reported that the gun was recovered with a full magazine and that only the chambered round had been fired. This is a condition we associate with something preventing the gun from cycling a fresh round from the magazine into the chamber after the shot was discharged.* One thing that can cause that is another man’s hand wrapped around the pistol, retarding its slide mechanism. This would indicate, as could certain gunshot residue patterns or cuts in certain places if found on Trayvon Martin’s hand(s), that a struggle for a gun was taking place when the fatal shot was fired. This would clearly change the shape of the case. But – WE DON’T KNOW YET.”

– Massad Ayoob, “George Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin: What We Don’t Know Yet” The author is a respected authority on the defensive use of firearms.

What Ayoob is saying is that when you fire a semiautomatic pistol, the slide is driven backward by recoil. The return movement of the slide strips a fresh round from the magazine as the slide goes forward and the pistol is ready to fire again unless something stops the slide from going back, leaving you with one round fired, an empty chamber and whatever you had left in the magazine. A hand grabbing the slide could do it, but tests have shown that pushing a semiauto pistol into a target can also cause it to misfire, or “go out of battery.” Sticking the pistol into the victim could also have impeded proper slide movement.

http://backwoodshome.com/blogs/MassadAyoob/2012/03/23/george-zimmerman-and-trayvon-martin-what-we-dont-know/

@redmanlaw: And he posted that on Friday. Good deduction.

So will the cops leak the gunpowder residue evidence? If Travon was grabbing the gun when the slide activated for whatever reason, wouldn’t there be marks on his hand?

Next question: Zimmerman had a concealed-carry permit. So, was his carry concealed?

And if it was, how did Trayvon see the gun to grab it? Had it already been pulled?

Or was it conventionally holstered? Or — RML alert! — would you still notice it in somebody’s belt, or under his shirt? At night?

Can’t nail down a damn thing in this case.

@Dodgerblue: They were so busy testing his corpse for drugs and alcohol, they probably didn’t have time to get around to swabbing him for gunpowder.

@nojo: As I posted over the weekend, dude had an in the waistband (IWB) holster that attaches to a belt or top of one’s pants on the outside and places the inside surface of the holster against one’s boxers.

Video: Wearing and using an IWB holster.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lCQQz8HwkX0

As shown in the video, you would not immediately notice that someone was packing in an IWB holster until they lifted their shirt. Some holsters have “retention devices” that keep your heater from falling out and prevent someone from grabbing it.

@Dodgerblue: That’s what Ayoob’s column says.

@redmanlaw: I knew you had mentioned IWB, but I had forgotten the details.

Not that we can draw any conclusions from that — I can imagine a situation where it was inadvertently exposed — but it’s one more detail to navigate.

And while we’re navigating details…

Witness “John” — the old witness presented over the weekend as a new witness — recalled the following the next day:

1. He sees Zimmerman on his back.

2. “John said he locked his patio door, ran upstairs…”

3. “…and heard at least one gun shot.”

4. ““And then, when I got upstairs and looked down, the guy who was on the top beating up the other guy, was the one laying in the grass”

So, between locking his patio door and looking out the upstairs window, everything happens. I’m not sure how many seconds that accounts for, but any hypothesis has to squeeze into a very short time.

Not sure whether he saw Zimmerman standing at that point. The local TV report doesn’t say either way.

This whole thing is really starting to piss me off.

Legalized vigilantism justified after the fact by the court of public opinion.

Rule of law is officially dead.

Lawrence O’Donnell never fails to piss me off.

ADD: Main point O’Donnell wants to make in his half-hour of coverage: He is outraged. Good to know.

Zimmerman’s lawyer has seen Chicago too many times.

“They both reached for the gun!”

@nojo: “So, between locking his patio door and looking out the upstairs window, everything happens. I’m not sure how many seconds that accounts for, but any hypothesis has to squeeze into a very short time.”

Could have been hours. They are in Florida.

@SanFranLefty: +1

I wish we did away with this gun stuff, and hit people with fish.

@¡Andrew!: :-) I did it. I did it. No court would convict me… (or something like that).

@¡Andrew!: Tommmcatt beat you to it.

Also, I’ve been doing the puppet dance all afternoon.

@JNOVw00tah: Standard condo, more or less. No mansion. They show it in the news video.

But that brings something else to mind: I haven’t seen the standard crime-scene illustration anywhere. I’m still unclear about the geography of the neighborhood.

@nojo: The streets have designated Hoveround lanes.

@redmanlaw: Not familiar with the Kel-Tec, but the Colt .45 M1911 will not fire if “pushed out of battery.”

While Ayoob is correct that a hand gripping the slide can prevent normal cycling, thus resulting in a spent casing in the chamber, pushing the slide out of battery will prevent firing in the first place.

@stickler: I’m wayyyy out my depth here. Can we talk about phasers?

@nojo: 933x

@nojo: Tommy’s right, and btw that Zimmerman dude is the fugliest Roxie Hart ever.

Meanwhile, since the smear campaign has now reached his social-media accounts, here’s Trayvon’s Twitter feed. Good luck finding anything damning, unless you don’t like Mystikal or Scooby snacks.

@¡Andrew!: You haven’t seen him in a low-cut white gown.

Here’s where assignment of blame begins and ends for me: when the police dispatcher tells Zimmerman not to follow Trayvon. He didn’t listen, and everything that happened afterwards can be attributed to his failure to do as she said. I don’t care who attacked whom–that wouldn’t have happened if Mr Wannabe Cop had stayed put and waited for the real police to arrive. It’s entirely his fault.

@nojo: I look great in an off the shoulder bone white gown!

Oh, wait, you were talking about Zimmerman. Carry on.

@Mistress Cynica: Here’s the problem: We don’t know that Zimmerman disregarded the operator’s advice. Contrary to what’s been said elsewhere, there’s nothing on the 911 tape that demonstrates Zimmerman continued to follow Trayvon.

Zimmerman’s story is that he was jumped while returning to his SUV. And to my knowledge, nothing yet contradicts that, besides the girlfriend’s account of Trayvon’s phone call. Nor does anything corroborate it.

@Tommmcatt Be Fat, And That Be That: No, you just enjoy being thrown around by a bunch of dudes in penguin suits.

@nojo: Who among us would not?

@JNOVw00tah: I got fish in the freezer and the will and ability to get more.

/covering all my bases

Son of RML and I are going fly fishing on Saturday. Report to follow then.

@redmanlaw: Not frozen fish, please. Fish sticks, okay. Got any turkey in that freezer?

Has anyone addressed the ALEC angle?

@JNOVw00tah: I’ve seen it out there, but I haven’t bothered to deal with it. I have my head full just keeping the facts straight.

@nojo: Good luck with that.

In this world, facts are like assholes, and truth is what the majority says it is.

@JNOVw00tah: Oh! So how far has SCP made it into Mad Men?

@JNOVw00tah: Which reminds me…

Thirty years ago, there was a story making the rounds about a package that took decades to deliver. Everybody laughed and laughed about the incompetence of the post office!

But since there was a local angle, and I was a Professional Reporter, I called around to check it out. Turns out not only was the post office innocent of the crime, it was their work that rescued the package from oblivion.

Of course, our rag wasn’t AP, so my story went no farther than the local circulation. Truth may be a team sport, but I was happy to play for the facts.

@JNOVw00tah: Last iMessage I received from him last night was a screenshot of his Mad Men-enabled Netflix queue.

I’m tempted to write a blaggz entry about tools and how I need to use ’em if I carry ’em. Hence, I don’t, and hope I never will, carry a gun. It’s on my belt, I’m gonna pull it out and use it, it’s like a built-in lizard-brain reaction. I wonder if something like that (or the standard “gun = no need to act like prey and RUN” reaction that seems to hit some people like a quart of whiskey delivered intravenously) was why the rod came out.

Sorry. I’ve been reading a lot of Raymond Chandler lately. Everyone, and I mean everyone in 1930s LA was carrying at least one gun at all times, if he’s to be believed.

@IanJ: There was some study or poll last week that folks who carry guns are more likely to think that other folks are carrying guns, and behave appropriately. I didn’t bother with it, because then you have to double-check methodology and shit, and likelihood doesn’t translate to specific cases.

@nojo: ::nodding in agreement::