George Zimmerman's attorneys won't use "stand your ground" defense

[TPaine7]

55. Hmmmm...

There are a few problems with your analysis:

1. In a self-defense scenario, the life of the attacker and the life of the intended victim are not equivalent

If someone is about to murder you and you kill them, a life was lost. If someone succeeds in killing you, a life was lost. It's a wash, in anti-gun mentality.

I guess I'll have to say this explicitly: in a self-defense scenario, the life of the INNOCENT intended victim is worth more than the life of the criminal assailant. Denying that devalues the life of the innocent.

2. If the tool you're using can't measure the benefits, pretending that means there are no benefits is not legitimate

The lives saved by ending a criminal career—with the exception of the immediate intended victim(s)—are by definition future lives. They cannot possibly be counted using today's homicide numbers. But statistical methods can be used to estimate the probable murders of 500 to 700 real or alleged assailants. Based on the dead alleged assailants' criminal histories, it should be possible to estimate the murders they would have committed had they lived.

Yes, I know that estimates of future lives saved are just that—estimates. But that's exactly the type of problem that statistics are suited to. You can even use confidence intervals. It's not as if the future can't be dealt with using intellectual rigor and clear principles. Accountants do it all the time; have you ever heard of "accounts recievable"?

3. Using a biased and/or unqualified estimator is likely to result in a bogus estimate

According to the abstract of the study you're citing, their number of lives lost due to illigitimate self defense was based on POLICE classification, not court verdicts, grand jury sessions, judge opinions or even DA charges.

In a new area of law, with zero or very few court cases to guide them, what do you expect the police to do with 500 to 700 claimed self-defense shootings that may or may not be justified under the new and unfamiliar law? Most of the time, if the guy is dead, you shot the guy and you admit it to the cop but claim self-defense, I expect you will be classified as a murderer, at least for police purposes.

Why not use court verdicts? That could account for a lot of misclassified SYG shootings. I know it wouldn't advance the agenda, but wouldn't it be more accurate?

4. "Back-of-the-envelope calculations"

Are those "back-of-the-envelope" calculations impeccable and state of the art and do they account for every relevant variable?

To be honest, given the issues I saw reading the abstract, I haven't bothered to look at them. But I'm sure you'll vouch for them. After all, they may be one-sided, based on deeply flawed premises and grounded in a poor estimate by an illigitimate estimator, but they reached the right conclusions. Right?