Please explain why that would be.

Yeah, like wedding photographers, jewelry artists, poets, screenwriters, game producers, web programmers, novelists, small film makers - nothing but control freaks!

The most freakishly control-minded people I seem to meet are those who want "control" over the people who create stuff because they entertainment on their own terms (meaning, free), rather than on the terms that the person who has created it has offered their work.

The people who create things want to control how they bring their work to market. You want to control the people who create things. Who's the control freak?

The whole point is that it's designed to report whatever people feel like reporting. It's mean as a tool of intimidation, just like the interactive who-owns-guns maps designed to make legal owners feel increasingly threatened by theft, etc.

This whole string of responses relates to ADs. Not public "brandishing." Stick with one topic, or make it clear you're having more than one conversation.

No, it's used as short-hand for the general bundle of sensibilities that give rise to the urge for a Nanny State approach to things. Collectivist thinking, where people born with or raised to have a work ethic are, by definition, slaves to those who aren't, won't, etc. It doesn't matter where you draw the line between Communism and Socialism, because they come from the same ideological place: they call for an elite group of people to spell out how the efforts of some people will be confiscated in order to dole them out to other people. Structurally, permanently. The harder you're willing to work, the more of a slave you are.

Right... because words have actual meanings, and we have entirely different words that mean "handling" or "loading" or "storing" or "testing" or "fumbling" or "cleaning," etc. Lack of precision in the language surrounding the nature and use of firearms is a non-trivial problem (see so-called journalists who interchangeably - and cluelessly - use "machine gun" and "assault rifle" and "semi-automatic" and the like).

brandish [bran-dish]
verb (used with object)
1. to shake or wave, as a weapon; flourish: Brandishing his sword, he rode into battle.

I don't know anybody who would refer to, say, handing someone else a gun (say, while out plinking cans in the woods) as "brandishing."

You typically wouldn't be handling a gun in public pretty much ever. But around strangers? Say, at the range? Loading, cleaning, etc., happens all the time around other people. As a range officer, I can assure you it happens all the time.

Or if you drop it while loading it, or are stupid while cleaning it, etc. I didn't stipulate perfection in handling and experience, only pointed out that there are all sorts of situations where an AD can occur without anyone brandishing a weapon at somebody.

Maybe once. But if they keep calling them for no reason, they'll arrest the caller for wasting their time and harassing the legal gun owner. Most cops are very familiar with the habitual paranoids and whiners on their beats.

This is, as they say, so wrong it's not even wrong.

Close enough that the witness also thought that his dad being there in the house, or not, was relevant. She pointed out that though Martin was there, his dad wasn't. Which is important because if we're talking about Martin being half a block away (not "right by"), the dad being in the house or not would have been meaningless.

RJ: "he was right by his daddy's house"

There really isn't any room for misunderstanding the testimony of the witnesses, of the police that interviewed Zimmerman, or the rest. There's no misinterpreting Martin's father's initial (honest) reaction to the recording he heard. Understanding the trial is about understanding the motivations of the people who put it on in reaction to craven political pressure. Understanding the facts is also very straightforward.

He never went in the house. But he was talking on the phone as he walked up to the back of the house (the same conversation during which he used the racist epithet). This according to his friend, who testified to that. The "drivel" part is you really, really wishing that he hadn't, because that takes all the fun out of your narrative.

OK, so you ARE saying that the prosecution and their star witness are lying about Martin's return to and arrival at dad's girlfriend's house. Thanks for clearing that up.

Nonsense. Dispatchers - in almost every jurisdiction - are civilians trained in handling such calls and performing dispatch duties. Union rules and contracts very often prevent even injured cops from booking time as dispatchers, as those are not law enforcement positions.

I know people in this line of work in half a dozen local jurisdictions surrounding a major metro area. In no cases do dispatch employees have any legal authority of any kind, and cannot direct people to do anything - medical or otherwise. In fact they are required to ask people if they would do this or that to help an injured person, and always say "please" because the are, essentially, asking a favor of the caller. They can't make them provide CPR (or anything else) and people who can't or won't do what a dispatch employee suggests face no consequences because they absolutely are not acting with legal authority of any kind.

All of which you know, so it's kind of mysterious that you're pretending it's otherwise, unless your understanding is limited to your own county or city where they perhaps don't do what they do most everywhere else. Regardless, the Martin/Zimmerman case does not involve a copy giving orders to Zimmerman. The dispatcher said, "OK. We don't need you to do that." And testified that it wasn't an order, meant to me one, or coming from anyone who could give one.

Which part? The part where he was at his dad's girlfriend's house? The prosecution's star witness quoted Martin himself as saying he was. Are you saying that the prosecution and their witness are lying? Interesting.

Or are you referring to the part where he referred to him as a "cracker?" That's the prosecution and their witness saying that.

Or are you referring to the part where Martin was beating on Zimmerman? Because there are eye-witness reports of that. He was seen doing so.

No need to. The prosecution's own witness established that Martin had already returned to his dad's girlfriend's house. For him to have been beating on Zimmerman where the attack occurred, he would have to have turned around and chosen to go back and go at him. The evidence backs this up exactly, even the evidence provided by a witness the prosecution chose.

You mean the guy who stopped his own murder from happening? That guy?

No, otherwise I'd have to believe some of the nonsense that the prosecution tried to trot out (like the BS voice analysis the judge very rightly kept out of the trial).

This is not true. The dispatcher testified to the fact that mentioning to Zimmerman on the call that they didn't "need" him to follow Martin was not instruction to Zimmerman.

You're very confused about this, aren't you? When you call 911 and ask them for help with a medical emergency, their advice to you to do CPR is not the same as being told by a police officer what to do. Are you really that obtuse?