The problem is that the entire food stamp program will be tainted by this. When you hear that hundreds of millions are wasted by the 1% on the program, this makes people just want to cut funding to the "wasteful government program".

Get rid of the fraud and you'll get rid of the people complaining about waste.

Why on earth they can't make these cards unique to the person I don't know. Put a picture on it, put a name on it, and require ID when the card is accepted. When someone loses a card (of which they are only allowed one active card) disable the old one and give them a new one.

Except that violent crime has been generally going down in the last two decades. I'm not saying this has anything to do with guns, but it certainly seems to be the case that violence is going down *despite* the increased prevalence of guns.

The US is overall very safe. The chance of having someone break into your house and threaten your life is remarkably low. But then again so is the chance of having a fire, yet we have smoke alarms and hazard insurance.

A gun in the house is a good insurance policy and that whole nonsense about making it more likely to get killed by your own gun is silly and only impacts drug dealers and fools. It's the same old repeated story. Anyway, the point is that it is highly unlikely you'll need a gun, but when you do need one you really need one. The cops are 4 minutes away at best.

"What was a gun designed to do other than kill things? "

Defending yourself from someone determined to injure or kill you. Killing an attacker is an unfortunate side effect.

Pepper spray, tasers, and so on, are not good substitutes for a variety of reasons.

No. You would not be the initial aggressor. The question in this case is WHO was the initial aggressor. Following someone as a neighborhood watch officer does not count.

It was avoidable. Was it ILLEGAL?

It would have been common sense for Zimmerman to just follow the 911 dispatchers advice (not direction or legal requirement) and let the police arrive later.

He was not TOLD to not pursue the kid. He was advised that they did not need him to do that. Very different. The dispatchers are pretty careful about what they tell people they can and cannot do. They are not the police and they can't order you to go here, or stay there.

There is no doubt that this is a very tragic affair and could have easily been avoided if Zimmerman just ignored the kid. But Zimmerman did not break the law by following this kid, and he did not break the law by patrolling his neighborhood. Confronting someone is also not illegal UNLESS you are doing it in a threatening manner, which perhaps Zimmerman did.

I'm not sure you know what premeditated murder is. This is man slaughter at most. If he's guilty of that, he should go down for it.

Saying "PERIOD" doesn't make you correct.

That study was pretty weak. I recall reading it and the setup was rather contrived. IIRC, they made the test subject hold a gun in one hand at the time of the test. I bet if they made the test subject hold a banana they might be more likely to think the other guy also has a banana.

"Carrying" a gun in a holster, and physically holding one in your hand are obviously distinctly different activities.

That is debatable.

What is important is who was the "initial aggressor". Merely following someone at a distance, or sending some mean words in their direction is not enough to be classified as the aggressor. However, if Zimmerman was running towards to the kid shouting "I'm going to kill you" then Zimmerman was certainly the initial aggressor and this will significantly count against him because you can't just start fights and then shoot someone when they pull a knife or start hitting you.

Zimmerman initiated the situation for sure, but we don't know yet whether he was the initial aggressor as defined by statute and case law in the state of Florida. We may never know...

That comment was in really bad taste, but really funny!