The reason for the OP is how many people are declaring they know what was going on in GZ and TM's head during the fight/assault, what would be reasonable reactions and even that they can calculate exactly how the fight/assault physically happened in microscopic detail. This raises the question of do they have any real life knowledge or experiences of those opinions (that they tend to declare are facts) - or are they trying to rationalize and calculate emotions and actions they actually have no knowledge of whatsoever?
By personal experience (very extensive) and very extensive personal observations of others over nearly my whole lifetime - both skilled/experienced in violence and far more who were not, I draw many different conclusions from those drawn by both anti and pro-GZ posters.
For example, EVEN IF TM has raged "You are going to die!" - that doesn't mean TM was the aggressor. That is very common type ragings in a fight - and can come from EITHER hate and agressiveness OR fear and defensiveness. On the other hand, anyone whose head had been slammed into concrete by a stranger is going to use any possible means and any possible weapons available - regardless of how the conflict started or who started it. IF it became a struggle over the gun as GZ claims - and both are amatuers of little fight experience - at that point I think it a certainty that one or the other was going to get shot.
All those ^ are truisms in my opinion - truisms about human nature. This was not two rational, reasoning thru it enlightened adults in a violent confrontation. It was two animals acting on instincts and the most primitive of emotions and instincts.
Life-survival violence raises the most primitive emotions of hate and fear particularly in those who never experienced it befor. A person doesn't know which will trigger in him/herself until it actually happens. There is little to no rationality in any of it.
Some people will become totally crippled in fear. Others will go into blind hate-rage - even if the victim. Most people wllh turn away/cring to pain (being hit). A few will turn into it they way a lion will turn into pain rather than be repelled by it. The person isn't thinking thru anything - they are just doing - am if inexperienced in such situations there will be no rationality involved. An experienced and/or trained person may be acting in some rationality and even with reservations - but is from conditioned actions and reactions by experience and training, not micro second to micro second analysis.
I have trained some women in self defense and usage of fire arms. I do not teach them to think. I train them to not think - by actual body movement conditioning to mindlessly react in preset ways to various situations - that all decisions were already made and done over and over and over physicallly so they don't have to think - just do as conditioned to do. There is no time to think nor is it human nature in such situations to do so.
What most strikes me as absurd in relation to reality is analysing the injuries of GZ to determine if they were life threatening. First, any blows to the nose and certain head against concrete is life threatening. But more relevant is that the person suffering such injury is not going to be calculating such a question because raw, core primitive emotions caused by the shock of extreme physical pain and violence will be in control.
The legal question seems simple to me - and it seems that people are trying to mix their personal ethics, social platitudes and some fantasy perfection humans should possess in that legal question. The legal questions seem to only be:
1. Who threw the first blow or overtly threatened to do so?
2. Did it become a stuggle for the gun?
Until it actually became a violent conflict, neither had done anything illegal so it all is all but irrelevant - although BOTH were foolishly acting well outside their skill range in relation to potentials.
As others try to analyse the entire life history and psychology of GZ and maybe TM too, and then every second prior to what happened in the actual fight/assault - and then every word said afterwards - I look at the actual fight/assault itself as what is decisive. Personally, I think whatevers lead to two men in a life-death struggle and one of the died. All evidence - to my values - says GZ isn't a murderer. BUT if it had been TM who ended up with the gun and shot GZ - I also would reach the same conclusion about TM, that he had not committed murder. For both it became a matter of life-death self defense and self survival - or at least both believed it was in their primitive minds. Both of them clearly lacked the skill and conditioned experience to opt for any middle ground.
The initial impressions burned in by the media (on both sides) was so extreme (and often false or off point) and so judgmentally editorial on emotional furious levels repetitiously that it seems most people can't let those instilled emotions go. From this, they seek every possible means to protect the powerful emotions they already then had about the case. Since I think basically ALL the talking media heads and partisans are just PR actors and liars accordingly, it was easier for me to let those go.
