Whoa. Guy who shot at George Zimmerman gets quite the jail sentence

You may recall that one month ago today the guy who shot up George Zimmerman’s car (with him in it), Matthew Apperson, was convicted of attempted second degree murder. Now the proceedings have drawn to a close with the judge handing down a twenty year sentence for the attack. You can almost hear the disgust in the mind of the New York Daily News reporter who had to deliver the terrible news about the man who tried to take out this perpetual menace.

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The Florida man who fired a gunshot at perpetual menace George Zimmerman was sentenced to 20 years in prison Monday for attempted murder.

Matthew Apperson, 37, had testified that he shot in self-defense during a road rage incident with ZImmerman last year. He said Zimmerman’s intimidating reputation — especially for his fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin — made him fear for his life.

But a Seminole County jury convicted Apperson last month of attempted second-degree murder, as well as shooting into an occupied vehicle and aggravated assault.

As much as liberals wanted to pin a medal on Apperson, this case was never going to go well for them. (Though it’s worth noting that this is one of the few times I’ve ever seen a liberal celebrating somebody firing a weapon.) In some ways it went even worse for the shooter than you might have imagined because he’s been ordered held in custody even though the case is being appealed. The reason? Because the last time he was out on bail he was found urinating on a public building, so I suppose they had to keep him locked up this time.

Yes, Apperson has a bit of a history. On top of his previous conviction, it was also revealed through the course of the trial that he’d been in a mental institution after having shown signs of paranoia, anxiety and bipolar disorder. And the various bits of testimony showed that he’d pretty much been stalking Zimmerman for a while before the fortunately non-fatal shooting took place.

But still, twenty years sounds like quite a bit for firing a shot into a car. I’m not trying to make light of it, but that’s a heavy pull for one bullet. Yet Florida’s laws are clear on the matter. This isn’t Apperson’s first time in front of a jury and having tacked another attempted murder charge onto his rap sheet, twenty years was the mandatory sentence.

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Still, the New York Daily News author manages to sneak in one more bit of angst and anger at the end of the summary.

Twenty years is Florida’s mandatory minimum sentence for shooting at another person with a gun.

But Zimmerman infamously walked free after shooting and killing Martin, an unarmed black teenager, after a scuffle in 2012. Zimmerman, who was a volunteer neighborhood watchman at the time, claimed self-defense and was acquitted.

Yes, that’s correct. He “infamously walked free” because he was found innocent of the charges leveled against him. Apperson was guilty. Not to be too nasty about it here, but would you like some cheese to go with that whine?

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