A question of self-defence - Fire extinguishers & self defence

[Tim May]

At 8:35 PM -0500 7/23/01, Jon Beets wrote:
>Uhhh yes it will go through the safety glass.. Look at the pics.. One person
>had already put piece of lumber through it.. That was about a 15lb
>extinguisher... From what I can tell from the photos the protester DID
>intend harm to the police. Of course none of us were there so its really
>hard to know the truth..

>----- Original Message -----
>From: "Jim Choate" <ravage at ssz.com>
>To: <cypherpunks at einstein.ssz.com>
>Sent: Monday, July 23, 2001 6:18 PM
>Subject: A question of self-defence - Fire extinguishers & self defence
>
>
>>
>>  Does throwing a fire extenguisher at a auto window constitution probable
>>  cause for lethal force in self-defence?
>>
>>  No. Because the fire extenguisher won't go through the safety glass.

First, "safety glass" is said to be "safety" because it tends to hold 
together instead of shattering into shards. It's not Lexan.

Second, anyone who has spent time in a wrecking yard knows things go 
through safety glass all the time.

Third, those of us who are old enough remember that Jayne Mansfield's 
head went right through the safety glass.

Fourth, disputing Choate about the physics of safety glass is as 
pointless as arguing with him over Gauss's Theorem, prime numbers, 
the First Amendment, the history of Europe, law, or anything else he 
has his peculiarly indisyncratic views about.

Fifth, if someone is trying to throw a fire extinguisher through 
either my front window or my side windows, I'm going to defend 
myself. I expect no less from the carabinieri.


--Tim May





-- 
Timothy C. May         tcmay at got.net        Corralitos, California
Political: Co-founder Cypherpunks/crypto anarchy/Cyphernomicon
Technical: physics/soft errors/Smalltalk/Squeak/agents/games/Go
Personal: b.1951/UCSB/Intel '74-'86/retired/investor/motorcycles/guns