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

[Ken Brown]

Sandy Sandfort wrote:
> 
> Not-a-lawyer wrote:

 [...]

> > We're not talking about
> > 'self-defence' here...
> 
> No, we're talking 'self-defense', this is the US, not the UK.

Actually Sandy, it was Italy. I haven't got the faintest ideas what the
laws on self-defence are in Italy. And I'm bloody-well sure Jim doesn't
either. 

Whay are you arguing with himn? We saw long ago that, for reasons he may
well understand but most of us don't, Jim will never admit that there
may be a factual mistake in anything he writes. He always tries to
redefine terms, bring up irrelevancies, alter emphases, to make
something that looks factually wrong seem as if it might just about have
been true in context. If Jim writes 20 things down, 19 of which are true
and someone objects to the 1 that is false, any following thread turns
into a ducking and weaving semantic flamewar about the one false
statement.

So a discussion about whether the Italian police were right to shoot
someone in Genova turns into an argument about the momentum of model
rockets - all because Jim can't bring himself to say something like: 

"I don't know, I wasn't there, I guess if the police account of what
happened is true then they might have been in fear of their lives, so
maybe we can't blame them for shooting. On the other hand, maybe the
news accounts are faked or exagerated and they were just picking on the
guy. I can't tell, I wasn't there and I haven't talked to anyone who
was."

But the words "I don't know" seem hard for some people to write down :-(


Ken Brown  (who doesn't know why he is joining the argument, when he has
work to do)