bakuretsu

I took the pistol safety class in Connecticut (though I don't live there anymore) and the one thing my instructor told us never to forget is if you shoot someone you will go to jail.

You can have all of the evidence to support your decision and you can win in court and be exonerated and all of that, but you will be arrested and you will go to jail and it can take a long time to go through that process. This is the burden that those who carry firearms bear: the last thing someone who carries a gun wants to do is actually shoot a person.

If you dig around on the Internet you can find some pretty horrific stories, too, like the one about the woman who was raped and got through it psychologically and bought a gun and carried it and then was actually almost raped again, shot the guy, and went to jail for a decade. As a juror I feel that I would see it in her favor, but the fact is that your prior experiences have no bearing on whether it is legally justifiable to shoot someone in self-defense.

Also it depends on the state and local laws, as we learned from the whole Trayvon Martin thing, unfortunately. "Stand your ground" is probably a crappy law, but even in Connecticut the law says that you must retreat if possible. The only way you can win a case in firearms self-defense in Connecticut is if you are cornered, even if you're in your own home.

As another brief example, it is the opposite in Texas, where you are seen to be defending yourself and your property in any case where your home is entered illegally; you don't have the legal requirement to retreat.

tl;dr: probably not.

Edit: a lot of people are pointing out that Zimmerman didn't invoke any "stand your ground" laws in that trial. I know, that's not the point I was trying to make, it was mentioned by the media and started the conversation about the acceptable use of deadly force and at the end of the day the person wielding the deadly weapon is the one carrying that burden.

The track is actually titled "Ready Steady Go." Great track for sure!

If anyone is interested in more of the story surrounding the People's Computer Center and later on the Home Brew Computer Club, they should immediately read Steven Levy's book "Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution," now in its 30th year of publication (pick up the 25th anniversary edition, which has some updates at the end).

Quite possibly one of the best books I've ever read about the real history of computing, hacking, and so on. It covers MIT in the '60s and the PDP-8 and PDP-11 all the way through to the Macintosh. Meticulously researched.

I live in the States but have vacationed to Ireland and London. I was surprised how popular the hard ciders are, especially in London. Aspalls on tap essentially everywhere.

Cider seems to be catching on a bit more in the US, but you still don't see it available on tap very regularly.

I can go anywhere!