You are wrong. In most EU countries self defense has to be proportional to attack, and to be used only when necessary. So if you exceeding limits of self-defense and you kill or damage someone using forces disproportionate to the danger you can go to jail.
No, there are many places where you want to think twice about responding to violence with violence, because if your violent response is deemed exaggerated, you end up being the one worse off on day of judgement.
Technically I suppose you could get away with killing if it can be shown that your life was in immediate danger, and not in the "old hobo waves a knife so cop shoots him in the back from thirty feet away" way like in the US. In practice that never happens, because it is very difficult to show that the only thing you could've done was to kill. Even if someone had you at gunpoint. Someone waving a rock or a knife? Lol no, unless you emerged out of a struggle with stab wounds or broken bones.
In many other parts of the world, someone having a weapon out is not sufficient evidence to show that they were going to murder you in 2 seconds unless you did it first. Even if they seemed angry and threatening. A threat of violence is not violence, a weapon is not violence, and an unstable person is not violence, and even violence doesn't justify killing unless that violence was life threatening.
That's the difference. The question here isn't about what they could in theory do. If you're going to kill someone in self defense, you'd better have very convincing evidence or other means to show that they were in fact about to kill you. Without signs of struggle, that evidence can be quite hard to procure.
So what do you do in this situation? If you can run, you run. If someone chases you with a knife and you can't outrun them, that's already much better for your self defense claim than if you just decided to shoot them the moment you got scared.. If you can fight or shoot back, you don't have to kill them, just respond enough to fend off the immediate threat. If you're not good enough with guns to make a non-lethal disarming shot, then I don't recommend bringing a gun (not that it'd be legal here anyway, guns are for sport and hunting). Your self defense can be regarded as exaggerated even if you didn't intend it that way. So if you accidentally make a lethal shot or accidentally punch someone to death, you're on the hook for it.
> If you're not good enough with guns to make a non-lethal disarming shot
This suggests to me that you don't know much about guns, gun safety, or gun laws. I'm not trying to be insulting, but saying something like that indicates that you really have no idea what you're talking about. No use-of-force experts recommend attempting a "non-lethal" shot with a gun. In fact, you'd almost certainly get in more trouble for doing that than for killing the person, at least in the US.
A gun is a lethal weapon, and there is no way to reliably perform a "non-lethal" shot. If you shoot someone in the leg, they can very easily bleed out. Aiming for the arm or hand makes it extremely likely that you will miss and hit someone/something downrange.
Oh I know what the gun nuts in the US say. I don't believe their view is universally shared.
I agree that there is no way to reliably perform a "non-lethal" shot which gets us back to my previous message: you'd better not bring a gun to a knife fight if you don't want to end up sitting in jail for killing. Use-of-force experts here would not recommend shooting at all if there's any chance a missed shot is going to hit someone downrange, unless again it can be shown that killing is absolutely the only choice left.
However, if you read the news here, you find that the police regularly manage to hit a leg and thus disable the assailant without killing them. Every time this happens, there's going to be an investigation into whether gun use was justified. And if the assailant ended up dying, it'd be much worse for the cop.
I don't know if they're specifically instructed to aim for legs, but maybe it's easier to stop bleeding than to revive someone with a bullet in the heart.
> Use-of-force experts here would not recommend shooting at all if there's any chance a missed shot is going to hit someone downrange, unless again it can be shown that killing is absolutely the only choice left.
Then it seems like we're on the same page? You shouldn't be shooting at all unless you're trying to kill the person. You shouldn't be trying to kill the person unless it's absolutely the only choice left. Given that it's the only choice left, potentially hitting someone downrange is a regrettable but possible outcome. Given that you're trying to kill someone, aiming somewhere other than center mass has an unacceptable risk of missing or not disabling the person.
> A threat of violence is not violence, a weapon is not violence, and an unstable person is not violence, and even violence doesn't justify killing unless that violence was life threatening.
> If you're going to kill someone in self defense, you'd better have very convincing evidence or other means to show that they were in fact about to kill you.
I don't understand this at all. A mentally unstable person shouting threats and approaching me with a deadly weapon is 150% enough evidence that my life is in danger. I can't see any other possible rationalization.
It is a complete failure of the state to make someone scared of defending themselves against legitimate threats.
For example, Soviet Union made self-defense illegal. This was part of a larger strategy to encourage crime against citizens, because the more the citizens are worrying about criminals, the less they think about the regime they are living in. They will even welcome more police oversight, because it is the only protection against crime they have. (Crimes against the state, on the other hand, were punished extremely.)
Do you have any sources for that story?
I would be interested in reading them because what you are describing sounds so idiotic that it seems like a parody of anti-communist talking points.
Minority rights are well-protected in America as a constitutional republic.
An actual direct democracy, like Switzerland, isn't as great as protecting minority rights. There's plenty of examples of democracies trampling minority rights, and there is a legitimate fear of tyrannical majority in most democracies.
America is quite unique in its system and how well it protects rights.
> to use force (up to and including deadly force) to defend oneself against an intruder
Perhaps only one place (Texas) uses this to justify regaining possession of property, which is what the GP was talking about.
Also:
> At most the Castle Doctrine is an affirmative defense for individuals inevitably charged with criminal homicide, not a permission or pretext to commit homicide.
Google can't win? Their idea of removing third party cookies was on the condition everybody would accept FLoC, so Google still makes money while everybody else doesn't. Yes, it's an antitrust concern.
You spread misinformation. Any ad company can use FLoC.
Let me be very explicit for you: privacy advocates say 3rd party cookies are bad b/c they allow tracking yet the eu blocks google from removing them b/c they think it might hurt their own ad tracking companies.
Snowden didn't have a degree and worked in DC beltway :P Anyway, most of the jobs that showed up when I googled "senior robotics engineer Virginia" don't mention a cert or degree (they ask for X-years of professional experience) or only mention a degree within a list of many desired qualifications ...
Idk what to tell you, everyone seems very reticent to hire despite actual experience. In some cases it's statute preventing the hiring of people without degrees.
It's not all roses like comes up on HN frequently.
I'll be honest in my area I'm out in a suburban part a Florida about 50 miles outside of Tampa and people who are not from the area who are caught doing drugs and homeless people and all this kind of stuff what happens is the cops they tell them I don't want to see you in this county anymore and then what they do is they bring them to a road called county line road and then they drop them off there and if they come back they get arrested... so you just don't see homeless people and all that kind of stuff out where I live because I'm being serious that's how the cops are out here
> people who are not from the area who are caught doing drugs and homeless people and all this kind of stuff what happens is the cops they tell them I don't want to see you in this county anymore and then what they do is they bring them to a road called county line road and then they drop them off there and if they come back they get arrested... so you just don't see homeless people and all that kind of stuff out where I live because I'm being serious that's how the cops are out here
This is pretty well-known in a lot of places. Around major cities, the police will send the persons into the city. Then the suburban people say there must be something wrong with the city, with all these problems. Personally, I'd rather be the community that takes care of the people that need it.
> doing drugs and homeless people
I don't equate the two. Even doing drugs is just a vice and now frequently legalized, and I'm sure the locals do plenty (without needing to know the locality). But to the extent that the drugs are illegal, being homeless certainly is not. There is nothing wrong with it or illegal about it. Some homeless people do bad things, and so do some people of every other group, including HN readers, rural locals, and wealthy people in big houses (and measured by total cost to society, there's no doubt which group does more).
In response to this, I'd say that I do equate the two. a lot of people think that you can help homeless people. but for most homeless people being homeless is a symptom of a greater problem. the problem is usually drugs. and I'm sure that's not true for all 100% of the cases but I'd be willing to bet that it's true for about 80 to 90% of the cases. you can give a homeless person a million dollars, and a large percentage of those people will use that money to squander it on things like drugs and other things that degrade their behavior and not improve it so that's the only reason I'd say I equate the two. drug abuse is a direct affect of what causes someone to become homeless. homelessness like I said for most situations is a direct result of being a drug addict and having mental illness caused by drug abuse, specifically crystal methamphetamine. I have hundreds of rentals and I see this everyday, and I'd say it's getting worse because 20 years ago there was not as many mentally ill people caused by drug abuse as there is today and specifically crystal methamphetamine. crystal methamphetamine the way that it's produced the last 15 years it produces permanent psychosis and brain damage it literally turns your brain into Swiss cheese so to say that drug abuse isn't related to homelessness means that you're just not looking into the correlation as much as you should be and it might be just because of a lack of experience.
Contrary to popular HN opinion, management jobs outside of big tech do not actually pay that well. I’m assuming the parent poster wants to switch career tracks entirely rather than stay within his/her currently available roles.
