Agreed. The rules/laws regarding fighting back are so weird. I was at a bar watching a band play and this guy was trying to mosh in the middle of it. This was a dive bar, literally 100 people crammed into a space barely the size of a store at a mall. After knocking some drinks out of people's hands and mine, I warned him to stop and one girl snatched the sunglasses off his face to tell him to stop (I think he was on something, wearing sunglasses at night inside a bar). He stopped for like maybe 2 minutes and started it again and knocked my new drink out of my hand. My friend pushed him, he pushed back and while he was focused on my friend, I punched him as hard as I could in the face, breaking his sunglasses in the process. While he was stunned I followed up with a right, left, right to his face, while my friend managed to get a few punches in. He went down, I kicked my foot in his direction (never was sure what part of his body I hit). We quickly left. However, after getting in our car, we had to pass in front of the bar to get onto the street we needed to get on. He was in front of the bar, holding a towel to his face. When he saw us, he ran up to our car and tried to punch our (girl) friend who was sitting in the back seat. I stopped the car and we jumped out. Right at that moment, a cop pulled up. I got arrested for assault with (get this) A DANGEROUS WEAPON because the guy had a broken nose (like, mashed into his face, I think all my punches must have hit him square in the nose) and a cut above his face. Apparently if you kick someone's ass so bad, you can be considered a dangerous weapon. I never knew that. Bail was set at 30 grand. I spent the night in jail with blood all over my hands, sleeping on a cold concrete floor, eating a shitty bologna sandwich with milk and an orange. They were playing Batman Begins though, so there's that.

Later at my court date, they pleaded me down to a misdemeanor of Disturbing the Peace because they had no footage of the fight, just his word against mine plus witness testimony, but I still had to pay a fine and attend Anger Management. Plus it turns out he had gone to the hospital and they did blood work on him and he was on some drugs. By all accounts this guy was asking for it, but apparently I had gone over the line in defending myself. In Justice's eyes, it's better to be beaten than to defend yourself and beat the other guy.

I was happy to pay the fine though, as I saw him later working at Bevmo (after I had bailed out), with 12 stitches and a huge bandage trying to hold together his mashed potato nose. I flashed him a shit-eating grin when he saw me, since I knew he wouldn't do anything to get fired and (possibly) get his ass kicked again. The thing that annoyed me was Anger Management, I had to pay for that out of pocket for 10 sessions and sit with people who had beat their wives and shit like that, and fake my way through learning how to control my anger.

Afterwards my friends got me a shirt screened with "DANGEROUS WEAPON" on it. Pretty cool.