So it looks like he’s out on bail.
He could be guilty of murder, or he could have been trying to protect his home from burglars.
Let us assume it’s the later. There are all sorts of problems with his story of what happened – if you were to tackle a burglar in your own home in the middle of the day with plenty of practice at that sort of situation.
But in the middle of the night ? Woken from a sleep and still in a daze? And not really knowing what to do ? It’s all to easy to imagine me doing something really daft in that situation is all too believable.
Add guns to that mixture, and you have the recipe for a disaster. Which if Pistorius is telling the truth is exactly what has happened.
There are those who argue that it is a right to keep a gun in the house to protect yourself from burglars. Ignoring whether it’s a right or not, it is for most of us a dumb thing to do. Most of us do not undergo the sort of training that will let us make sensible decisions in such a situation, and those that do have the training are not likely to operate at full effectiveness without the right level of caffeine.