people freqently conflate Stand Your Ground vs Duty to Retreat... with the entire rest of the debate.

I'm trying to keep this neutral, so I'm using a rather cut and dry example: Somebody kicks in your door with a pump action and starts shooting- There are _some_ jurisdictions that require you to try and flee. You kill them and they werent bodily blocking your car in? Murder charge. investigation finds a sabatoged engine? Doesn't matter.

Stand Your Ground assumes reasonableness and codifies leaveing the fight or flee decision up to the individual.

Ultimately- you're going to have PTSD either way.

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crote 20 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Your example isn't quite as cut-and-dry because in a lot of cases that's going to involve the Castle Doctrine as well, and "starts shooting" means there is an actual danger merely than a perceived potential danger.

Counter-example: You're walking on the streets, at night, in the "bad part" of town. Someone walks towards you with their hands in their pockets, and their head covered with a hoodie. They say "Hey, what are you doing here?". You perceive this to be a threatening situation and fear for your life. Are you supposed to: a) pull out your gun and shoot them, or b) run away?

Some proponents of Stand Your Ground would say that option A is perfectly fine, some proponents of Duty To Retreat would say that you must attempt option B first, and fall back to option A only as a last resort.

	▲	butvacuum 13 hours ago \| parent [-]
		It seems I may have misremembered my example and inadvertantly made duty to retreat appear worse than it is. However- it was meant to highlight the positons both sides and it holds correct enough for thst still.

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derriz 20 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> Somebody kicks in your door with a pump action and starts shooting- There are _some_ jurisdictions that require you to try and flee. You kill them and they werent bodily blocking your car in? Murder charge.

Which jurisdictions? Is this in the US? I’ve lived in a bunch of European countries and in none would you be charged with murder in that situation.

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lukan 20 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Germany has had some weird court decisions in that regard, in general the law does say flee and not shoot back if this is an option. But mostly courts are reasonable and do not punish the victim. Only if the victim decides to use violence after the threat is over

https://www.hrr-strafrecht.de/3/15/3-199-15.php

But there was even a case, where a hells angel shot a police officer in his home who were doing a raid - and got free (because they did not identify themself as police).

https://www.lto.de/recht/hintergruende/h/bgh-spricht-hells-a...

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bulbar 20 hours ago | parent [-]

The law says your are allowed to stand your ground. You don't have to flee.

> But there was even a case,

I don't know the details of the case, but if somebody thought some criminals are raiding his house with guns and it's reasonable the he thought that, then he's fully within his rights to defend himself and, depending on the necessities, by shooting at them.

Still terrible what happened, of course.

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lukan 19 hours ago | parent [-]

"The law says your are allowed to stand your ground. You don't have to flee."

No it does not in germany (and I think most other states of the world).

If fleeing is a safe option - this is what you have to do instead of shooting. Reality just seldom is so clear.

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bulbar 12 hours ago | parent [-]

See here for example as reference: https://www.heidelberg-strafrecht.de/notwehr.html

> Allerdings gilt besonders hier der Grundsatz, dass das Unrecht dem Recht nicht zu weichen braucht. Man darf sich zur Wehr setzten und muss nicht flüchten.

Translation: > However, the principle that wrongdoing need not give way to what is right applies here in particular. One is allowed to defend oneself and is not required to flee.

I believe that's pretty common and a sane approach.

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lukan 12 hours ago | parent [-]

Not so easy,

"In bestimmten Situationen kann das sonst umfassend geltende Notwehrrecht eingeschränkt sein. Dies ist dann der Fall, wenn die Verteidigung außer Verhältnis zum Angriff steht."

"Besonderes gilt bei dem Einsatz von Schusswaffen."

"Auch wird das Notwehrrecht eingeschränkt, wenn der Angriff von schuldlos Handelnden wie Kindern, Betrunkenen oder Geisteskranken ausgeht. Hier muss zunächst versucht werden, dem Angriff auszuweichen. Erst wenn ein Ausweichen nicht möglich ist, ist eine Notwehrhandlung geboten"

In other words, my statement above was in those words indeed not exact correct - you don't must flee before shooting, but germany does not has a "home is your castle" law.

	▲	bulbar 11 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Sure, there are sane guardrails in place. Your are not allowed to shoot at somebody who steals a bottle of water from you or makes a picture of you against your will. You also correctly mentioned kids or sick people that do not have a criminal intend in a narrow sense. Generally however, you don't have to flee and the defence doesn't need to be proportionate to the attack or what you are defending. You just generally have to choose the mildest defence available to you that you can reasonably know having under an ongoing or imminent attack - you don't have to "take your time and look around" if some milder defence is around the corner.

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CWuestefeld 14 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

At least in New Jersey, the duty to flee is the law.

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zimpenfish 15 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> I’ve lived in a bunch of European countries and in none would you be charged with murder in that situation.

Presumably not the UK?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Martin_(farmer)

"Anthony Edward Martin was an English farmer who shot two burglars in his home [...] was convicted of murder, which was later reduced to manslaughter on grounds of diminished responsibility"

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bulbar 11 hours ago | parent | next [-]

"Details" matter:

> The prosecution accused him of lying in wait for the burglars and opening fire without warning from close range, in retribution for previous break-ins at his home.[13]

No warning shot.

He also llegally bought a semi-automatic pump shotgun, possibly with the explicit plan to kill the intruders (as he got robbed in the past).

He also shot at them while they were fleeing.

So, yeah, in this particular case the judge decided that what he did was not covered by the law.

	▲	xyzzyz 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Just to nitpick, there is no such thing as “semiautomatic pump shotgun”. It’s either semiautomatic, or a pump.

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giaour 15 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Where exactly is the imminent threat of deadly force in that example?

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oopsieDayz 20 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

It's a BS

If someone comes through your home door guns akimbo in the US, blasting back is fine

US Supreme court has often leaned heavily on right to protect self in one's own home in ruling against local and state laws that might ban ridiculous things.

	▲	zimpenfish 15 hours ago \| parent [-]
		> If someone comes through your home door guns akimbo in the US, blasting back is fine Unless that someone is a cop, of course.

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ekianjo 20 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> European countries and in none would you be charged with murder in that situation.

Local news say otherwise

	▲	bulbar 19 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		Because local news love to omit certain details of a case or don't know them to begin with. They make money reporting what people want to read and that's not necessary what's true.
	▲	derriz 18 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Examples? Maybe it’s true but I’d be surprised. Like I said from experience of living under a number of jurisdictions, none will charge a person with murder in those circumstances. Everywhere I’ve lived, if your life is directly threatened like that, you are absolutely allowed to defend yourself with violence commensurate with the threat. They may have been confusing or deliberately conflating things with the fact that in most western jurisdictions, you are not allowed to kill, for example, a fleeing trespasser or burglar. This is viewed as an entirely different situation from one where you are being threatened directly with immediate physical violence.