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 20 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 13 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 13 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 12 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.