...but there don't seem to be any better ones in existence and it does it's job pretty well all things considered. What "sucks" in many of our minds, is that one doesn't get their hand shaken and a pat on the back for shooting a "bad guy" automatically. And what sucks is that doing the RIGHT THING can mean you end up broke or in jail.
As we often say, shooting someone is the SECOND (maybe third?)
worst outcome of a violent encounter, just shortly behind dying at the hands of a criminal. If you are FORCED to draw and shoot someone, you are having almost the worst day you could have, and your life is now going to change in very bad ways. Even if things "go right."
Many people kill others. Many are found to be justified in that action. Many are not. Nobody wears a halo -- or at least none anybody else can see -- nobody is the "good guy" just because he thinks of himself that way. Many circumstances end up where both sides of a lethal force encounter thought they were "the good guy." Many men or women who had a legitimate reason to fear for his or her life, still broke the law in inexcusable ways in how s/he went about "defending" himself or herself.
Law enforcement and the courts are constructed so that society can figure out who acted within the confines of the law and who did not. That is an expensive and lengthy process because it is WORTH it.
But you DO NOT want to be inside it if there's any way to avoid that.
... and even though we feel that some scumbag making a violent threat is justified for a use of force in "self-defense", it is the jury you have to convince with the current Federal and State laws that you will be subject to.
A jury, sometimes. Sometimes just the responding/investigating officers and the DA. Not every case is prosecuted. One of the goals of our debates and all this haranguing here in ST&T is to help folks understand how they need to think about guns and social interactions that is most likely to keep them from ever seeing:
a) Another person in front of their gun barrel; and
b) The inside of a responding officer's squad car; and
c) The inside of a police interrogation room; and ... failing all that...
d) the inside of a court room; AND ... and if they DO end up there,
e) Their self-defense plea rejected by a jury.
There is plenty of instances of assailants who have been killed in a confrontation, even pounding the crap out of somebody and the person who defended themselves still being incriminated or having a hell of a time proving their innocence (or that they were not guilty, LOL).
Worth repeating: You don't argue "not guilty" in a self defense case. That wouldn't make any sense, unless you're going to claim you DIDN'T shoot the "bad guy" after all. And that would be a real bad idea. You're going to plea GUILTY, with an "AFFIRMATIVE DEFENSE" (affirmative meaning, "YES, your Honor, I did it!") by necessity of Self Defense. In other words, "I'm guilty of the act, but I should be exonerated of blame and punishment because the law excuses that act in my situation. ... AND HERE'S MY PROOF."
A lot of people tend to think of the old maxim, "guilty until proven innocent," and that the "burden of proof is on the prosecution." In a self defense case, neither of those things is true. You're going to admit guilt and then it is on YOU to PROVE your case as to why you had to do that thing, and that the law's exemptions apply to what you did.