Posted by SSN Vet: What I find sad about this entire incident is that if MikeNice had chosen to be MikeMean, he would have popped the guy twice in the chest and when the police showed up and saw him sitting on the ground and the BG dead with a knife in his hand, Mike would have been much better off.... a clear case of self defense (assuming he's not in one of the inane liberal states that have a duty to retreat.... but even then, he did retreat, untill he backed into a car.)
You are forgetting two very big factors: (1) Had a witness seen MikeNice shooting a man with his hands up, or had the incident been recorded on a security camera, it would certainly
not have been seen as a "clear case of self defense"; and (2) it is much more likely that a person shot with a handgun, even multiple times, will survive to relate the story.
The fact that the man had raised his hands an had been backing away would have made shooting him a crime. We presume that you would not advocate that.
Then, just to show how completely lost an morally adrift this country is, when the police due catch the guy weeks later, they won't bother charging him with the "amred robbery" that he attempted.
Do you not think that a much more likely assumption is that the authorities concluded that they did not have a case?
By the way, do not try to correlate the duty to retreat with "liberal" states. At the beginning,
all of our states--in fact, all of the original colonies--had a duty to retreat. George Washington had a duty to retreat, and so did John Adams. It was a fundamental principle of the common law.
In many states, either legislatures or high courts have determined that the a duty to retreat no longer exists even when one is not within his domicile.
Some of those are Michigan, Nevada, and the state of Washington--"liberal" states, don't you think?
A few that have not include Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, and Virginia--not so liberal.
The duty to retreat originated in the era of contact weapons. The advent of firearms has clouded the legal issues and led to the gradual elimination of that duty.
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PS: OOPS, missed Lee Lapin's post.
I would like to add my thanks to MikeNice.
