However, can we see that what she is really demanding is for victims to "play the percentages" like so many comments in this thread have suggested? Is this "play the percentages approach" really reasonable in your minds?
Sorry, but that's pure BS. What she's saying is that she wishes her son was alive and that she is sad because he is dead.
She's not demanding anything and, if she could be objective (which is probably virtually impossible when a mother is talking about the death of her child), she would realize that what happened was a reasonable outcome given the situation.
The fact that mothers get upset and emotional when their children are shot and tend to make negative statements about those who shoot them, has no bearing at all on whether it is legally justifiable to shoot an armed robber. It also has no bearing at all on whether the use of deadly force is the best survival strategy against armed robbers. Those things are all totally unrelated
.
The rationale that civil society expects defenders to adhere to is the AOJ triad. Is Ability, Opportunity, and Jeopardy present....not "what's the likelihood"...?
This is mixing two important concepts.
It is certainly true that armed robbery, in and of itself, is generally considered to be JUSTIFICATION for the use of deadly force.
However, that fact has no bearing on whether or not deadly force is the best option for SURVIVAL in an armed robbery.
The fact that legal justification exists doesn't automatically make deadly force the best option for survival. In some cases it may be, but in other cases, the circumstances of the situation may make compliance a better survival strategy.
It's a HUGE mistake to assume that just because deadly force is justified in a particular situation that one should switch off the decision making process at that point and start shooting. Just because you won't go to jail if you shoot doesn't automatically mean that shooting offers you the best chance of coming out of the situation alive.
Several posts in this thread use the rationale that since most armed robberies (or 99.71% of armed robberies in Chicago in 2011 per JohnKSa) don't result in a murder, then you can conclude that your bad guy is probably not a real threat of killing you, or causing you great bodily harm. Give him what he wants, and you'll probably be OK. This is especially important if you're facing an already-drawn gun. Therefore, fighting an armed robber isn't reasonable.
I suppose everyone looks at things slightly differently, but I can tell you that's not the conclusion I would draw.
The point of the statistic isn't that you can use it to make the determination ahead of time that fighting an armed robber isn't reasonable, it's to provide a better understanding of reality. This will help you make your decision based on the circumstances you face rather than basing your actions on misconceptions stemming from a skewed idea of reality, or basing your actions on panic generated by the unrealistic idea that you're almost certainly going to die unless you start shooting.
Your bad guy IS a real threat and could very well end up taking your life, but it's important to understand that, by far, the most likely outcome is that you won't die as the result of an armed robbery--even if you are in one. That doesn't mean you should relax and assume you're home free, but it does mean you shouldn't feel like your only reasonable course of action in an armed robber is to start a gunfight and hope you win.
