Again, If you provoke a confrontation, you cannot claim self defense. That should be the law.

[onenote]

78. Actually its not

I think you are referring to the duty to retreat. But the duty to retreat is not the same thing as a duty not to confront or provoke.

An example (that I've used before): A guy (much bigger and tougher and with a reputation of being a belligerent drunk) borrows some money from you. You ask him to pay it back and he tells you he doesn't have it. A couple of hours later, you get a call from a friend telling you the guy that owes you money is drunkenly buying drinks for the house at a local bar, loudly laughing about what a sap you are. Pissed, you go to the bar and "confront" him verbally, demanding that he give you your money back. He tells you to get lost. Instead of leaving, you again demand repayment. At this point, he drunkenly pulls out a gun and points it at you. You pull out a gun that you put in your pocket just in case the guy threatened you and you shoot him.

In a stand your ground state, you have a legitimate claim of self defense, even though you could have avoided the confrontation by staying home or by leaving when he refused to pay you. Even if it turns out that the "gun" he pulled was not loaded, you win.

In a duty to retreat state, the result would almost certainly be the same. That's because even in a duty to retreat state, you had no obligation to stay home and not confront the guy in the bar. When he threatened you by pulling a gun, you had a duty to retreat, but only if you could do so in complete safety to yourself and others in the bar. Since there was a strong likelihood under the circumstances (i.e., no one but the drunk may know his gun isn't loaded), it is reasonable to assume that he could shoot try to shoot you if you tried to leave the bar when he pulled his gun and that his shooting posed a threat to you and others in the bar. Now, if he had pulled a knife, it might be possible that you could have gotten away in complete safety, in which case you would lose. Every case turns on its facts. For example, the hypothetical I just described might come out differently if the guy had a knife and was 10 feet away from you vs. a case where he was only 2 feet away from you.