Duty to retreat vs stand your ground and castle laws: Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater

[TeamsterDem]

55. Fair enough

But I guess what I'm referring to - perhaps misusing "vigilante" in the process - is a case in which you've now got an armed population stepping into roles in public areas which they're not trained to handle. I realize that the law doesn't inhibit the freedom to flee, but when you give someone the right to a gun and the right to "stand their ground" (in a public venue) I think you'll find that fleeing is considered less often and in some cases AFTER firing a shot would be. Not everyone. Of course there are responsible gun owners - the majority, but I suspect you'll also have the types who are offended by the very notion of fleeing, and not altogether too worked up over stray bullets because "that sum bitch criminal ought'a get what's comin." Something like that.

With respect to my Starbucks example, let me be more specific: If a man enters a Starbucks with a firearm visible and makes it verbally known that he's there to rob the place, I think there's a big difference between a police officer (off duty or otherwise) confronting him versus, for example, me. I do have weapons training, but it's military weapons training, not civilian law enforcement training. Additionally, it's been some 10 years since I was in the military, so while the training doesn't just up and die, the sharpness - crispness - of the skills does erode after time owing to the fact that I no longer have ample time to keep my shooting skills as good as they'd need to be to control my fire with extremely sharp precision in a public venue. For that reason I don't think I belong opening fire because the odds of me being able to fire a guaranteed on-target shot (as opposed to even some slim-chance innocent bystander accident) is far from certain and, if we're discussing me preventing an imminent threat to another is concerned, we must then assume that the robber and victim are in close proximity to one another - further upping the odds that I accidentally hit the person I'm ostensibly saving.

That and target acquisition/discrimination is not like riding a bike. Yes, I could probably still - after all these years - do a better job of it than the majority of untrained individuals, but without somewhat constant training in that regard you tend to lose a bit of the quickness and agility in doing so. Moreover, if someone enters a Starbucks to rob the place, I'm not immediately convinced just by that fact alone that THE PUBLIC would be better off by me killing them than simply allowing them to take the money and vamoose. Maybe some people might feel more "manly" for doing so, but perhaps the round I fire hits an innocent person. Perhaps the soft tissue expelled on exit strikes a child, causing a worse and longer lasting psychological trauma than the mere robbery would have. And perhaps I wasn't right about the "gun" in his hand, perhaps he had a toy gun, perhaps I simply saw it wrong and shot, for example, a mentally ill person who was simply having some sort of episode. That is why police officers need to be doing that job unless the very LIFE of that other person is without question in mortal danger. Then yes, I'd agree I have a duty to help. But one person's "mortal danger" is another person's "been there, done that a thousand times."

You're right, I did misuse the word "vigilante," but I'm not sure my semantics make my argument any worse. Civilian law enforcement is responsible for interdicting a threat, not just some armed individual. I have no more business intervening in a robbery than I do heading into the Mexican border area to interdict cartel shipments: I'm not a police officer/border agent. Could and perhaps should I keep my eyes out for such criminal violations? Of course. But only to report them to a proper authority whose job it is to intervene and interdict. The only interdiction I should be doing is within my own home; my castle.

If the question becomes your OWN safety (or that of loved ones) then I think the solution changes; I think you do have a right to protect yourself or your family, or perhaps even friends with you at the time. But to say that I shouldn't first have a duty to flee (if safe to do so) from a public place BEFORE determining that I have no other alternative but to stand and fight seems to be a very dangerous precedent indeed.