If your life is threatened it becomes self-defense and is then legal - at least for MD - our issues come with an unarmed and unthreatening burglar, in those cases you're "required to retreat" across the house to call 911 and wait.
Depends what their intent is. What if its to rape and kill you or kidnap your kid?
That becomes self-defense/defense of life (or whatever the secondhand term is precisely I know I'm screwing it up) in the jurisdictions I'm familiar with. An overwhelming amount of property theft is non-violent and done by unarmed perpetrators.
"Pardon me, Mister Burglar, do you happen any guns, knifes, or anything that could hurt me? No? Ok, I'm just going to go into my bedroom closet here, since you're unarmed and are thus unthreatening. NP. Take what you wish, thanks!"
Note the preconditions in my statement, that you are getting robbed and are alone. I don't know what preconditions exist in the legally required flee laws they have in liberal paradises like Maryland but I would hope they'd put in exceptions for if you have family in your house.mkopec_sl said:
Well, I think the issue is it can be hard to tell if you're just being robbed by an unarmed person or whether you're being home invaded and assaulted, what have you, particular at night when these types of events tends to occur the most. People wake up to someone breaking a window, kicking in a door, they're already disadvantaged, so then the law is telling them "You need to verify you're being B&Ed by an "unthreatening burglar" (to me that's an oxymoron, quite frankly, but that's neither here nor there and I don't think you meant the statement to be taken that way anyway, but hopefully you can see my point about presuming that a burglar is unthreatening in any situation seems to be a mistake from my point of view) before you're allowed to consider defending yourself, versus, you know, just grabbing your handgun from the drawer by the bed, poking your head around the corner, and blowing their brains out when they come into view.
Shrug - although I'm not fond of the lack of castle doctrine here - I don't see the harm in pulling a weapon on them and NOT SHOOTING and then if they pull a weapon or charge, then shoot in self-defense. Intimidating them with a weapon to leave is still perfectly legal here.
Freudian slip Tucbro? Or do we need to have a talk?
I dunno bro, seems like you worry plenty.Tuco_sl said:
You're basically thinking of how things work in movies. Look at this exact case...Zimmerman's gun had no effect on his losing the fight and sustaining injuries until he pulled the trigger. If things are bad enough to warrant a gun being drawn I'm assuming that I am near death in that moment. There is no way I consider trying to setup some kind of standoff until I can successfully call the police and keep the gun on the guy at the same time. I got a big phone, brah...can't handle a Galaxy Note 2 (TM), talk to 911 on it, and keep a gun trained on a guy at the same time and still feel out of danger. What if the intruder doesn't just leave when the gun comes out? Too many possibilities, most of them with unhappy endings.
