When Deadly Force Is Involved
A Look at the Legal Side of Stand Your Ground, Duty to Retreat and Other Questions of Self-Defense
By (author) Bruce M. Lawlor
Publication date:
17 March 2017Length of book:
286 pagesPublisher
Rowman & Littlefield PublishersISBN-13: 9781442275287
Self-defense, as a legal concept, is easy to describe but difficult to apply. Generally, a person who is without fault may use reasonable force or defensive force for the purpose of defending one's own life or the lives of others, including, in certain circumstances, the use of deadly force, provided there is no reasonable alternative to avoid it. When someone begins to parse the words of this description, however, he or she runs immediately into a maze of self-defense laws that appear to be at odds with each other.
Bruce Lawlor clears up the confusion by identifying the major issues that surface in most self-defense cases and by describing how the law has dealt with them historically. Its purpose is not to provide legal advice, but to illuminate the path that must be taken to decide whether a claim of self-defense is valid. It examines a variety of issues, including the duty to retreat and stand-your ground laws, what is a deadly threat, when is fear of mortal danger reasonable, and even what happens when a person mistakenly shoots some in self-defense.
When Deadly Force Is Involved: A Look at the Legal Side of Stand Your Ground, Duty to Retreat and Other Questions of Self-Defense brings a bit of order to the confusion behind self-defense.
Bruce Lawlor clears up the confusion by identifying the major issues that surface in most self-defense cases and by describing how the law has dealt with them historically. Its purpose is not to provide legal advice, but to illuminate the path that must be taken to decide whether a claim of self-defense is valid. It examines a variety of issues, including the duty to retreat and stand-your ground laws, what is a deadly threat, when is fear of mortal danger reasonable, and even what happens when a person mistakenly shoots some in self-defense.
When Deadly Force Is Involved: A Look at the Legal Side of Stand Your Ground, Duty to Retreat and Other Questions of Self-Defense brings a bit of order to the confusion behind self-defense.
What justifies the use of lethal force in self-defense? On the surface, it seems to be a simple concept, particularly to laymen; but the question is one of the most complex and thorny legal issues that prosecutors and courts of law can deal with. The right to self-defense is actually perhaps the most narrowly defined of all human rights; that is something that most laymen do not understand even though it is attempted as a defense every day in homicide trials. Bruce M. Lawlor presents an excellent study of the issues involved in self-defense in a clear in understandable manner in When Deadly Force is Involved. It is a book that should be read by every American who owns a gun as it lays out the perceived parameters of that define the justifiable use of lethal force.