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Old July 15, 2013, 05:56 PM   #5
KyJim
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Join Date: July 26, 2005
Location: The Bluegrass
Posts: 9,137
Quote:
This makes me wonder, yet again, why SYG has so many strident opponents.
I have wondered that, as well. The general rule in most of the U.S. for much its history has been SYG. In 1895, the first Justice Harlan Stone summed it up in a SCOTUS opinion:
Quote:
[I]f the accused did not provoke the assault, and had at the time reasonable grounds to believe, and in good faith believed, that the deceased intended to take his life, or do him great bodily harm, he was not obliged to retreat, nor to consider whether he could safely retreat, but was entitled to stand his ground, and meet any attack made upon him with a deadly weapon, in such way and with such force as, under all the circumstances, he, at the moment, honestly believed, and had reasonable grounds to believe, were necessary to save his own life, or to protect himself from great bodily injury.
Beard v. United States, 158 U.S. 550, 564, 15 S. Ct. 962, 967, 39 L. Ed. 1086 (1895). Somewhere over the years, part of the Country lost sight of this.
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