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Let's do a boundary-value problem here:
"Officer, [the individual I perceived to be a Gangbanger] looked at me and I felt threatened so I shot him...."
- (Prediction: That ain't gonna fly.)
"Officer, the guy got into my face, his friends punched me to the ground, yelled Gang threats of how they were now going to kill me and pulled guns ...so I shot them...."
- (Prediction: That would probably result in no charges at all.... except in New York, Massachusetts, Chicago, San Francisco, etc))
"Officer, the guys [who later turned out to be 13-14 years old] with red baseball caps came up to me, told me to get out of their territory, reached into their pockets and pulled out [what later proved to be a pellet guns] so I shot them..."
- (Prediction: You're definitely going to jury trial and you'd better be able to convince the a panel of people who've just come from Starbucks w/ their Latte's that you were in reasonable fear for your life from kids w/ toys.)
BOTTOM LINE: You need to go take a self-defense class where most of the course work emphasizes the legal issues and lots of case studies/examples. You also need to have thought all this out ahead of time -- and you are still going to be rolling the dice.
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