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If the armed robbery situation arises, and I do feel that the store clerk or whoever is the subject of the armed robbery is in danger of "serious bodily injury", am I allowed to respond with deadly force? Let me just say that I would hate to kill another person, especially when I am not the actual subject of the robbery. I have consulted a few retired officers about this issue, but I wanted to get feedback from someone here who has a background in law (as many here have said that they do).
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BuckHammer, if you do not receive a useful response from your quite reasonable query, please consider this: I have learned in my experience that attorneys are usually quite reluctant to put specific advice in writing. This was often extremely frustrating to management, who wanted something to define the boundaries of what they could do and remain compliant.
There are, I believe, two main reasons for that reluctance. The first is that, as both easyG and Fiddletown have mentioned regarding the case at hand, there are always far too many variables to be able to lay out a useful hypothetical example. The second, which I think derives from the first, is that they do not want to create something that may be used against their clients in a real situation later. A face to face consultation is always more fruitful. Both you and I would, I think, benefit from one.
One other thing: you use the phrase, "I feel." Realize that, as has been said before, you
will have to later convince others that your "feeling" was reasonable. Your conclusion will be judged against the "reasonable person" standard, and you will have to convince others later that a reasonable person would have come to the same conclusion, based on what you knew at the time.
The related experience that I have has to do with persons making informed judgments with which they were quite comfortable, and having auditors, regulators, and investigators look back at a later time at the facts and competing judgments that existed at the time and come to different conclusions. Sometimes this led to allegations, findings, and so forth that became very unpleasant indeed.
I do hope you find this constructive and helpful.
Your question is good one, but it is difficult to address in the abstract.
One other thing. In my CCW class, I was told that it is
permissible in Missouri to protect a third party, but that one was only
required to do so if the third party were a policeman. I was also told that attorneys recommend against intervention in a situation involving a third party. That's second hand information.
Good luck!