All CCH instructors must have shocking bits of advice they use to wake up their students. Mine told us to make sure we kill the assailant so he can’t testify against us in court. Makes sense, in a grim sort of way. But I also read somewhere that when the cops respond to a shooting, they very seldom arrest the guy laying on the ground in a pool of blood. They usually arrest the guy standing there with a smoking gun in his hand.
I don’t think the system favors bad guys – I think it just doesn’t distinguish bad guys from good guys in the same way “common sense” does. The law’s business is keeping the peace and protecting citizens and their property from harm. When you discharge a firearm, even in self defense, from the law’s point of view you are putting citizens and their property at risk and disturbing the peace. You have to answer for that.
And remember the smoking gun scenario. The law considers everyone to be innocent until proven guilty. From the law’s point of view, the guy laying in the pool of blood is just a citizen, and you are just another citizen who apparently shot him. When one citizen shoots another, it’s always the shooter who has to prove he had sufficient reason to act as he did. And since we can’t have citizens running around shooting each other and getting away with it, the standards of proof are set extremely – maybe ridiculously – high.
All this makes sense in principle. From the point of view of someone who’s life is in immediate danger, though, it seems kind of insane.
