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Even when the shooter was armed (+ with a friend) and the victim was unarmed and alone?
When I was growing up there were some teenage boy in my school who used to blow up the postbox of a grumpy old neighbourhood man (I have no idea if he wad grumpy before or after they started doing this). And everytime he used to come running after them and they would run away as fast as they could. I guess by this line of thinking, if one of them had a gun, they could get away with shooting him because he had "clear intent to harm".
Thankfully, the law is not quite this stupid - if you're the instigator, you don't get to claim self defense.
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Yes. Given how easy it is for someone to die just by hitting their head on the ground from a simple fall, if someone's rushing you with clear intent to harm, then that means either they've decided that your life is forfeit or that they've recklessly disregarded the value of you staying alive. Either way, this entitles you to defend yourself with deadly force in my view. Obviously kids should be arrested and punished for blowing up someone else's property, but getting your property blown up doesn't entitle you to carry out that punishment yourself.
I think you´re wildly exagerating how often people die from falls. Im a medical doctor and have worked many yours in emergency rooms where people came in after all kinds of falls. Very rarely did someone actually die from a fall. The only ones I remember where people who fell from the top of staircases. Freak accidents obviously happen, but would be a bit strange to use to make legal precedent.
By the same logic you could say that the old man that the two young men where harassing could have died from a heart attach in trying to get away from them (the were high on methampethamine and armed).
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