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To: allmendream
one cannot start a fight - assess that you are losing said fight at the risk of your life - and then draw a gun and kill the guy you started a fight with.

That isn't self defense.

Can you cite statutes or rulings in support of this claim? (I'll stipulate that who started the fight is relevant to whether one believed one's life was in danger.)

37 posted on 05/17/2012 2:25:52 PM PDT by JustSayNoToNannies (A free society's default policy: it's none of government's business.)
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To: JustSayNoToNannies
Haven't found Florida's law - but usually self defense claims are predicated upon being the victim of an attack. But while I was looking around I found this.

Apparently nothing in the “Stand your Ground” law actually spells this out - and one CAN start a fight - determine you are losing the fight - and then kill the person you started the fight with. I was wrong with how the law was written - but the intent - according to it's authors - was that such a defense was predicated upon being the victim of an aggressive attack - not the initiator of it.

http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2012/03/21/do-stand-your-ground-laws-encourage-vigilantes/what-the-florida-stand-your-ground-law-says

The problem is that nothing in Peadon and Baxley’s law says this. It provides that any person may use deadly force when “he or she reasonably believes that such force is necessary to prevent imminent death or great bodily harm to himself or herself or another.” So long as someone reasonably thinks he or someone else is in danger, he can shoot to kill, regardless of whether the shooter is the one who initiated the hostile confrontation.

41 posted on 05/17/2012 2:46:58 PM PDT by allmendream (Tea Party did not send GOP to DC to negotiate the terms of our surrender to socialism)
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