Posted on 09/08/2011 6:16:45 PM PDT by Revtwo
Various Chiefs of Police and other law enforcement representatives have gone on a public tour with the Governor proclaiming how important the “Duty to Retreat” is to New Hampshire’s self defense law as it applies to honest citizens under RSA 627:4. Given that they feel that way, we propose adding it to the self defense requirements for law enforcement found under RSA 627:5. (Note that this applies only to a law enforcement officer's self defense, not to making an arrest.) We have taken the exact language that they support and just modified it to fit law enforcement. Here is how it reads:
(Excerpt) Read more at pgnh.org ...
Gotta love this one!
Why is this whacky place given such weight in the GOP primaries? Looks like a recipe for picking RINOs.
Kind of hard to retreat from a bullet coming toward your back while you are retreating. Don’t think I can run that fast. Should make the home invaders feel better though.
Stupid idea. When your daughter is praying the cop will shoot her kidnapping carjacker who is forcing her to take money out of the ATM, before he rapes and kills her,,,,, the cop will have a legal duty to retreat. He can’t even use force if he happened upon him at the very beginning,, carjacking her!
Yes,, this idiotic lunatic proposal even makes it mandatory that the cop run away and not fire, EVEN to protect an innocent third person. We must protect the predators. We can train the cops to do a great report when someone finds her carcass though. But again,, how do they arrest him when they do solve it,, if he presents a gun, the cops must ALWAYS retreat.
Yeah,,, gotta love this!
The "duty to retreat" bill is going isn't going to go anywhere. In fact I suspect we will have a "no duty to retreat" bill first.
Vermont and New Hampshire were invaded and conquered long ago by the Conn-Mass-NY liberals. They moved up there to get away from the mess they made there. These people made a geographic change but brought themselves along which resulted in having what they had before.
If, on the other hand, this would be a bad law for cops, then what makes it a good law for citizens? “Equal under the law” does not mean, some animals are more equal than others. Citizens have no less a reason to protect their own lives than cops do theirs.
As that is the case it only makes sense that the laws that apply to the peons civilians also apply to the ruling class enforcers police officers.
Either retreat forward or step back once to get a stable shooting position and shoot.
SB88 is in fact the “stand your ground” law. My mistake. So expect next week that this “duty to retreat” nonsense will be forgotten.
Sometimes I think there ought to be a “duty to engage and destroy.”
Not really. You have to understand the rest of the NH law that is being discussed. In NH you have no obligation to retreat in your home, or its immediate surroundings, and burglars should not "feel better". RSA-627:4
II. A person is justified in using deadly force upon another person when he reasonably believes that such other person:
(a) Is about to use unlawful, deadly force against the actor or a third person;
(b) Is likely to use any unlawful force against a person present while committing or attempting to commit a burglary;
(c) Is committing or about to commit kidnapping or a forcible sex offense; or
(d) Is likely to use any unlawful force in the commission of a felony against the actor within such actor's dwelling or its curtilage.
The debate is over section III:
III. A person is not justified in using deadly force on another to defend himself or a third person from deadly force by the other if he knows that he and the third person can, with complete safety:
(a) Retreat from the encounter, except that he is not required to retreat if he is within his dwelling or its curtilage and was not the initial aggressor; or
(b) Surrender property to a person asserting a claim of right thereto; or
(c) Comply with a demand that he abstain from performing an act which he is not obliged to perform; nor is the use of deadly force justifiable when, with the purpose of causing death or serious bodily harm, the actor has provoked the use of force against himself in the same encounter.
(d) If he is a law enforcement officer or a private person assisting him at his direction and was acting pursuant to RSA 627:5, he need not retreat.
Most NH residents consider the "complete safety" part of the law ridiculous, when considered in the light of the opening section on defending ones self from deadly force. As you correctly noted, in the kind of situations addressed by the law, "complete safety" is unlikely to be part of the situation.
And in this state that's exactly what they would do. Not too long ago a criminal shot and killed a police officer during a traffic stop in the northern part of NH. The next person to arrive at the scene was an armed citizen. He shot and killed the criminal.
I believe your question answered itself sir.
> Duty to Retreat
Have we suddenly turned into France?
Pay attention much? That is in essence the very point. That all the things you foresee are the things NH LEO's think THE CITIZENS should have a duty to retreat from. This group (a PRO-gun group) is simply pointing out that anything that's good enough for us, the public, is obviously more than good enough for those ostensibly subservient to our group, state actors.
When your daughter is praying the cop will shoot her kidnapping carjacker who is forcing her to take money out of the ATM, before he rapes and kills her,,,
Really? You do watch way too much TV. There are no documented cases of LEOs being present during this straw man scenario you have described. LEOs are not super humans in capes and tights who swoop down from the heavens and rescue damsels in distress, rather they are only around much later, if at all, to string up the yellow tape and write reports.
There is, as per the Declaration of Independence:
"But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security."
And unless you want to argue that the US Code isn't [valid] law you shouldn't claim that the Declaration of Independence isn't law.
Nope- wouldn’t argue with that at all. But I would point out that the Declaration of Independence is talking about engaging and destroying the government- it doesn’t say anything about small-time criminals.....
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