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We need to get rid of that idiotic "duty to retreat". What the heck was this fine citizen supposed to do if the perp had known the current laws re gun use, and simply kept right on carting the loot away? Shoot him? Yeah right, and spend the next decase in prison and have all his assets awarded to the perp as damages. Citizens need to be empowered to shoot if necessary, in order to keep someone they have witnessed committing a crime from fleeing before police arrive. And will somebody please hurry up and invent a little video recorder gadget to mount on firearms, to keep such a system from generating unproveable he-said-she-said cases?

Duty to retreat is a legal doctine going back a long way. It works well and serves to prevent unwarranted decisions being made by ordinary citizens in circumstances that the citizen usually has no training to deal with in the first place. If your life, or the life of another is in imminent danger of death or great bodily harm, you are empowered to use deadly force....duty to retreat or not.

The "duty" is merely a device to weed out those individuals who are unsure of how to react to a potential deadly force situation. Notice that in your own home (hotel rooms are included in the definition of "home") the castle doctrine replaces the duty to retreat. But on the street, duty to retreat is just another safeguard in an unsafe and litigious world.