Close Call!

Legal & Second Amendment
1

USCCA Family,

The family and I were out, this was a few year’s ago around this time of the year , I have a son and 2 daughter’s ones 23 the other is 20 and my son is 17 now but back then they were allot younger.

We come home because I had to change my clothes so they waited in the car, I backed up in my driveway and as I was leaving back out I see 5 guys through my front door, there is a sidelight there (window). They were in my yard/driveway harassing my wife and kids surrounding the car using profanity loudly. My wife was terrified

At the time I had a Maverick 88 pump with a pistol grip which I immediately grabbed , I swung the front door open quickly and racked it back (had three shells 00 buck loaded) I told them they had about 2 second to get the f$#@$# off of my property unless they wanted to be part of the concrete. The young men took off immediately, fastest I have seen someone hop in a vehicle and skirt off

Back then I didn’t know too much about laws especially Maryland law, I have learned so much these past couple of years and recently became a uscca member.

Now, In my opinion the “Duty to Retreat” law has got to be the dumbest law ever written. it’s bureaucratic crap. The way I interpret it is, if you are in a immanent threat situation you have a duty to retreat even on your own property? who makes these dumb laws? . IF you are in danger and an immanent threat occurs you ARE NOT going to react in a “retreat” fashion you are going to think survival, okay MAYBE in a fist fight situation and that’s a huge maybe and would depend on circumstance…

Other than that you WILL HAVE TO protect yourself or family, those guys could have easily done something to my kids and wife and what? we are supposed to retreat? by the time the kids and wife could move or run they could have been shot dead or anything, it makes no sense!

A little more details:

The perpetrators were young men somewhere around 18 to 21 let’s assume, one of them took off his shirt and was ready to fight prior to me coming out with my Maverick. It turned out that they were going around knocking on doors ready to fight because someone had stolen an iPad from one of them and they used “Find my iPad” to trace back to our neighborhood. I live in a very nice development, one of the richest counties in Maryland to add, crime does not discriminate. The police came and took a police report and went out looking for them, I described the vehicle , I got part of the license plate but didn’t get it all, I was so focused on blasting the s%# out of them and protecting my family. This totally caught us off guard as most crimes do.

I may not have done everything correctly by law or training but the way I see it, I was protecting my family by any means necessary

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@TheProtector, I think you did everything right.
If you divide the whole situation into small time chunks, you find out that the imminent danger already has been in progress. There is no way anyone could retreat.

You have used the force necessary to respond to the threat. And you reasonably believed that deadly force was immediately necessary in order to protect your wife’s and kid’s lives.

Based on the circumstances at that time “Duty to Retreat” cannot be applied.

“Duty to Retreat” law is not dumb at all. We just need to know when and how should be used.
De-Escalation is always the first step we take, if possible.

Hopefully @MikeBKY can tell us more about this.

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It’s kind of difficult to retreat when your car is surrounded.

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I am not a fan of “duty to retreat” laws because they of the subjectivity of the various use of the doctrine by different jurisdictions. The variations range from “you must attempt to retreat if it i safe to do so” to “you must take all possible measures to deescalate or remove yourself from the situation before resorting to the use of defensive force, especially deadly force.” While I understand these laws, they are extremely subjective and, if they go to a jury, it leads to potential what if games about what else you MIGHT have done to prevent you from having to use the force. Make sure to look at what the actual law says if you live in or are traveling through a duty to retreat jurisdiction. Knowing it is a duty to retreat is not necessarily enough.
As for @TheProtector’s incident, I will not be a Monday morning quarterback to try to say what could have been done differently. In light of the fact that your family had no way of retreating and you could not depend on help coming within moments if necessary, your approach protected your family without any loss of life or the use of any physical force. Your show of force quickly and positively eliminated the possibility of harm to your family.

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I totally agree with your statement @MikeBKY

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Not a fan of the duty to retreat because I nearly got railroaded over it!

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