In Minnesota, if you’re a law-abiding citizen, you have a right to use lethal force in self-defense, provided you meet four criteria:
- You can’t be a willing participant in the fight. If you’re in a fistfight and it escalates to knives, you’re not eligible to claim self-defense.
- There must be a reasonable threat of death or great bodily harm – and by “reasonable”, they mean (as Joel Rosenberg drilled into our heads in concealed carry training) “reasonable enough to convince a jury”.
- The force used must be reasonable; you can’t keep shooting when they’re on the ground.
- You must make every “reasonable” effort to avoid using lethal force.
The klinker – that last one applies even when you’re in your home; you must make a “reasonable” attempt to disengage from the fight. There are some extenuating circumstances that affect how “reasonable” will be defined by prosecutors, judges and juries – if you’re old, injured, ill, it’s -30 outside, you have children sleeping upstairs, you’re a woman being attacked by an ex-husband with a long history of violence and stalking – but the upshot is that, all other things being equal, your house is not your castle.
Changing this farcical situation was one of the big hopes of Minnesota’s Second Amendment movement for this session – until last November. The sweeping in of DFL control beat the crap out of most rational hopes for a change in the law.
Not that we can’t try. Joel Rosenberg notes an opportunity for the Second Amendment crowd in Minnesota to show that it’s still out there, and still taking names.
He quotes an NRA release:
House File 498, championed by State Representative Tony Cornish (R-24B), has been pocketed by State Representative Joe Mullery (D-58A), Chairman of the House Public Safety Committee, and could be defeated without being debated.“Castle Doctrine” self-defense legislation would allow a person to use deadly force in and outside of their home and vehicle and removes duty to retreat when outside of the home. The bill also provides that a person who uses reasonable force against an intruder shall be immune from civil and criminal liability for injuries or death of the intruder.Please contact Representative Mullery by phone at (651) 296-4262 or email rep.joe.mullery@house.mn and Speaker Margaret Kelliher (D-60A) at (651) 296-0171 or rep.margaret.kelliher@house.mn and respectfully urge them to support your right to self-defense by allowing HF498 to be heard.Please do. Be polite, please; but please be insistent that they do the right thing.
Ring. Ring. Ring.
Very tired voice: “Representative Mullery’s office.”
“I’m calling to ask that Representative Mullery do the right thing and schedule a hearing on HF 498, a bill I suspect he’s more than vaguely familiar with.”
Laughter. “Yes, he is. I’ll pass that along.””Thanks. Have a nice day.”Took me a while to get through the Keliher’s voice mail; her line was rather busy today, for some reason.
This notion – that your home should be one place that you don’t have to yield unconditionally to some armed scumbag off the street (provided one meets the other three criteria for justified self-defense) should be bipartisan; criminal scum don’t generally care if you’re a Republican or a Democrat.
That it’s not is something that we need to talk with our DFL friends and neighbors about..
Mitch believes that if anybody so much as sets foot on his property – religious nuts, Girl Scouts, Amway salesmen – they’re fair game to be kept in a pit in his basement and forced to apply moisturizing lotion.
“It puts on the fez. IT PUTS ON THE FEZ”
Yup.
That said, this bill is unlikely to pass this year — but Mullery’s staff has now been claiming that they’re not sitting on the bill, but merely waiting for an opportunity to move it forward. I don’t believe them for a moment, but it’s interesting how, err, defensive they are on the issue.
Lots to be defensive about, when it comes to this; Governor Pawlenty, for example, as still to follow through on some commitments that were to be completed by January 1 — of this year.
If I should avoid a confrontation likely to escalate into deadly violence everywhere else, why shouldn’t the same obligation apply when I am in my home?
Rick,
Pay attention. Closely.
If legitimate self-defense is on the table, it’s already escalated to deadly violence.
If I should avoid a confrontation likely to escalate into deadly violence everywhere else, why shouldn’t the same obligation apply when I am in my home?
You shouldn’t be legally obligated to prove that flight was unsafe or impractical in the first place; it’s not an “obligation” found in Minn. Stat. 609.06 or 609.065 in the first place, nor is it required in many, perhaps most, states.
You are legally obligated not to be an aggressor in a confrontation, but when you’re minding your own business in your home, you are not aggressing against somebody who doesn’t break in or sneak in.
Just to clarify, under present Minnesota law, you’re not obligated to retreat in your own home — see Glowacki, or Pendleton.
“If legitimate self-defense is on the table, it’s already escalated to deadly violence.”
OK – but I thought your point was that the criteria for “legitimate self-defense” should be different in your home than everywhere else when it comes to your obligation to retreat safely. My question was why?
“Just to clarify, under present Minnesota law, you’re not obligated to retreat in your own home — see Glowacki, or Pendleton.”
So are Mitch and the NRA wrong that MN law needs to be changed?
Nope; they’re right that it needs to be changed. Take a look at the Cornish bill; every one of the issues it addresses (and there are many) are ones that need to be addressed.
The key isn’t the issue of an obligation to retreat inside one’s home (there isn’t one, although there is a very large back door that prosecutors can use and have used to argue otherwise) ; it’s what rebuttable presumptions police, prosecutors, and jurors should have about the use and/or threat of lethal force in a self-defense situation, both inside and outside of one’s home.
Whether or not the rules for the intentional taking of a life should or shouldn’t be different in one’s home than outside it is an interesting issue, on which reasonable people can differ; that they in fact are different isn’t. (They are.) Again, note Pendleton and Minn. Stat. 609.065 — fear of death or GBH isn’t an element of a “defense of dwelling” defense.
A bit of an update: just as a demonstration of how tone-deaf the DFL metrocrats are on this issue, Mullery’s staff latest pravda is that they’re not sitting on the bill, but merely aren’t scheduling it.