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‘Duty to retreat’ laws cost precious seconds but also further embolden violent criminals, potentially endangering additional lives.

There’s a problem in our society when people face prosecution for defending themselves in public, and when a major network props up an anti-gun activist on Sunday morning television to ridicule the basic right to self-defense with lies and rhetoric, the underlying issue and our rights at large as Americans face even greater peril.

Unfortunately, that scenario is exactly what America got this past weekend when ABC’s Martha Raddatz held a discussion with a Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence attorney on “stand your ground” laws, in which the so-called expert blatantly lied on the air claiming these statutes and precedents “upend centuries of common law on self-defense and allow people to carry guns outside of the home…” This is utter nonsense.

[Source.](https://thefederalist.com/2023/04/25/standing-your-ground-is-a-constitutional-right/) > ‘Duty to retreat’ laws cost precious seconds but also further embolden violent criminals, potentially endangering additional lives. > There’s a problem in our society when people face prosecution for defending themselves in public, and when a major network props up an anti-gun activist on Sunday morning television to ridicule the basic right to self-defense with lies and rhetoric, the underlying issue and our rights at large as Americans face even greater peril. > Unfortunately, that scenario is exactly what America got this past weekend when ABC’s Martha Raddatz held a discussion with a Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence attorney on “stand your ground” laws, in which the so-called expert blatantly lied on the air claiming these statutes and precedents “upend centuries of common law on self-defense and allow people to carry guns outside of the home…” This is utter nonsense.

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I went down a rabbit hole searching for a source of the claim that "common law self-defense required a duty to retreat". Allison cited research by Gifford's Law. Gifford's cited a paper by the ABA. The ABA cited nothing and just stated that it was. No source from any of them, no surprise.

I searched for other hacks proclaiming a historical duty to retreat and found variations like "English common law doctrine held a “duty to retreat” that meant that you were obligated to retreat in the face of an attack". But surprise, NOT ONE SOURCE cited anywhere. They all circle-cite each other's empty, no-source, made-up, fantasy about the state of the law.

There's a funny thing unique to the law going back 400 years give or take: it's all written down! If somebody said it, it's in writing somewhere. Conversely, if you can't cite it, it probably didn't happen.

Using a real source (and being a super nerd with an inquiring mind) I did read the 1895 case of Beard v. U.S. and it DID contain citations stating principals at law in existence then and historically, and coincidentally they did reach all the way back to English common law:

In the case of justifiable self-defense, the injured party may repel force with force in defense of his person, habitation, or property against one who manifestly intendeth and endeavoreth, with violence or surprise, to commit a known felony upon either. In these cases he is not obliged to retreat, but may pursue his adversary till he findeth himself out of danger, and if, in a conflict between them, he happeneth to kill, such killing is justifiable. Foster's Crown Cases (1762) County of Surry (UK)

https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/158/550/

American law has no tradition of a duty to retreat and neither does the English law, at least according to the research of the US Supreme Court in 1895. As usual, lying liberals are lying.