January 22, 2009

Do you know, under current New Hampshire law, you are not allowed to defend yourself if you are attacked in a public place? Imagine coming out of the bank after cashing your paycheck, or out of the grocery store with your children in tow and, suddenly, a man steps out of the shadows, charges towards you, pulls a knife, and demands your money. A woman returns to her car at the Mall of NH. An attacker with a baseball bat demands she get into his vehicle. You leave the hockey game at the Verizon Center and return to your vehicle in the parking garage at the Center of NH. Two men approach with a gun drawn demanding that you....

In the above scenarios, in order for you to use deadly force to defend yourself, you must make a split second decision. Is the attacker “about to use deadly force” or “committing or about to commit a kidnapping or forcible sex offense”?  You must be able to prove to police that you could not have safely retreated from the situation, or it will be you who goes to jail (if you survive the attack).

Larry Pratt, Executive Director, Gun Owners of America, put it this way: “Somebody should not be twice victimized, first by the assailant, and then by the legal system trying to destroy his life.” How could anyone actually believe that you should not defend yourself until you’ve run out of room to flee? It means that your life is not worth protecting except as a last resort!

House Bill 160 fixes the current law by saying that you may use deadly force in defense of your life “in any place you have a right to be.” HB 160 requires prosecutors to prove that you were not in a situation where you needed to use deadly force, instead of using the presumption that you must retreat from the attack. No one should use deadly force unless they have to! No one should go to jail for justifiably using deadly force to defend oneself.