Political Crossfire Forums

Just pondering here...

Could not the winner of a duel use the legal argument that he was standing his ground and was in mortal danger of losing his life if he didn't defend himself? Heck, why not bring back gladiators, same reasoning, I had to kill him before he killed me. Following the Zimmerman trial there certainly doesn't appear to be any legal requirement to avoid potentially dangerous encounters in order to invoke stand your ground... why not just go the full monte and make it legal for willing participants to use deadly force against each other.

Would be too hard to define "willing". They'd almost need to get together ahead of time and sign a document notarized expressly stating that they were willing, so as to absolve the other guy. Plus you'd have issues of people being forced to be "willing" because of threats against their family, etc.

My understand of stand your ground is you don't have to turn your back and try to escape...thus getting shot or stabbed or beaten or whatever because you made yourself such an easy target. Trying to escape is potentially far more dangerous than self defense.

This whole notion that self defense is actually offense....pisses me off.

They already do that stuff, its called gang warfare though.

Why shouldn't people be able to choose to engage in mutual combat?

That being said, I think that is a novel twist to the stand your ground doctrine, but I don't know if it could stand up to the test. It's mutual combat, which is apparently illegal.

I would prefer that murder not be legal, whether both parties consent or not.

how does one consent to being killed in a way that doesn't leave gigantic loopholes for psychopaths to exploit?