Self defense laws are, unfortunately, filled with very gray areas, making them difficult to defend in a court of law when someone uses self defense techniques to protect themselves from an attack that could result in death or serious bodily injury. If you are going to practice any form of martial arts or self defense techniques it is very important that you understand the law surrounding the use of it in order to keep yourself from being unjustly imprisoned for protecting yourself, your loved ones or your property from what you perceived as imminent danger, destruction, bodily harm or death.
Defendants in a self defense case must be able to prove under self defense laws that they perceived that they were reasonably or even unreasonably in danger of being killed or harmed. Once this is done, they then have to prove that they were mentally competent at the time of the incident and not impaired in any way where they may have misconstrued the attacker’s intentions. Obviously if you are being attacked you are under some form of duress and this is taken into consideration. Impairment in this case refers to being under the influence of drugs or alcohol or suffering from some form of mental disability, such as paranoia.
Most law jurisdictions prefer to see the victim attempt to retreat or make an escape before restoring to self-defense that could result in the use of deadly force. They want the victim to exhaust every means of escape possible until there is nothing left for them to do except allow the attacker to hurt or kill them or fight back. Self defense laws are consistently being tweaked in an effort to eliminate some of the grey areas and make the definitions more concrete, but until that happens always try to diffuse the situation before it can escalate to the use of deadly force and never let anyone perceive you as being the aggressor. Your life is on the line here, and how you react may keep you out of jail.
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