Essay
The bill I have chosen to use for model legislature is HF661, which states ”Law on use of force in defense of home and person clarified, self-defense and defense of home laws codified and extended, common law duty to retreat outside the home eliminated, boundaries of dwelling expanded, presumption created, and rights available to a person in that person’s dwelling extended to others defending against forced entry.” “https://www.revisor.mn.gov” Here I will walk through what this bill means, as well as the positives and negatives of it.
This bill looks to clarify and extend pre-existing self-defense law in the home. The second part of this bill looks to eliminate the “common law duty to retreat”. Meaning if your home is being invaded you no longer have to look for an exit for your home before you begin to defend yourself and your household. The latter half of the bill is stating that this law is extended to others in the dwelling trying to defend themselves as well as expanding the legal definition of dwelling.
The pros of this bill as I see them is mostly the removal of the common law duty to retreat. ‘Duty to retreat is a legal principle that stipulates individuals must attempt to withdraw or escape from a threatening situation before resorting to the use of force, especially deadly force.” -https://www.usconcealedcarry.com With the introduction of this bill if you ‘hear a bump in the night’ your first action can now be to go investigate and keep your home safe. Where before you would be nearly forced to exit the house and pray they don’t destroy/steal everything. Or worse, hurt anyone left in the house.
The consequences of this bill being introduced is it could lead to escalations of violence in the home if the intruder never intended on harming anyone. As seen in this instance the Minnesota Supreme court ruled on earlier this year. https://www.cbsnews.com where in this situation Mr.Blevins had the opportunity to retreat and escape the situation. However he chose to escalate the situation in an attempt to defend himself.
