kazzaerexys

There's a lot more to this issue than a single thread here can address. Ayoob gets to a lot of it in that book. A single unarmed opponent may represent a lethal threat based on a disparity of force. One of the typical examples of such a disparity is an able attacker against a disabled victim. If a normal fistfight (no defensible lethal threat) results in you ending up down on the ground, disoriented and unable to defend yourself, and the attacker presses on, then that could well be a lethal force situation based on the disparity of force. More than one court has decided that the "shod foot" against a defenseless victim is, indeed, a lethal weapon.

PR, there are some simple (or, at least, straightforward) situations where just about any sane person can look at what happened and say, yep, that was a danger to life and limb. There are a whole lot more situations that are much greyer, where you could end up facing charges and the final result, whether or not you get convicted, may depend upon your ability to clearly articulate how you decided, in a split second, that you were in fear for your life and needed to react accordingly. What Ayoob's book does (pretty well, in my opinion) is address a lot of the little details that can help you make that decision and explain it to a potential jury.

Remember, the legal standard for self defense is not that you felt in fear of your life; it's that a hypothetical reasonable man, embodied by twelve jurors, would have felt in fear of his life in that same situation knowing what you knew at that time.

So, getting grabbed and punched may pose a lethal threat, but you may spend a lot of time and money having a lawyer try to explain that against a DA who keeps pointing out to the jury how you gunned down an unarmed man in cold blood.

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“What is a moderate interpretation of [the Constitution]? Halfway between what it says and [...] what you want it to say?”

—Justice Antonin Scalia