Self-Defense Law

Defined

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The use of force to protect oneself from an attempted injury by another. If justified, self-defense is a defense to a number of crimes and torts involving force, including murder, assault and battery. - https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/self-defense

First, yes self-defense describes a methodology meant to educate a person to skills meant to stop 🛑 a physical attack. BUT, it also describes a legal concept whereby one who provides the legal system that what they did was in self-defense is tantamount to admission to breaking the law because SD is illegal unless one can justify actions taken as justification as to why they broke the law and ask the legal system for forgiveness (justification for breaking the law).

SDLaw as to justifying you position is subjective in nature chock full of obstacles, potholes and pitfalls that literally make your legal status as dangerous as the actual application of self-defense.

What follows is provided to give the student, teacher and professionals an idea of its complexity. Make sure you get legal advice from appropriate legal professional sources loooooong before you find yourself in such dire straits. 

THINK 🤔 AVOIDANCE FIRST AND DO ALL YOU CAN TO AVOID CONFLICTS WITH EVEN THE SLIGHTEST POSSIBILITY OF VIOLENCE!

There are five inter-related elements necessary to justify use of deadly force in self-defense: Innocence, imminence, proportionality, avoidance and reasonableness. - https://www.arsenalattorneys.com/blog/self-defense-case-study-frank-trujillo

Under California (tort) law, self defense is defined as 1) a reasonable belief regarding an imminent danger of being killed, injured or touched unlawfully, 2) a reasonable belief that use of force is necessary to prevent the harm from occurring, and 3) the use of no more force than what's necessary to prevent the harm. - https://lawshelf.com/videocoursesmoduleview/defenses-to-intentional-torts-module-3-of-5

Imminent unlawful aggression means an attack that is impending or at the point of happening; it must not consist in a mere threatening or intimidating attitude, nor must it be merely imaginary, but must be offensive, menacing and positively strong, manifestly showing the wrongful intent to cause injury. - https://lawphil.net/judjuris/juri2020/oct2020/gr_242942_2020.html

Like all defenses, the privileged use of force in self-defense has several limitations: (1) The privilege is terminated once the threat is terminated. That is to say, once the threat to the defendant has been defused, the defendant has no right to use force in self defense. - https://lawshelf.com/coursewarecontentview/self-defense

Note: the more I discover the scarier it gets, BUT as recommended by one professional I must persist at the physical because otherwise simply erodes our rights, constitutional and otherwise!