Law to OK deadly force as form of self-defense
The NRA wants a law that says a citizen doesn't have to run from an attacker.
CHEYENNE, Wyo. (AP) -- In the "Cowboy State," where guns are present in more than half of all homes, an unlikely battleground is forming in the fight over the appropriate use of firearms.
Flush with victory in its push for state laws allowing concealed handguns, the National Rifle Association is lobbying lawmakers here and in 11 other states to make it easier for people to defend themselves with deadly force.
The NRA, backed by a growing membership of about 4 million, wants legislation specifying that people have no duty to retreat from an attacker before using deadly force. About half of all states have similar rules on the books.
But in Wyoming, the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence is taking a stand.
James Brady, the former press secretary to President Reagan who was wounded in an attack on the president, called on Wyoming legislators in a statement last week to oppose the legislation, called it "a sham, a farce, a dangerous solution to a nonexistent problem."
"No one's in jail in Wyoming for acting in legitimate self-defense," Brady said. "The only thing this law might do is keep people out of jail who deserve to be there."
Neither state Rep. Stephen Watt, a Republican sponsor of the Wyoming bill, nor Uinta County Attorney Mike Greer, the president of the Wyoming County and Prosecuting Attorneys Association, could cite a Wyoming case in which someone was prosecuted but would have been spared if a no-retreat law were on the books.
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