The-Armory.com Forum

Anyone know if in virginia for self defense do you have "the duty to retreat". Florida just got rid of that so now you can prove self defense w/o having to escape or retreat first. I was wondering if anyone knew where virginia fell on that issue.

Virginia has no law on deadly force, per se. Instead Virginia covers deadly force with case law and common law.

Basically a person may stand his ground as long as he was not a part of the initial confrontation. If he was part of the initial confrontation, then he must retreat as far as possible and announce his intentions to leave the confrontation before he can use deadly force to defend himself.

An innocent third party can also be defended with deadly force.

Deadly force can only be used against deadly force, where the victim could be killed or greviously injured.

Hope this helps.

Thanks for the insight