Attorney General Eric Holder said this at the annual NAACP convention on Tuesday:

There has always been a legal defense for using deadly force if—and the “if” is important—no safe retreat is available.   But we must examine laws that take this further by eliminating the common sense and age-old requirement that people who feel threatened have a duty to retreat.

Say what!?  What age-old requirement?  Whence this?  Has he never read John Locke?  Does he think Locke wrong?  If so, based on what?

Has he never read US law?  Does he think US law is wrong?  Oh, wait….

What logic of his underlies this outlandish claim?

If we retreat when we have the means to resist, all we do is reward the criminal for his crime.  Our right to our lives and our property create in us no obligation at all to retreat, or to cede them to another solely on the basis that another wants them more than do we.

On the other hand, if “we” have a duty to retreat when threatened, surely “we” includes that threatener: he has a duty to retreat if we threaten him.