No Duty to Retreat: Violence and Values in American History and Society

By Richard Maxwell Brown

Book Overview

In 1865, Wild Bill Hickok killed Dave Tutt in a Missouri public square in the West's first notable "walkdown." One hundred and twenty-nine years later, Bernard Goetz shot four threatening young men in a New York subway car. Apart from gunfire, what do the two events have in common? Goetz, writes Richard Maxwell Brown, was acquitted of wrongdoing in the spirit of a uniquely American view of self-defense, a view forged in frontier gunfights like Hickok's. When faced with a deadly threat, we have the right to stand our ground and fight. We have no duty to retreat.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0806126183
• ISBN13: 9780806126180
• Release Date: March 1994
• Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press
• Length: 278 Pages
• Weight: 0.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.4" x 8.3"