Self defense should definitely be a right, and I'm not American - I'm Swedish. There's a big difference between responding with full force, or as Swedish law allows, responding with reasonable force proportional to the harm that you're at risk of.

Any limits to the right to intervene should not go further than what the state can fill in for. Since the police is not everpresent in our lives (and shouldn't be!), there will inevitably be situations where you need to fend for yourself, since you can't always just wait for police to arrive.

You can put this through some translation software of your choice;

http://www.domarbloggen.se/sodertorns-tingsratt/ansvarsfrihe...