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Castle Doctrine in the US - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

According to the Wiki we have a "stand your ground" doctrine which is one level up from a the Castle doctrine.

Other states have a stand-your-ground clause, or no duty to retreat policy which expressly relieves the home's occupants of any duty to retreat or announce their intent to use deadly force before they can be legally justified in doing so to defend themselves. In states where Castle Law is included as a part of a larger personal-self-defense law, there may be a duty to retreat if the altercation happens in a place outside the home; even though there is no duty to retreat if the altercation happens at the home.
Stand-your-ground laws (sometimes called shoot-first laws by critics) are statutes that allow the use of deadly force to defend against forcible unlawful entry or attack. These bills significantly expand the boundaries of legal self-defense by eliminating a person's duty to retreat from an invader or assailant in certain cases before resorting to the use of "defensive force that is intended or likely to cause death or great bodily harm to another." [3]
In a Minnesota case, State v. Gardner (1905) where a man was acquitted for killing another man who attempted to kill him with a rifle, Judge Jaggard stated-
The doctrine of 'retreat to the wall' had its origin [in Medieval England] before the general introduction of guns. Justice demands that its application have due regard to the general use of and to the type of firearms. It would be good sense for the law to require, in many cases, an attempt to escape from a hand to hand encounter with fists, clubs, and even knives, as a justification for killing in self-defense; while it would be rank folly to require [an attempt to escape] when experienced men, armed with repeating rifles, face each other in an open space, removed from shelter, with intent to kill or cause great bodily harm[4]
Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. declared in Brown v. United States when upholding the no duty to retreat maxim that detached reflection cannot be demanded in the presence of an uplifted knife.[5]