In Massachusetts, a man was sentenced to a year in prison for shooting a coworker who was busy knifing him--for the second time--even though the Massachusetts Supreme Court admitted that "it is possible that the defendant is alive today only because he carried the gun that day for protection."
From the book "Lost Rights", page 221.
by James Bovard
MA SC quote from Commonwealth v. Lindsay,
396 Mas. 840, 489 N.E. 2d 666, 669 (1986)