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Notes -
I try to avoid absolutes, but I haven't seen any SYG law that did anything except remove avoidance - which isn't to say a judge or jury somewhere misunderstood it in a case - so if I could be pointed to a bad SYG law that removes more than avoidance, I'd love to see it.
In this case, the defender with the gun isn't legally allowed to use it in a non-lethal confrontation - it would break the proportion pillar, just having the gun doesn't permit one to use it. SYG also doesn't do anything here as if the "defender" goes for the gun, they are not acting in legal self defense with or without SYG.
Theoretically, and I am confident this has happens fairly often, two people who are both armed (guns holstered) and get into a shoving match without anything else happening. In this example, if one of them reaches for their gun, they have elevated a non-lethal confrontation into a lethal one, and the other person is now legally allowed to go for their gun. If no one reaches for their gun, it is a non-lethal confrontation regardless of guns being present - same as if they each had a sheathed knife or sword.
To give you your due, however, the presence of guns (or any other lethal weapon) does heighten tensions as actions in the heat of a confrontation can be misinterpreted and someone quickly lowering their hand to their side can look just like reaching for the gun. That is an incredibly unfortunate example, though, again, this isn't an issue caused by SYG or remedied by removing SYG - with or without SYG a confrontation where lethal weapons are around (even when holstered) is much more likely to escalate to legal self defense due to misinterpretation of actions.
In a weird way, guns essentially remove the avoidance pillar in most self defense cases to begin with (making SYG redundant), as as Nybbler put it: you can't outrun a bullet. It would be a very unusual self defense case where the prosecution could reasonably suggest a person can safely run from a lethal confrontation with an attacker with a gun.
Where SYG would most likely apply is when the "attacker" has a melee weapon of some sort and the "defender" has a gun - but is also confident they could safely remove themselves from the situation yet still decide to use the gun instead. I would be surprised if the number of cases which fit this fact pattern or similar to this is incredibly small - making SYG a boogeyman. I'm not even really defending SYG laws as much as I am pointing out it is probably used effectively in a handful of cases annually and is being smeared by people who either have no idea how self defense law works or are lying for political/legislative ends.
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