The central thing to understand in "Disparity of Force" scenarios is this. Disparity of Force situations will very, very often end up in front of a JURY. These kinds of cases are tailor made to be litigated.
So, the issues for you boil down to how much MONEY do you have? How good is your ATTORNEY? These are the central issues because without money and a good attorney you may very well end up financially ruined even if you win, and imprisoned if you lose. You need to assume that if you go to trial in a disparity of force case (in probably most parts of this country), if the case goes to a jury, everything bad that can happen WILL!
This is the best argument that there is out there for having some sort of coverage in the event you need to defend yourself with a firearm. U.S.Law Shield, Citizens for Self defense, I believe there are others that offer a support system that is probably very well worth considering.
I have thought about this issue a lot as I am in the same boat as you. I am a 64 year old man, I weigh 145lbs. and stand 5' 9". Oh yeah, did I mention that I have NEVER been a good runner?
The police are NOT immune from big time trouble over disparity of force, either. Just check out the recent news:
Officer Jason Van Dyke vs Laquan McDonald (w/knife)
Officer Timothy Loehmann vs Tamir Rice (w/airsoft gun)
Officer Darren Wilson vs Michael Brown (unarmed)
If the police have problems like this, what chance do you think YOU have?
Jurisdiction matters. There are tons of variables besides the few you mentioned that are either taken by the law as mitigating circumstances, or aggravating circumstances for the same set of facts depending on which jurisdiction the shooting takes place. In a Castle Doctrine/Stand Your Ground state, disparity of force is a minimal consideration in certain places, such as home, business or car. The victim of a car-jacking here in Alabama gets the legal presumption of justified use of deadly force if he fires his weapon to fend off the jacker(s). Same for several felony crimes in a home or business. In a non-Castle Doctrine/SYG state, you may be exactly right how the law looks at the use of deadly force in any and all places a victim may be. You may be wrong too though. With 50 different sets of laws covering hundreds of different crimes in different ways, there are no blanket statements (or applicable warnings) that apply across the board.
You're of course right though that things can go South in any shooting situation. It's an extension of the schizophrenic way our (in)justice system looks at the Constitution, civil rights generally, and 2nd Amendment rights specifically the way I see it. When I say "schizophrenic," there are lots of examples available to demonstrate what I mean, but let's just look at the Martin/Zimmerman case for a brief moment. Both the cop-shop and the Prosecutor initially declined to seek an indictment against Zimmerman because they put their heads together and concluded that he was justified in shooting Martin under FL's SYG law. A few weeks later, after intervention by the State AG and ridiculous butting-in from the fed, Zimmerman was arrested and charged, and the Chief of Police was driven out. I think technically he resigned, but there were definitely higher-ups putting pressure on him to do it. In the end, Zimmerman, the local Prosecutor and the cop-shop were all proven correct in their initial assessment by an acquittal verdict based on the same principles of defense described in the SYG law. Yes, Zimmerman's financial life will likely never be stable again, and yes, he has since shown a proclivity for drawing further attention to himself since the trial, but the facts as they played out clearly show that the SYG did apply, and should've been left alone after the cop-shop and local Prosecutor first invoked it as their rationale for not seeking an indictment.
The same kind of schisms can show up here in Alabama I suppose, but most people who choose to carry a gun for protection don't decide to pull the trigger based only on what the law says, and that's true whether the law should shield them from prosecution as in the Zimmerman case, or if their perceptions of being threatened don't comport with local law at that split second when one decides to pull the trigger. In both sets of circumstances, it can go for or against the shooter depending on so many variables that it renders it unrealistic to expect even the most well-trained, well-informed and well-intentioned carrier to go through all the thought-processes you lay out above. As the saying goes, better to be judged by 12 than carried by six. There's only so much one can do to prepare for that moment, and most of the aftermath will still be out of their hands no matter how well-prepared they were going in.
Not really disagreeing with you, just trying to take the wide view on the subject. Legally-speaking, it ain't just you and the bad guy that determines the legality or illegality or the rightness or wrongness of a given shooting, or the accuracy/inaccuracy of perceptions that the members of government evaluating the shooting after the fact may bring to the table, and that's true even in jurisdictions like the one I live in where black letter law gives us much wider latitude than the vast majority of other states do. Pulling the trigger is always a crap-shoot (no pun intended). If one worries about it beyond making themselves as well-informed as they can realistically be, they're going to hesitate at the critical moment and get themselves killed.
Blues