If they are throwing rocks, I assumed they were on the side of the river still where the rocks collect. Where would anyone go hide?

Depends on where the guy was. If I was standing behind a tree next to the river while taking a pee and some crazy asshole starts screaming at me, I would probably tell him to **** off too.

Doesn't make it not murder if he killed me, IMO.

Down river, up river, across the river, wherever.

So your plan for them was to outrun the bullets?

They were almost certainly drunker than cootie brown, in large numbers and getting rowdier by the minute... they started this, i'd bet on it.

"WE'LL PISS WHERE WE WANT YA OLD MOTHER****ER"

Just a difference in opinion, but I see it completely the other way. The guy goes to pee, this old dude comes running out yelling to get off his property and fires off a couple bullets - killing the guy, his friends panic and start chucking rocks to get the guy to back off.

The bullets may have been intended as warning shots but it doesn't matter when one of them kills someone.

This isn't even a case where he was trying to stop a thief who was running off with his car or something, so "defending my property" is right out.

NO one is chucking ****ing rocks at a guy shooting real bullets at them...

The rocks came first, bet on it.

It would be murder in Iowa too. If you are outside your home or place of employment around here, then you have a duty to retreat when it is a reasonable possibility. The only question that would be asked in court is "could he have run away?".

And you're making cracks about outrunning bullets? :facepalm:

Certainly more plausible than pushing the canoe back into the river and floating down stream to get away while the guy is shooting at you or even abandoning the canoe and running on foot in their water shoes.

I suppose it will come as a surprise to absolutely no one that this would also be considered second degree murder here in Maryland.

Except, of course, that the only place in Maryland where you find both guns and water is downtown Baltimore, and if you start taking fire there, you have plenty of rusty dumpsters and discarded syringes to hide behind.

No, not more plausible. Not even plausible at all.

Also, in downtown Baltimore there's no element of surprise since you're expecting to come under fire.

For sure.