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[Max White]

Basicaly, if you are in a room with me and a gun, and you spent the morning writing bad fan fiction about you shooting me and then girls in short shorts come to sleep on your chest, your in for first degree murder, because it is premeditated. If however, all morning you were planning on sitting down with me and drinking milk, then I say something like "Yo mommas so fat, they use a grapefruit for here miniture" and you get annoyed and shoot me, that's second degree, non-premeditated murder.

Best example ever? I think so!

[Phmcw]

Well, a quick question : where do you live?

Else, you got the idea : battling to save your life, should it be put at risk is ok. Not all right, but ok. You have to do it.
However, packing a gun "just in case", which mean "I'm expecting to be assaulted and ready to kill the bastard" is not.
Or rather, as a normal citizen of a developed country, you shouldn't be in a situation were this course of action is reasonable.
If you really have to, it's that streets are damn dangerous and you should not be tolerating it.
(For instance, if you lived in the above mentioned Mexico, I would totally understand your decision, but it's hardly the same level of threat.)

[Virex]

I've had a look into what constitutes a murder and what constitutes a manslaughter and it seems to me that voluntarily manslaughter is entirely redundant, since killing someone is murder if the attacker had the intent to cause serious bodily harm, which is also true for pretty much any case of voluntarily manslaughter. So there you have the origin of my confusion.

[Max White]

Oh me? I'm from Australia. You know, that place that is currently under water?

As for voluntarily manslaughter, wouldn't that cover cases of survival homoside? You know the old case where as you and a buddy are climbing a cliff face, and you slip and the rope is caught and bad things happen, and the only way your freind can get back to the cliff face and live is if he cuts your rope and lets you fall to your death?

[Virex]

Well, you either intentionally hurt/kill someone or you don't. So even in that case, intentionally cutting the rope would be murder, and probably of the first degree too, due to the particularly torturing way you'll meet your end. scratch that, misread the criteria.

[Sir Finkus]

Well, a quick question : where do you live?

Else, you got the idea : battling to save your life, should it be put at risk is ok. Not all right, but ok. You have to do it.
However, packing a gun "just in case", which mean "I'm expecting to be assaulted and ready to kill the bastard" is not.
Or rather, as a normal citizen of a developed country, you shouldn't be in a situation were this course of action is reasonable.
If you really have to, it's that streets are damn dangerous and you should not be tolerating it.
(For instance, if you lived in the above mentioned Mexico, I would totally understand your decision, but it's hardly the same level of threat.)

You don't have homeowners insurance because you live in fear that your house is going to burn down, but it's damn nice to have if it does.  I don't carry, but I do keep a gun at my bedside table when I sleep. I'm certainly not "expecting to be assaulted", but if I am, I'll have a fighting chance. 

Ok, granted. Killing in self defence is still murder. Do my words tickle your fancy now?

The idea that killing someone to defend yourself is morally equivalent to walking up to an innocent person and shooting them is absurd.  I suppose every police officer that has been forced to use their sidearm is a cold blooded killer too.:Edit: misinterpretation on my part, disregard

[Nikov]

The idea that killing someone to defend yourself is morally equivalent to walking up to an innocent person and shooting them is absurd.  I suppose every police officer that has been forced to use their sidearm is a cold blooded killer too.

Remember the person killed was, at one point, a baby. Hence, they are cold-blooded baby killers.

[Max White]

The idea that killing someone to defend yourself is morally equivalent to walking up to an innocent person and shooting them is absurd.  I suppose every police officer that has been forced to use their sidearm is a cold blooded killer too.

You made a little jump in logic, understandable, but not forgivable. You made an emotional assosiation between murder and moraly wrong. I said that under the law it was murder, and you implyed that murder was evil under all conditions.

[Fayrik]

You made a little jump in logic, understandable, but not forgivable. You made an emotional assosiation between murder and moraly wrong. I said that under the law it was murder, and you implyed that murder was evil under all conditions.

'Eh, I think you're missing the point.
But by the looks of it, everyone here has, so I'll just drop it. >.>

[Max White]

Well he was attacking my argument(?) based on the fact that it implyed that people were moraly wrong to defend themselves, while I never made that claim, so how is it missing the point to draw out that distinction?

[Sir Finkus]

The idea that killing someone to defend yourself is morally equivalent to walking up to an innocent person and shooting them is absurd.  I suppose every police officer that has been forced to use their sidearm is a cold blooded killer too.

You made a little jump in logic, understandable, but not forgivable. You made an emotional assosiation between murder and moraly wrong. I said that under the law it was murder, and you implyed that murder was evil under all conditions.

Ahh, I missed the bit where you explained it was a legal distinction, not a moral one.  My apologies.

[Fayrik]

Well he was attacking my argument(?) based on the fact that it implyed that people were moraly wrong to defend themselves, while I never made that claim, so how is it missing the point to draw out that distinction?

Well, yes, and that's fine.
But it deviated from my orignal argument. Thus why I'm going to try stepping out again.

[Max White]

There was an origenal argument to be adressed?

[Phmcw]

I do keep a gun at my bedside table when I sleep

And that's exactly what I'm speaking about. You have no reason to believe you may get murdered but you keep a gun near your bed while you sleep as an insurance.
In Belgium you would be called paranoid. In America it's ok, apparently.
And on the moral aspect, you're getting ready to kill. Not to defend yourself, to kill whoever attack you. There is a distinction.
The fact that this distinction is lacking in America, that the gun ownership is high, that guns aren't required to be stored in a safe... all that can only make gun-crime flourish whenever crime is high (or even medium).

[Lord Shonus]

By that logic, putting on your seat belt when you get in your car even when you don't expect someone to hit you is "paranoid." More importanly the idea that the only way a gun can do anything is if someone winds up dead is absurd. I personally know of cases where intruders were driven off by an unloaded gun.