If somebody is attacking me with deadly force, they have made a decision.
Let's stop right there with your first sentence. The reality of the situation is actually:
If YOU THINK someone is attacking you with what YOU THINK is deadly force, then YOU THINK they have made a decision.
And there lies the problem of any deadly weapon as a self defense device. With any other kind of self defense device, if you are mistaken in any any of your assumptions, your assumed attacker isn't dead. With a gun, you are literally telling us the best course of action is to shoot first and ask questions later. Which is utterly barbaric and ignorant.
If someone threatens me with a knife or other lethal weapon, they have employed deadly force. I do not think they have employed deadly force, they have, without question, employed deadly force. I can't tell what they're thinking, so I have to assume that they are willing, ready, and able to use that weapon against me. If I cannot tell what they are holding, then I cannot, legally or in good conscience, use deadly force against them.
Deadly force is an absolute last resort. I actively avoid situations that I think are dangerous (dark alleys, dangerous neighborhoods, etc.). If I'm attacked, I will first try to find a reasonable escape route and just run the hell away. Only if all other options are exhausted would I even consider drawing my gun.
Do you believe that any use of force at all in self defense is justified?
If the microstamping (among other gun ID systems) are so great why are police specifically exempted from these laws?
That's simple - they shouldn't be. And in many countries with mandatory registration, they're not - the individual officer is not the registered owner of the firearm, the department is, however, the department has extensive records of which firearm is issued to which officer, though at this time, ballistics must be relied upon to match a firearm with a fired round, rather than any microstamping or other technology.
Though, I recall more than one proposal for police weapons to be ID tagged to identify the firearm used. They already do it with many tasers - the most popular brand of police-issue tasers in the world do it by firing a bunch of little plastic tags that scatter in the area that it's fired.
So, I'm having the exact same conversation again, in the same thread, with the same kind of person who is misunderstanding me in the same way. Maybe I'm not explaining myself correctly.
Have I ever said use of force in self defense isn't justified? Or have I said use of deadly force in self defense is never justified? I think I said the latter, and never the former.
I'm someone who HAS been threatened with a knife. And you know what? I'm sooooo glad that I live in Europe, or the chance is that the person who threatened me would be dead by now. And I DON'T WANT THE PERSON WHO THREATENED ME WITH A KNIFE TO DIE! But, if that person was in America, there's a chance that person would die. And die to the hand of someone like you.
Do you know how many people who threaten someone with a knife WANT to kill their victim? Never. If they wanted the person dead in exchange for whatever they wanted to steal, they would kill the person first, and then take it.
But it turns out they don't want to kill anyone, even if they are threatening. They just want your money. And you should give them your money. Or, if you value YOUR health over your money, you should fight them for it. But you have no right to value your money over THEIR life. That is fucked up.
That you can't tell what they are thinking makes YOU the danger in this situation. Not them. You. You are the most dangerous person there.
What I did in the situation I was threatened with a knife was to turn around and walk away. You know what they did? Nothing. They didn't back up the threat at all.
Another time I was attacked by two people wanting to steal my camera? I shouted loudly and repeatedly for them to stop until other people came to break things up.
Last year, when someone tried to rob my girlfriend and I, I punched the guy hard in the face. Less than a minute later a bystander was chasing him down.
Years ago some people tried to rob my brother and I, and I got into a fight until the police turned up and brutally beat the robbers with sticks. I went to the hospital to have my nose xrayed.
Use force, as much as you want, but don't use deadly force.
In a society without the constant fear of guns, you know how many people are killed during home invasions? So close to zero I can't find any stories of it happening anywhere in Europe after a quick google. How many people are killed in robberies? How many people are killed by accident?
By your judgement, is a punch to the face deadly force?
That's a silly question. A punch can kill, but it lacks the implicit intention to kill of a firearm. If you are shooting at a person, you are shooting to kill. If you are punching someone, you can punch someone to death, but in most if not all cases of single punches causing death, it was not an intentional act.
By your judgement, is a punch to the face deadly force?
That's a silly question. A punch can kill, but it lacks the implicit intention to kill of a firearm. If you are shooting at a person, you are shooting to kill. If you are punching someone, you can punch someone to death, but in most if not all cases of single punches causing death, it was not an intentional act.
My question is not a silly question. If you punch a person in the face, and they die, you killed them. Obviously, your punch was indeed deadly force. If you are opposed to the use of deadly force in self defense, you should never punch someone in the face (assuming we define "deadly force" as "potentially fatal").
If you shoot someone you shoot to kill. Shooting to wound is going to get you put in jail.
Punching someone in the face is not lethal force unless:
A) the person is seriously weak and fragile. the person throwing the punch is a professional fighter.
There is no comparison here.
To reiterate: if you are going to pull the trigger the death of the person you are aiming at has to be your goal. If you do not want them dead you do not shoot.
If you shoot someone you shoot to kill. Shooting to wound is going to get you put in jail.
Punching someone in the face is not lethal force unless:
A) the person is seriously weak and fragile. the person throwing the punch is a professional fighter.
There is no comparison here.
To reiterate: if you are going to pull the trigger the death of the person you are aiming at has to be your goal. If you do not want them dead you do not shoot.
Shooting to stop the threat does not mean "shoot to wound". It means aim for center mass, and shoot until the attacker stops. Like I said, 80% of people shot in the body (torso) survive. Being shot is far from a guarantee of death, and death is not the goal. If you think that the goal of shooting an attacker is to kill them you are (pardon the pun) dead wrong.
A person who thinks a punch to the face is deadly force and being shot is not, is not someone who should be allowed anywhere near a gun of any kind.
Do you spend your days thinking up new and interesting ways to twist people's words into things they did not say? Did I ever once say or imply that shooting someone is not deadly force?
My question is not a silly question. If you punch a person in the face, and they die, you killed them. Obviously, your punch was indeed deadly force. If you are opposed to the use of deadly force in self defense, you should never punch someone in the face (assuming we define "deadly force" as "potentially fatal").
Wrong. Your intent is to kill. You are using a deadly weapon, and frankly, your intent should be to kill in a situation where you are acting in your own self defense, and you have arrived at the use of your firearm, which should be your last resort - where you have attempted or eliminated as impossible every other means to stop the threat to your person. Survival rates are irrelevant to intent.
For example - for every completed suicide, there are roughly 30 (at least in my country) that survive the attempt, that does not mean that someone committing suicide does not intend to take their own life.
If you cannot deal with the fact that if you are shooting someone(or at least trying to) you are intending to kill them, then I'm sorry, you shouldn't be using a firearm for self defense, or even contemplating it. I'm not like some other people here, I have no personal moral problem with killing in self defense, with a firearm or without, but if you're shooting someone gambling on the fact that they'll probably survive, then you simply should not be using a firearm for self defense.
Also, if you want to go down that path? It's still a silly question. Because if survival rates matter, then you still can't compare a punch to a gunshot, because a punch has a even higher survival rate than a gunshot wound to the body(practically 100% - even most one-punch deaths are not caused by the punch, but by other conditions, such as medical conditions, or the victim falling and smacking their head on something causing lethal injury), and a much, much lower amount of potentially lethal force.
There's a thing called the "Head Injury Criterion", basically the measure of likelihood of head injury by blunt force trauma to the head. A score of 1,000 indicates a serious injury, in one in six cases. The punch of an Olympic boxer only rates about 164. Your chance of dying from a single punch from an attacker in a confrontation are one in tens of thousands, if not more - far, far better than your chances of surviving a shot to the chest.
Last of all, you're completely misrepresenting what the article says. What the article actually says is that "Shots to roughly 80 percent of targets on the body would not be fatal blows, Dr. Fackler said" - which does not indicate an 80% survival rate to being shot in the body(which I must point out, is delightfully non-specific), it indicates that most places you can be shot on the entire body are not immediately lethal.
Along with this, the article notes that "If a gunshot victim’s heart is still beating upon arrival at a hospital, there is a 95 percent chance of survival" as you paraphrased, but it also notes that survival rates for anyone shot in a vital organ plummets, or as the article puts it, "People shot in vital organs usually do not make it that far, he added." The abdomen, funnily enough, being just jam-packed with vital organs - which is also part of the reason that you shoot for the center of mass, because it's got the best ratio of chance-to-hit vs lethality.
If you're going to argue that a penetrating chest wound has the same potential for death as a punch to the face - not to put too fine a point on it - you're out of your bloody mind.
Nope. The intent is not to kill, it is to stop the threat. Of course I am aware that there is a very real chance that the person who is shot will die as, and that is a chance that I am willing to accept. There is also a chance, albeit a much smaller one, that if you strike someone in self defense (punch, kick, etc.), they will die.
Scott admonished me in the other thread that aspiring to anything less than being a paragon of moral virtue makes me an evil person. If that is true, and if killing a person for any reason (even self defense) is an inherently evil act, then using any force in self defense must be considered inherently wrong, for even the slightest chance of killing your attacker makes you an evil person. If someone knocks you down and starts kicking you in the head, don't you dare strike out with your hands or feet! You might trip them, causing them to fall on their head and die, and then you're an evil murdering asshole.
You should have done your research before asking for this debate. If you had you would have seen that you were adding nothing new to the topic that has not already been debated on this forum.
Again, twisting the argument. Using intentional lethal force and claiming it is not lethal is what makes it less than paragon. Furthermore you are using the straw man argument in wild situations.
I've had two life threatening situations personally happen to me and one more happen to close family.
The first time I had a gun pointed to my head happened when my friend showed me his dad's revolver. We were all the way up to the point where he cocked the trigger. What am I to do, shoot him? No, I tackle him and tell him to check if it was loaded. This is a gun belonging to a legal gun owner who went through legal means to purchase this gun legally. Can you dismiss this as a case of negligence? Of course, but what about every other case like that?
What of the threat of random strangers? I was mugged on the Red Line one time in college. I rounded a corner into four people who ambushed and pinned me to a wall. They had guns, I did not. If I had a gun, they would have taken that too. What if they didn't take my theoretical gun and they didn't beat the shit out of me before disengaging? Do I draw and fire? It'd be making a threatening action against four already drawn guns and in their mind a lethal threat is targeting them, better use their tool to pacify me. What then should I have used, grenades, dead-man switches, my own personally funded crew of Hell's Angels? I would recommend arguing for option 3, as that one sounds more entertaining.
Finally what of that 30-foot knife argument that every die hard gun advocate pulls out eventually. My friend's uncle, same one that pulled out that revolver on me, was being held up at knife point at his mechanic shop. The guy had a lethal weapon and lethal intent and a demand for all his money. He gave the guy a $20 and a strong wording to leave. The attacker wasn't satisfied and applied lethal force. His uncle took his knife arm and stabbed his other arm with it before literally tossing him out of the shop. This last story was more hero worship to how much of a bad-ass he was.
Either way this is going to go nowhere. This isn't a discussion, it's a shouting match at two brick walls.
Nope. The intent is not to kill, it is to stop the threat. Of course I am aware that there is a very real chance that the person who is shot will die as, and that is a chance that I am willing to accept. There is also a chance, albeit a much smaller one, that if you strike someone in self defense (punch, kick, etc.), they will die.
Scott admonished me in the other thread that aspiring to anything less than being a paragon of moral virtue makes me an evil person. If that is true, and if killing a person for any reason (even self defense) is an inherently evil act, then using any force in self defense must be considered inherently wrong, for even the slightest chance of killing your attacker makes you an evil person. If someone knocks you down and starts kicking you in the head, don't you dare strike out with your hands or feet! You might trip them, causing them to fall on their head and die, and then you're an evil murdering asshole.
Yes. Violence is always wrong. If you punched and kicked Mr. Rogers, may he RIP, do you think he would hit back at all? No. He would just look at you, even if you beat him to death. Even if we could not live up to that level of greatness, we should at least aspire to it.
You consider that courageous behavior to be stupid and are ascribing virtue to barbaric vengeance.
Maybe the reason you are so worried about defending yourself from this imaginary threat is that you are the kind of person who is frequently attacked? A person who has anger and makes others angry. Instead of wasting time defending yourself with guns, you should try to defend yourself with love. It's a lot cheaper. If you give and receive love from others, nobody will want to shoot you. If someone does come after you, the people who love you will come to your aid, and you will to theirs.
Instead of being so concerned with prolonging the limited life you have, you should instead be concerned with increasing the quality. I can assure you that guns will not help you in this regard in any way whatsoever.
Read the beginning of Les Miserables again. Oh, you want to steal my silver flatware? Go ahead. Take it.
Also, your account will never be deleted. This isn't the EU. You don't have a right to be forgotten.
Another key problem with smart guns is the NJ law that mandates once such guns are first sold anywhere in the US a three year clock starts and after three years ONLY smart guns can be sold in NJ. This law is the reason why so many gun owners are against smart guns being sold anywhere in the US.
OK, I held out for a good, long time hoping to have a good debate, but instead all I got was insults and half-formed opinions.
I find this sentiment quite puzzling, and rather offensive. As far as I'm concerned, it seems to me that the discussion was reasonable, and fairly genuine from both sides.
I, for one, think Scott and Luke are going rather too far in calling you "evil". Although I agree with them that it's a moral failing on your part (just as it would be a moral failing on my part if I was wrong), I think it's simply far too convenient to suggest that you think the way you do because you happen to be evil. People just aren't that simple.
I think that you're wrong, and I think that you're making an error in the way you think about the greater issue, and that that line of thinking leads to somewhat immoral decisions. I don't think that's what people mean when they use the term "evil" - if that's all it takes, then pretty much 100% of people are "evil".
However, to dismiss the arguments other people responded to you with as "half-formed opinions" is a complete cop-out. If the points people made were indeed "half-formed opinions", it should have been a trivial matter for you to rebut them; in fact you did not do so. Sure, it is your prerogative to leave the discussion, but don't do so while totally dismissing the other people who argued against you in good faith.
Thoughts aren't evil. Actions are evil. Although I was explaining why Scott would call someone evil, not calling him/her evil. Implying someone is a disturbing cunt is not calling them evil.
Nope. The intent is not to kill, it is to stop the threat.
Yes, the intention is to stop the threat, to put it as you euphemistically do. Just as the US doesn't torture people, they employ "Enhanced interrogation techniques". Just as the NSA doesn't spy on people, they "monitor communications for threats to national security." And how are you stopping the threat? What is the process of stopping the threat with your firearm? You intend to stop the threat, by what means? Drawing your gun and proceeding to aim a barrage of harsh language in their direction that makes them reconsider their life choices?
Dressing up distasteful action in pretty words does not make the action any less distasteful, nor does it change the nature of that action. It doesn't matter if you say you "intend to stop the threat" instead of "intending to kill them", because you're intending to stop the threat by killing it. In fact, I'm concerned that by the way you seem dead-set on putting it, you do not appreciate the gravity of the action you're speaking of.
Like I've said, I'm not like the rest of the people here - I have no moral problem with killing in self defense, if necessary. But I do have a damned big problem in dressing it up in such nonsense to make yourself feel better- Oh no, he died when I shot him? I didn't mean to kill him when I shot him three times in the chest with .45 caliber hollowpoints, I just meant to stop the threat.
I don't mean this as an insult, but you should not be carrying or contemplating using a firearm for self defense. Your repeated attempts to dress it up in euphemisms and feel-good language indicate that you are simply not prepared for the responsibility this entails - namely the responsibility for ending someone's life by your conscious action.
That's not a bad thing, I can think of maybe a half-dozen people at best who have passed through these forums who could handle it, and I've seen a lot more than a half dozen people here over time. But you still can't deal, and in my eyes, that still means you shouldn't be carrying or owning a firearm with the intent of using it for self defense.
OK, I held out for a good, long time hoping to have a good debate, but instead all I got was insults and half-formed opinions.
Scott, can you please delete my account? I want to remove all temptation to come back.
What you're experiencing is the crucible that basically all of us have cooked in more times than we can count - we've all had an opinion that the rest didn't agree with. I've had blazing rows much fiercer than this with every single person you've disagreed with(or who have agreed with you, for that matter) so far, to be honest with you.
That's the price of admission for hanging out with a group of intelligent people, and one village idiot. (Before you get any ideas about being the village idiot, you're going to have to fight me for the job.)
Nobody has seriously insulted you, and considering we've hashed this all out previously, I personally guarantee you that none of these opinions are half-formed, they've been tried, tested, argued out, and changed where they were found wanting.
But, if you have found that you want to leave, then fair enough. Genuinely sorry to see you go, you seem a pretty decent chap with a good head on and a decent personality, but if you can't handle people disagreeing with your ideas and testing them in arguments, then this is not a place where you would find happiness in any measure, and it really is best if you do move on.
Comments
Deadly force is an absolute last resort. I actively avoid situations that I think are dangerous (dark alleys, dangerous neighborhoods, etc.). If I'm attacked, I will first try to find a reasonable escape route and just run the hell away. Only if all other options are exhausted would I even consider drawing my gun.
Do you believe that any use of force at all in self defense is justified?
Though, I recall more than one proposal for police weapons to be ID tagged to identify the firearm used. They already do it with many tasers - the most popular brand of police-issue tasers in the world do it by firing a bunch of little plastic tags that scatter in the area that it's fired.
Have I ever said use of force in self defense isn't justified? Or have I said use of deadly force in self defense is never justified? I think I said the latter, and never the former.
I'm someone who HAS been threatened with a knife. And you know what? I'm sooooo glad that I live in Europe, or the chance is that the person who threatened me would be dead by now. And I DON'T WANT THE PERSON WHO THREATENED ME WITH A KNIFE TO DIE! But, if that person was in America, there's a chance that person would die. And die to the hand of someone like you.
Do you know how many people who threaten someone with a knife WANT to kill their victim? Never. If they wanted the person dead in exchange for whatever they wanted to steal, they would kill the person first, and then take it.
But it turns out they don't want to kill anyone, even if they are threatening. They just want your money. And you should give them your money. Or, if you value YOUR health over your money, you should fight them for it. But you have no right to value your money over THEIR life. That is fucked up.
That you can't tell what they are thinking makes YOU the danger in this situation. Not them. You. You are the most dangerous person there.
What I did in the situation I was threatened with a knife was to turn around and walk away. You know what they did? Nothing. They didn't back up the threat at all.
Another time I was attacked by two people wanting to steal my camera? I shouted loudly and repeatedly for them to stop until other people came to break things up.
Last year, when someone tried to rob my girlfriend and I, I punched the guy hard in the face. Less than a minute later a bystander was chasing him down.
Years ago some people tried to rob my brother and I, and I got into a fight until the police turned up and brutally beat the robbers with sticks. I went to the hospital to have my nose xrayed.
Use force, as much as you want, but don't use deadly force.
In a society without the constant fear of guns, you know how many people are killed during home invasions? So close to zero I can't find any stories of it happening anywhere in Europe after a quick google. How many people are killed in robberies? How many people are killed by accident?
My question is not a silly question. If you punch a person in the face, and they die, you killed them. Obviously, your punch was indeed deadly force. If you are opposed to the use of deadly force in self defense, you should never punch someone in the face (assuming we define "deadly force" as "potentially fatal").
If you shoot someone you shoot to kill. Shooting to wound is going to get you put in jail.
Punching someone in the face is not lethal force unless:
A) the person is seriously weak and fragile.
There is no comparison here.
To reiterate: if you are going to pull the trigger the death of the person you are aiming at has to be your goal. If you do not want them dead you do not shoot.
A 46 year old soccer referee was punched in the face and killed by a 17 year old. The referee was not weak and fragile, and the teenager was not a professional fighter.
For example - for every completed suicide, there are roughly 30 (at least in my country) that survive the attempt, that does not mean that someone committing suicide does not intend to take their own life.
If you cannot deal with the fact that if you are shooting someone(or at least trying to) you are intending to kill them, then I'm sorry, you shouldn't be using a firearm for self defense, or even contemplating it. I'm not like some other people here, I have no personal moral problem with killing in self defense, with a firearm or without, but if you're shooting someone gambling on the fact that they'll probably survive, then you simply should not be using a firearm for self defense.
Also, if you want to go down that path? It's still a silly question. Because if survival rates matter, then you still can't compare a punch to a gunshot, because a punch has a even higher survival rate than a gunshot wound to the body(practically 100% - even most one-punch deaths are not caused by the punch, but by other conditions, such as medical conditions, or the victim falling and smacking their head on something causing lethal injury), and a much, much lower amount of potentially lethal force.
There's a thing called the "Head Injury Criterion", basically the measure of likelihood of head injury by blunt force trauma to the head. A score of 1,000 indicates a serious injury, in one in six cases. The punch of an Olympic boxer only rates about 164. Your chance of dying from a single punch from an attacker in a confrontation are one in tens of thousands, if not more - far, far better than your chances of surviving a shot to the chest.
Last of all, you're completely misrepresenting what the article says. What the article actually says is that "Shots to roughly 80 percent of targets on the body would not be fatal blows, Dr. Fackler said" - which does not indicate an 80% survival rate to being shot in the body(which I must point out, is delightfully non-specific), it indicates that most places you can be shot on the entire body are not immediately lethal.
Along with this, the article notes that "If a gunshot victim’s heart is still beating upon arrival at a hospital, there is a 95 percent chance of survival" as you paraphrased, but it also notes that survival rates for anyone shot in a vital organ plummets, or as the article puts it, "People shot in vital organs usually do not make it that far, he added." The abdomen, funnily enough, being just jam-packed with vital organs - which is also part of the reason that you shoot for the center of mass, because it's got the best ratio of chance-to-hit vs lethality.
If you're going to argue that a penetrating chest wound has the same potential for death as a punch to the face - not to put too fine a point on it - you're out of your bloody mind.
Scott admonished me in the other thread that aspiring to anything less than being a paragon of moral virtue makes me an evil person. If that is true, and if killing a person for any reason (even self defense) is an inherently evil act, then using any force in self defense must be considered inherently wrong, for even the slightest chance of killing your attacker makes you an evil person. If someone knocks you down and starts kicking you in the head, don't you dare strike out with your hands or feet! You might trip them, causing them to fall on their head and die, and then you're an evil murdering asshole.
Mlaboss, you're a funny guy. I shoot you last.
Scott, can you please delete my account? I want to remove all temptation to come back.
I've had two life threatening situations personally happen to me and one more happen to close family.
The first time I had a gun pointed to my head happened when my friend showed me his dad's revolver. We were all the way up to the point where he cocked the trigger. What am I to do, shoot him? No, I tackle him and tell him to check if it was loaded. This is a gun belonging to a legal gun owner who went through legal means to purchase this gun legally. Can you dismiss this as a case of negligence? Of course, but what about every other case like that?
What of the threat of random strangers? I was mugged on the Red Line one time in college. I rounded a corner into four people who ambushed and pinned me to a wall. They had guns, I did not. If I had a gun, they would have taken that too. What if they didn't take my theoretical gun and they didn't beat the shit out of me before disengaging? Do I draw and fire? It'd be making a threatening action against four already drawn guns and in their mind a lethal threat is targeting them, better use their tool to pacify me. What then should I have used, grenades, dead-man switches, my own personally funded crew of Hell's Angels? I would recommend arguing for option 3, as that one sounds more entertaining.
Finally what of that 30-foot knife argument that every die hard gun advocate pulls out eventually. My friend's uncle, same one that pulled out that revolver on me, was being held up at knife point at his mechanic shop. The guy had a lethal weapon and lethal intent and a demand for all his money. He gave the guy a $20 and a strong wording to leave. The attacker wasn't satisfied and applied lethal force. His uncle took his knife arm and stabbed his other arm with it before literally tossing him out of the shop. This last story was more hero worship to how much of a bad-ass he was.
Either way this is going to go nowhere. This isn't a discussion, it's a shouting match at two brick walls.
You consider that courageous behavior to be stupid and are ascribing virtue to barbaric vengeance.
Maybe the reason you are so worried about defending yourself from this imaginary threat is that you are the kind of person who is frequently attacked? A person who has anger and makes others angry. Instead of wasting time defending yourself with guns, you should try to defend yourself with love. It's a lot cheaper. If you give and receive love from others, nobody will want to shoot you. If someone does come after you, the people who love you will come to your aid, and you will to theirs.
Instead of being so concerned with prolonging the limited life you have, you should instead be concerned with increasing the quality. I can assure you that guns will not help you in this regard in any way whatsoever.
Read the beginning of Les Miserables again. Oh, you want to steal my silver flatware? Go ahead. Take it.
Also, your account will never be deleted. This isn't the EU. You don't have a right to be forgotten.
Also, this man says hello. He arrived a bit later than usual.
I, for one, think Scott and Luke are going rather too far in calling you "evil". Although I agree with them that it's a moral failing on your part (just as it would be a moral failing on my part if I was wrong), I think it's simply far too convenient to suggest that you think the way you do because you happen to be evil. People just aren't that simple.
I think that you're wrong, and I think that you're making an error in the way you think about the greater issue, and that that line of thinking leads to somewhat immoral decisions. I don't think that's what people mean when they use the term "evil" - if that's all it takes, then pretty much 100% of people are "evil".
However, to dismiss the arguments other people responded to you with as "half-formed opinions" is a complete cop-out. If the points people made were indeed "half-formed opinions", it should have been a trivial matter for you to rebut them; in fact you did not do so. Sure, it is your prerogative to leave the discussion, but don't do so while totally dismissing the other people who argued against you in good faith. See you later.
Dressing up distasteful action in pretty words does not make the action any less distasteful, nor does it change the nature of that action. It doesn't matter if you say you "intend to stop the threat" instead of "intending to kill them", because you're intending to stop the threat by killing it. In fact, I'm concerned that by the way you seem dead-set on putting it, you do not appreciate the gravity of the action you're speaking of.
Like I've said, I'm not like the rest of the people here - I have no moral problem with killing in self defense, if necessary. But I do have a damned big problem in dressing it up in such nonsense to make yourself feel better- Oh no, he died when I shot him? I didn't mean to kill him when I shot him three times in the chest with .45 caliber hollowpoints, I just meant to stop the threat.
I don't mean this as an insult, but you should not be carrying or contemplating using a firearm for self defense. Your repeated attempts to dress it up in euphemisms and feel-good language indicate that you are simply not prepared for the responsibility this entails - namely the responsibility for ending someone's life by your conscious action.
That's not a bad thing, I can think of maybe a half-dozen people at best who have passed through these forums who could handle it, and I've seen a lot more than a half dozen people here over time. But you still can't deal, and in my eyes, that still means you shouldn't be carrying or owning a firearm with the intent of using it for self defense. What you're experiencing is the crucible that basically all of us have cooked in more times than we can count - we've all had an opinion that the rest didn't agree with. I've had blazing rows much fiercer than this with every single person you've disagreed with(or who have agreed with you, for that matter) so far, to be honest with you.
That's the price of admission for hanging out with a group of intelligent people, and one village idiot. (Before you get any ideas about being the village idiot, you're going to have to fight me for the job.)
Nobody has seriously insulted you, and considering we've hashed this all out previously, I personally guarantee you that none of these opinions are half-formed, they've been tried, tested, argued out, and changed where they were found wanting.
But, if you have found that you want to leave, then fair enough. Genuinely sorry to see you go, you seem a pretty decent chap with a good head on and a decent personality, but if you can't handle people disagreeing with your ideas and testing them in arguments, then this is not a place where you would find happiness in any measure, and it really is best if you do move on.