I'm sorry that you percieve it to be more complicated than it is. Since each and every individual situation is different, there can be no determination from one given incident or frame of mind that translates to another. If you feel that your life is in danger on Monday, and you dont't feel the same way given similar circumstances on Tuesday, how can you compare the state of mind of a human bieng since every situation is different. IMO this is a dangerous path that you are on, since hesitation that you are instituting by your argument, could also cause the person not to react properlly, and thus cause them injury or worse. I don't mean that their aren't consequences for one's actions, but overthinking something while uner stress or worse, might make the difference between life and death. I also believe that if you don't have to fire your weapon to preserve life, you shouldn't. As someone mentioned in here that a neighboor shot 2 burglers breaking into a neighboors house. Since it is actually on the site I bring up that particular incident, if this guy isn't in danger why did he shoot, was he in fear of his neighboors life? did he even know if the guy was home, was he at all threatned? We don't know this information so it's impossible to make a call on something like that? We only get part of the story second hand, it's all relative,hearsay,etc. thus any evidence that is obtained in the answer to a hypothetical would be mute IMO. If someone said they did something that they "knew' was wrong, or they would do something regaurdless of knowing, that may be different, but people are people and they like to talk, and you know if you have been on forums as I have for many years, the internet is also used as a shield between people, there are a lot of tough guys in forums, that live vicariously through their internet persona, so it's easy for someone to say something that they don't really mean, that's about it .