You sound like someone who's never had a gun pointed at your face.

If cooperating with the aggressor leaves you alive, and not as an accident, it wasn't attempted murder.

It might be violent, immoral, terrifying, and any number of other things, but if the intent wasn't that you end up dead (even if there was a serious risk of that happening), it's not attempted murder.

It's a bit more complex than that, because (in most of the United States) intent becomes irrelevant once there is an actual death.

If you bring a gun to a mugging and it ends up killing someone - even if it went off accidentally - it's considered first degree murder. No matter what your intent, you willfully created the circumstance that led to someone's death.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felony_murder_rule

From a purely technical legal perspective, robbing someone with a gun isn't attempted murder until they get shot, and then it was premeditated willful murder.

You're using 20-20 hindsight. That if you lead with is a big if.

> You're using 20-20 hindsight.

No, I’m not.

Obviously, the victim won't often be able to tell with any certainty (except with some idea after the fact) whether it was attempted murder.

That the difference may be hard to perceive from a particular viewer's perspective doesn't mean that the difference doesn't exist.

You're talking about intent, but the parent poster is talking about reasonable belief.

In US courts, the latter is (generally) what matters for self-defense claims. Courts don't expect victims to have perfect knowledge of a situation.

So in a certain sense, US courts recognize that things like armed carjackings should be treated as attempted murders.

> You're talking about intent, but the parent poster is talking about reasonable belief.

I'm talking about “attempted murder”, which is a crime defined by intent, and is entirely irrelevant to self defense analysis, where legality of the threats action only matters to the extent of it being unlawful, not as to what particular law is violated.

> So in a certain sense, US courts recognize that things like armed carjackings should be treated as attempted murders.

No, they don't, they recognize that the specific identity of the crime or other violation of the law involved on the part of the attacker is generally immaterial to self-defense analysis, which isn't “armed carjackings should be treated as attempted murders” except in the sense that it is also “simple assault should be treated the same as genocide” or “tortious, but non-criminal, battery should be treated the same as torture”.

In other words, if you don’t get shot, it wasn’t attempted murder.

If I am in the desert, and have only 1 litre of water, and someone takes it by force, they may have just killed me. If I need my car to support myself financially, and it is stolen, my life might well be ruined. Regardless of what the law states, if someone tries to damage my livelihood, for whatever reason and in whatever way, I am morally justified in damaging them to protect myself, and in doing so I stop them from repeating that damaging behavior in the future. This, generally, makes the world a better place to live in, as long as you don't engage in predatory behavior.

You're only morally justified in a proportionate and necessary response.

If your boss fires you, that's a pretty real threat to your livelihood. Is that attempted murder? Are you going to respond by assaulting him?

Any time you think the world is black and white, you're wrong.

You might have reason for last water, but not for stolen car. Stolen car is not sure death nor attempted murder. Even if stolen with gun.

You just rationalized killing someone by refraiming his action as something more deadly as it is. Which is literally reason why these laws about limits of self defense exists.

And that's the issue. Where do you draw the line of having people take your stuff? At what point is it going to completely ruin your life to have something stolen? I draw the line at having anything stolen, because to some degree I rely on all of my property, and anyone who tries to illegally acquire it will not likely try the same again.

There is far way from "to some degree I rely on it" and "stealing it is effectively trying to kill me. The self defence laws exists literally because of people who rationalized murders with far fetched reasoning like that.

These self defense laws are loose, inconsistent, and use 20/20 hindsight instead of intent. You can believe you are doing the right thing in the moment, but still be convicted because you necessarily acted on imperfect information. You can say the same about many laws, I imagine. My point is that it doesn't matter what someone is trying to steal. They can't know what impact it will have on you; they don't care what impact it will have. By choosing to violate you, they are inherently choosing to make you an enemy, an opponent, a victim. I firmly believe that this means they have chosen to give up the protections of our legal system in favor of brigandry. I can't see how a murder can occur in these circumstances, with one party forsaking the law to victimize another... No law, no murder.

Yes, it certainly is when the criminal is using a deadly weapon to commit the crime.