Hrm, and yet in this discussion there are quite a few examples of people glorifying defending themselves with a weapon or lethal force. It is romanticized in the US and that's going to tip the balance on whether someone will preserve themselves or attempt to "take justice into their own hands". I think judges are in the position, and have generally proven quite able, to rule on cases where someone was legitimately uncertain if there were other options, but it's also a bit scary how glorified responding with force seems to be.

In my country of birth, there are quite a few cases where people are convinced on "excessive force used in self-defense" even in situations where they were literally being shot at. So no, it's not at all a given. I'd rather not have that possibility.

A more important question is why. We're discussing a situation with a premise that we have already firmly established that the victim was violently attacked, or had a credible threat of the same (if we haven't, then it's not self-defense by legal definition). At that point, why would you accommodate the attacker at the expense of the victim, so long as victim remains threatened (again, if they're no longer threatened, then it's legally not self-defense)?

I often hear truisms such as "every life is valuable", but that goes both ways, and there's no way to avoid judging the relative value of victim's life versus the attacker's in this situation. Since it was attacker's choices that create this contradiction in the first place, I believe that they're fully responsible for it - i.e. the victim has no obligations whatsoever to think about the attacker's safety, only about their own and that of bystanders. Which means removing the threat by the most efficient way possible, rather than the most humane towards the attacker. Once attacker is no longer a threat, then considerations of the value of their life etc are back in force, because it's no longer at the expense of danger to someone else.

If somebody tells you "your money or your life," it's pretty obvious that the safer option is to give them the money.

> If somebody tells you "your money or your life," it's pretty obvious that the safer option is to give them the money.

Safer for you, right then (unless you, you know, actually need that money, for food). Unsafe for all of their future victims, whom you have just chosen not to help. This is true for the same reason that evolution and game-ification works... Applying positive feedback to an action increases the likelihood of that action being performed again. By giving in, you choose not to stop them, and communicate to them that what they are doing is okay.