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Why are you more likely to do one thing than another when both have the same outcomes and the same costs? That’s what you should be focusing on.

Wrong, wrong, wrong!

The first scenario (illness) is about alleviating a random (if albeit tragic) situation, but has no moral dimension to it. It's like if a neighbor said that a meteor had destroyed his car, and could you spare $50,000. People contract cancer or die from other random occurrences every day. EVERYONE will die eventually.

In the second scenario (hold-up), it's about correcting a MORAL WRONG. Serving justice. Making a small contribution (you are, after all, at best preventing only a SINGLE robbery from taking place) to maintaining societal order, and preventing an injustice.

Cute attempt to "frame the question" so as to mislead and downplay the MORAL aspects of the two situations.

Regards,

Great reply and along the lines of the more “nuanced” items I was going to reply with. There is also the function of the immediate reality of the “potential”, pending death (in the next few seconds) versus the ability to use medical science, with time on our side, to save the person.

Additionally, the disease is only affecting the clerk. It will not affect you, assuming it is not a contagious disease. The firearm aimed at the clerk could as easily be turned and aimed at you in the next second.

These are just two of the items that are missed in the writer’s rudimentary response. And I have many more...

JoMa

At a local clinic of a large local hospital where I stop occasionally I see posters, prominently placed, stating that if you need medical services and cannot afford them, that medical establishment is bound by law to provide it for you, despite your inability to pay. Tina can get her surgery for free. The government demands it.

My preoccupation is with the possibility that the meteor hits the cancer sufferer just as one draws one's weapon.

Does one still, as the author of this article suggest, attempt to take a picture of the perpetrator's getaway driver's vehicle?

Should it matter that a picture of a meteor strike might sell for in excess of $50,000, all of which one could keep now that the gas station attendant is a former gas station attendant?

And, in this scenario, does one re-holster the weapon in order to draw one's smart-phone or camera, thereby possibly wasting valuable split-seconds?

There was a guy in Seattle that worked in a mall. Heard shots being fired by a shooter. Went to help - he had a pistol. He saw the shooter and told him to stop.

The good guy was shot and paralyzed. BUT - the shooter then ran into a storage room, stopping his shooting and later arrested.

In my mind, the only thing the good guy did wrong was to announce himself to the bad guy. An armed guy shooting up a mall? Just kill him. I know the arguments of surviving in order to be there for the ones you love - and that love you.

Would I be able to live with running away and leaving others to die or be injured? Of course. But probably not without second-guessing myself all the time. And what sort of life would that be?

Agreed though - one needs to know beforehand what circumstances they might use deadly force. A violent argument? So who is fighting in defense of themselves - and who is the aggressor?

Theft of an expensive item? Legal shoot in my state - but no - the punk can have the big-screen TV.

Some guy has a gun out and waving it at the cashier? Bang. Bang. Bang. (If I think I have the drop on the guy.)