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Originally Posted by Crompsin
The thing about self-defense is "an appropriate amount of force used to neutralize the threat."
Firearms make it easy to kill someone with one or two shots, if not leave them a drooling vegetable for life. They're efficient and any moron can "activate" them. An obese midget can kill someone with a gun as well as a military body builder.
Swords? You gotta try to kill somebody. They're neutralized long before they're dead unless you run them through. Severe wounds versus death.
Generally speaking, a gun can be assumed capable of killing someone instantly while a sword cannot. That's why we use guns instead of swords today. We call that "progess."
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The legal system considers the use of a firearm akin to chopping off someone's head with a sword. You're not going to get a more lenient view on things because you just stab some dude in the gut instead of slicing his jugular open. In either case you will, in all likelihood, be considered to be using "lethal force" to defend yourself, as you used a lethal tool to do so. So long as the object is sharp, fires a high-velocity projectile, or really fucking big and heavy (e.g. a sledgehammer) I think it's safe to say that even one shot/jab/slice will be legally considered lethal force.