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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 cl

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.

dragonwriter 8y ago
> 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”.