is there ever a situation where its 'right' to take a life?

[athiest_420]

i believe so, in a few sircumstances

consider a situation where an individual was threatening u and your family to a point where it was clear his intentions where to kill you? would you kill him before he had the chance? or atleast wound...

i know if some one put me in a situation where it was quite litually 'me or him', i would do everything in my power to make sure it would be his demise, not mine.

other situations are like the death penalty, now im in no doubt there are ppl (paticuly child killers, who do not deserver life, and if not killed, then at VERY LEAST the life sentance should indeed be just that. life.
the only thing that puts me of the death penalty, is false convictions, i dont trust the legal system.
i think execution should be held for the highest and most evil of crimes where theres no doubt the subject is responsible.
and in other cases life should mean life, but ofcourse let the retrial and protest their innocence if there is any doubt to his guilt.

and a question i would like to pose to you all now:

theres a man, he is planning to go on a killing spree, you dont know who he is, or where he is, all you know is that in 2 days he will slaughter 200 innocent ppl.

you have a button, if you press it, he drops dead, end of story...

do you press it?

if not, what if i said he would turn the gun on himself afterwards anyway.. would that change your actions? is so.. why?

i for one would be thankfull for the chance to press the button, and save the people, i would do so without any remorse or guilt. but thats me.

[puddleglum]

That said, there are ways of stopping someone from killing which do not involve force - the philosophy and methods of non-violence are more difficult for people to understand and to practice, but they are infinitely preferable to violence.

I agree that we should try to use nonviolent methods to stop people from killing but that isn't always possible. So if we are put in a position where we must either kill someone who is planning to murder someone else or allow an innocent person to be murdered which one should we choose?