I like to think that JK just didn't bother to write out that Bellatrix said it. Having to speak the words lend it a good sense of gravity, and also reduces the OP-ness of what is otherwise BOOM! Insta-kill.

 

Would the use of the Unforgivables on other creatures even be illegal then, aka werewolves, mermen, goblins?

 

Well, the issue here is a little bit different. You do not need to kill in order to defend yourself from an attack.

A better analogy would be you having a taser and a gun with you when someone threaten your life. Is choosing to shoot at your assailant with a gun instead of tasing him with a taser a less moral choice?

 

There is also the question of shields to consider, though. A stunner could end with your death at the hands of a death eater. No one can block a killing curse without some Dumbledore level transfiguration or charms work to get a large object in the way.

Morally, condoning murder even in self-defense is difficult. Yet, if one considers the aggressor at fault, then using the killing curse in self defense is morally acceptable if the person had declared in any way an intent to kill.

Legally, which was not what this thread was about but is interesting, self-defense is always about equal force. If someone punches you, you can't gut them with a knife and call it self-defense. If someone pulls a gun on you, you certainly can.

The problem with wizards is that their wands act as fist, knife, gun, and everything else outside of the range of violence. You can't tell what's coming unless you can read minds or it has already left the wand.

That takes away some of our ability to make a situation legally self-defense, manslaughter, or murder.

Seeing as the government in a lot of ways sympathized with the death eater agenda, I'm pretty sure, legally, there's no way that the killing curse can be used in self-defense.

@Sesc

He used the term dark magic to mean 'magic that hurts people'. Neutral magic was 'utility and protection'. Light magic just didn't exist.

There's literally no need to bring up light and dark magic unless they are clearly definable and work in a system. It's just asinine to say that dark magic exists, let alone in opposition to neutral magic.

The point on light and dark isn't nit-picking; it's logic.

My point was never to say people don't use the term dark magic. It was to say that people shouldn't.

 

Depends totally on who you are defending yourself against. If it's 13 year old kid threatening to punch you for lunch money, pulling a gun on them and blowing their brains out is excessive.

But let's look in real life. If a guy has a confrontation with NY police, and he shoots at them, it's not going to be unusual for him to become a corpse riddled with 60 bullets in short order.

So if Harry used an avadra kedrava on Tommy and his gang, is anyone going to loose sleep? No. Because like Terminators, they just weren't going to stop. Making that a morale dillemma is just American Comic book logic imo, silly, serves no purpose, and on the level for kids.

That's the type of shit that annoys me with Batman and such. He rather puts the Joker in jail for the 80th time just to predictably escape again and again and kill a lot of innocents than to finish the job. Is that morale? Nevermind the roots of it was entirely born from greed, to keep a superhero series going and going, and having nothing to do with morales except to fatten wallets. Then that nice but completely misguided idea spread from there, imo, from the people who actually bought into it when they read it as kids.

So if someone were to attack me out of the blue, I'd go for whatever is going to stop them. Not going to stop and consider what will cause that person the least damage. They caused the situation, the end results are on them.

 

:facepalm Like this argument hasn't been tread out and put down a thousand times before by you people who don't even read the comics.

TL;DR, it's the onus of the legal and prison system to deal with him once he's been captured. It's their fault he keeps escaping or hasn't been put to death, not the police's or Batman's fault. You don't ask why the police don't shoot someone in the head instead of capturing him, it's not their job to kill people, and neither is it Batman's.

Obviously the "keeping him alive for future comics" reason is valid, but there's an in-universe explanation for it. And of course sometimes writers overdo things and twist the circumstances so it's not as plausible to the audience.

 

It's not a tough guy stance. I never said I would be able to stop an attacker, just try anything to stop them. Just basic survival instinct.

Batman doesn't have a job except whatever he decides it is.