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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 7819495" data-attributes="member: 42582">Tell me more about the situation. For discharging a firearm in general, what sort of target is someone shooting at? An animal in the woods? A bottle in your backyard?When we get to a target at a commercial firing range, or on a military base, what precautions were you taking? I've never been on a firing range, commercial or otherwise, but I am guessing that they have many precautions to ensure that the discharging of firearms does not constitute an unlawful and/or dangerous act.But prima facie, yes, killing a person by discharging a firearm seems to me to raise the question of manslaughter. I'd be surprised if the police did not pay some attention when a homicide of that sort occurs.So if you add in that additional piece of information, sure. Initially you said if I fire a gun at a gun range where there is a person you don't know is there. That does not contain the additional information you provide. And the very fact of a homicide resulting raises the question of manslaughter.Sure. Negligence in some form or other is an element of manslaughter. The mere fact that you're firing a gun at a firing range doesn't prove you're not negligent!No. Or, at least, not self-evidently. Negligence, which can include a failure to acquire knowledge, can be a basis for liability in both criminal and civil law. And the flip side of negligent criminality is being guilty only of attempt rather than the offence itself because of some intervening circumstance outside your knowledge and control.And then when we move from law to morality, there is the much-discussed notion of moral luck. (The phrase is Bernard Williams', but I don't think he was the first to notice the phenomenon.) You can come under duties not because of what you intend or what you know but simply the circumstances you find yourself in. This seems to be how the paladin in the OP scenario came under a duty to the NPC.Peter Singer's Famine, Affluence and Morality is one of the best-known attacks on moral luck in the context of duties of rescue - by rejecting common-sensical notions that immediate proximity is relevant. But non-consequentialists don't accept Singer's argument.</blockquote>

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