Dueling should be legalized

Thank you, I'm enjoying this as well. ==Defense: Dueling is a Right== --Warning labels on cleaning supplies-- This is an analogy I really have to take issue with. Explicit consent and knowledge about what involved parties are getting into is central to what I am defending. I don't think that a scenario where dangerous chemicals are being dispersed without proper information regarding associated risks is comparable. --Costs to society-- You raise a valid point about costs to society as a whole where medical treatment is concerned, but I would respond with a few counterpoints: -Since you specifically reference "resources that might otherwise have been used or held in reserve for the unfortunate victims of accidents or crime," I will mention that to an extent lifestyle choices are factored into medical decisions. An example being that smoking, alcohol and/or drug use or a history of such self-harming behaviours are already taken into account in determining who is qualified to receive organs, for example (1). The issue of whether convicted criminals should be discriminated against on organ transplant waiting lists is also a prominent and controversial issue in medical ethics (2)(3). I would argue for extending medical "discrimination" much further but I don't want to stray from our topic (and medical ethics is a very complex subject that I couldn't do justice as a secondary topic here), so I'll just say that I think it would be completely reasonable for duelists to be classified as lower priority for a variety of medical treatments. -Where medical costs incurred by the state are concerned (which would vary by country, of course), this is not something that an individual can voluntarily opt out of, so I don't think it is reasonable to impose any moral obligation of safe lifestyle choices upon people for being subject to it. --Dueling is more lethal than other dangerous activities-- I'm willing to concede that dueling is more dangerous than the other activities mentioned (although I agree that reliable statistics on this don't exist) but I don't think it successfully refutes the principle at hand. Ultimately, your argument is that it is a question of degree and that makes all the difference. But in that case, what is the magic number where an activity crosses a threshold of being illegal? 1 in 1000 chance of dying per attempt? 1 in 100? 1 in 10? It's an arbitrary and subjective metric, at whatever point you want to start deeming a voluntary and consensual dangerous activity as somehow unacceptably dangerous. The principle is what matters and the principle applies the same across all mentioned activities. --Right to life-- You (quite rightly, in my view) acknowledge that people should be permitted to waive their own right to life, then you say that justification should be required. By your "rational basis test" on this matter, shouldn't suicide be criminalized again? Ultimately this goes back to the point of contention where I believe that individuals should have personal autonomy over their own life and should not require state permission to do something that has a chance of ending it. ==Defense: Increased Public Safety/Medical Response== Ooooh, I enjoy game theory! Pretty much all of your points in this section relate to existing violence being the purview of criminals and arguing that they do not want to fight fair, they don't care to abide by any code of honour, they would not want to involve themselves in the legal system, and they don't care about having legal permission to do things. All good arguments, but I would counter that if legalized dueling were combined with a stern and effective criminal justice system that was able to consistently secure convictions for murderers as well as provide heavy punishments for them, it would deter people from committing murder and incentivize dueling. Why spend decades in prison when your gang's best duelist could take someone out openly without legal repercussion? Obviously this would not prevent heat-of-the-moment rage killings, but I'm not proposing it as a catch-all solution to violent crime. I'm simply saying that in certain contexts in which a violent altercation were to happen regardless, if dueling were legal it could instead happen in a more regulated environment. Conversely, I think that there would be *very* few people who are currently law-abiding and non-violent people who would take the opportunity to duel if it was legalized. Therefore, it wouldn't take a whole lot of criminal violent crime being redirected to organized dueling to offset the increase in violence. Alternatively, this might change if a culture of dueling was able to emerge. If that were the case, more currently law-abiding people would duel, however it would also encourage people to be more civil and avoid conflicts because they had the potential to escalate this way. ==Dueling Promotes Honour and Justice== --If the legal system offers no redress, it's not severe enough to warrant risk of death-- It's up to the individual to determine what is "worth" risking themselves for. At the risk of boring you I have to reference the "rights" argument again. In some circumstances, civil law may apply but an individual may deem that insufficient to satisfy the situation. In others, there are times when sensible legal principles to apply broadly unfortunately leave specific situations in which harm is done but can't be addressed. --No incentive to accept-- Public shaming and evidence of cowardice. This is something that would already carry weight in some rougher circles, but it would require some time for culture adjustment upon dueling being legalized for this to extend to the same extent to the general population. When dueling was a common practice historically, there was a culture surrounding it and declining it legitimately made one a subject of contempt and ridicule. But regardless of the incentive of the challenged, it could still be a very cathartic experience for the person issuing the challenge to simply be declined. It would equip them with the psychological relief of knowing that they had the courage and conviction to place themselves in physical risk for a cause they believed in, and the person on the receiving end of their ire did not have the same qualities. They could receive satisfaction from the loss of face of the other party. --Societal pressure and undue influence-- As you can see from my defense above, to an extent I accept that there would be social pressure to accept. However, this completely fails as an analogy: "Consider the difference: Horatio rode to save the maiden from the dragon because he feared for her life. Horatio rode to save the maiden from the dragon because he thought he probably should." Facing social pressure to do something to avoid looking like a coward is not on the same level as being forced to do something in order to save someone's life. Additionally, I do believe there is a degree of contradiction in your criticism here, as before you downplayed the suggestion that people should take drastic action based on 'hurt feelings' when the argument was whether a victimized party should be allowed to challenge an offending party to a duel. Now you are arguing that the prospect of facing social humiliation is an all-powerful coercive element on the same level as having to act to preserve a life. With that I conclude my defense. I very much appreciate you presenting these points; this was a very interesting exchange. (1) http://www.ucdmc.ucdavis.edu... (2) http://journalofethics.ama-assn.org... (3) https://www.scu.edu...