Intentionally taking a life is morally equivalent to allowing a life to be lost.

"But killing can be from apathy. If I don't care what happens to people, if I have no respect for their life, my apathetic killing of that person is equivalent. Basically, what I'm saying is that since I don't care, I can make the conscious choice to kill or the conscious choice to let die simply because I don't care. If I do care then my action or inaction is wrong. So basically, if one cares killing and letting die are both wrong, and if one doesn't care, neither are wrong." Here is the fallacy of this idea: Any voluntary/intentional killing is a decision which must be made. If you intentionally kill someone then you have a goal/intention. You DO care because you are attempting to take control over the flow of events. If you truly did not care, you would not take any action, because there would be no motive. You may not care about the ethical implications, but you still have some degree of intention over what happens, since you are acting on a set goal. An inaction, however, implies no goal, and therefore is truly free from morals. "No, it's voluntary, he just doesn't care that they die when he kills them. His intentions aren't bad, he's simply having fun killing people. The other person who lets a child drown in a pond also doesn't care. He just doesn't feel like saving the kid." If he is completely unconcerned with the issue of whether his bullets will kill, then it is not voluntary. The man in your hypothetical is not voluntarily killing people, because that is not his goal, his goal is only to have fun randomly shooting his gun, and he is completely unconcerned with the matter of the people dying. He is not trying to kill people, but he is also not trying to not kill people, making it involuntary. Consider this scenario: Someone is given a simple remote with a big red button. When pressed they will receive one hundred dollars. There is a chance (we do not know how big a chance) that a random person somewhere MIGHT be killed as a result of the button being pressed. The person does not care whether or not someone dies, this is completely irrelevant to him. He presses the button a few times, but not out of any goal involved in homicide; nay, only the simple goal of getting money. The possible murder is therefore involuntary because he did not have the goal to kill someone. This is a simpler version of your mall scenario. "He made a conscious choice to kill those people, it is intentional, it is just apathetic." First of all, you have now changed your scenario from it's original form. You originally stated "The bullets that fly out kill tons of people, but he doesn't care." That doesn't seem like a "conscious choice" to me, it sounds more like a side effect of another action he was taking. In your original scenario he did not make the purposeful decision, he merely killed people without thinking about it or caring, which means that you don't have a goal. However, a "conscious choice" does imply a goal very much. And secondly, in your above quote, you contradict yourself with the terms "intentional" and "apathetic". Here is the definition of "apathetic", courtesy dictionary.com: "1. having or showing little or no emotion: apathetic behavior. 2. not interested or concerned; indifferent or unresponsive: an apathetic audience." Now here's the definition of "intentional": "1. done with intention or on purpose; intended: an intentional insult. 2. of or pertaining to intention or purpose." One word means having purpose, and the other means being indifferent. You, however, have used them both in the same sentence to describe the same thing. This is a contradiction. "You misunderstood. What I meant was that an action done because you want someone dead is wrong, so killing and letting die because you want a person dead are both wrong and equivalent, and an action that is apathetic can't be wrong, so killing and letting die out of apathy are not wrong, so they are equivalent. What I am saying is that if killing and letting die are done under the same motive, they are equivalent." I repeat that the scope of this debate is only concerned with intentional killings, and a killing done without goal or purpose, involuntarily, or as a trivial side effect of something else, is not within that range. "For example, if I shoot someone because they are wearing a stupid shirt, I am immorally killing them. If I let them drown in a pond because I don't like they shirt, I am just as immoral. However, if I run someone over with my car, intentionally, simply because I don't care enough to swerve out of the way, I am not wrong, and if I let a child drown in a pond because I don't care enough to get my clothes wet to save him, I am also not wrong." The scenario of the car above actually fits better with the "letting a life be lost" category, since it was not an action but an inaction that killed. It was your lack of action/ your negligence to swerve. And even if this were a murder, than it certainly wouldn't be "intentional", it would be simply a mere side effect of you're not swerving. If it were intentional, you would think: "I think I'd fancy killing this lad, I suppose I'll run him down with my lorry. Pip pip." If it were apathetic, you would think: "I don't really feel like swerving, so I wont"