Dueling should be legalized

Good stuff. I'm pleased to be engaged with a cogent opponent. I look forward to the second rebuttal phase, as well.== Dueling is a Right == You are nominally correct in that mutual consent would seem to override danger concerns. This might suffice as an argument if one is the type to take the warning labels off of cleaning supplies and let nature take its course. Those of us who rate life as equal to or higher a right than liberty take a different tack.The major flaw in the comparisons you draw with other activities is that in matters such as boxing or BDSM is that the law still very much frowns upon inflicting actual damage, especially permanent damage. As I established in my own argument, the state has a vested interest in its participants not dying. If for no other reason than that externalities abound, voluntarily taking yourself out of circulation, so to speak, is disallowed. A severe injury imposes externalities in that your contractual obligations to your job and your family are violated, and society is harmed marginally by your visit to the hospital and your recovery thereafter, consuming medical supplies, medical staff, and other resources that might otherwise have been used or held in reserve for the unfortunate victims of accidents or crime, with the attendant price increases that put upward pressure on insurance.Drawing analogues to other 'dangerous activities' does not help your case. All the activities you listed -- boxing, skydiving, scuba, automobiles -- are regulated to hell and back so as to minimize the chances that you can hurt yourself. Skydiving, for one, seems like a good analogue for dueling until you realize that the fatality rate is at 0.005 deaths per 1,000 jumps. All of the leisure activities especially carry the illusion of risk, but their regulating bodies are so stringent that one is literally more at risk on the highway.Dueling with deadly weapons, meanwhile, seems destined to an injury rate of 50% at minimum. Though I doubt research exists, I can only imagine the fatality rate would be unconscionably high. There's also a thing called the 'right to life', which is innate to all sapient life. I will be the first to admit that waiving your own right to life should be allowed by the law, but some minimum standard of justification should be present. The law might see prolonged, unremittingly poor quality of life might be an excellent reason. "Because he pissed me off," really would not. It meets no test of a rational basis.== Increase Public Safety / Medical Response ==These both boil down to the same concept, to whit: There would be a net reduction in risk from violent exchanges. You have yet to establish this. Since there's likely to be no research on the subject, I must instead resort to applied game theory.To make any serious impact on these numbers, duels would need to displace more unregulated clashes than new duels crop up where there would not have been violence in the first place. I find this hard to believe for one big reason:Exactly who do you think is going to be your 'customer base', so to speak, for dueling?The people most likely to engage in deadly armed conflict in our society are criminals. This is not tautological; law-abiding citizens have a HOST of options for legal redress without resorting to violence. Criminals otherwise engaged in illegal enterprise do not have this luxury, for to expose oneself to the legal system is to invite scrutiny that they can ill afford; this makes violence and extortion one of the only forms of redress to which they have access. Making dueling illegal would have little to no impact on this violence, because it would STILL require engaging in the legal system, thus provoking the very exposure they are seeking to avoid.Furthermore, the criminals who are doing violence are not doing so to satisfy some honor code. This isn't the Wild West, pistols at dawn sort of underworld. It is a world of ambushes, drive-bys, and hostage-taking. When trying to survive the cutthroat environment of the drug trade or similar, the very LAST thing they are incentivized to want is a fair fight. Even amidst the tiny proportion of people who are STILL inclined to arrange such a strange thing as a fair fight between criminals, they hardly need legal permission to do so. I mean, you know, by definition.This leaves your dueling proposal catering to a very tiny demographic of law-abiding dilettantes, rednecks, meatheads, and sundry who would otherwise NOT be engaged in potentially-lethal violence. With little or no reduction in criminal violence, the conclusion seems inevitable: Public safety would actually fall, especially if adoption spread due to the 'enforcement' of a cultural moral system of honor.== Dueling Promotes Honor and Justice == This is the weakest and also the most insidious point you've made, in my view.First off, if the legal system offers no redress, one must wonder if the offense is severe enough to warrant the risk of death. While there are flaws in our system, including that large companies can abuse individuals with near-impunity, I think most would agree that we are TOO litigious as a society. Of the few matters which you cited that don't 'rise to the level of' litigation-worthy, none seem to rise above the level of 'hurt feelings'. In no society that takes life seriously should those offenses warrant blood-sport.What's more, there is no innate incentive for someone to accept such a duel in redress. What rational reason would a con-man, or a spiteful coworker, or an inveterate gossip have for agreeing to personal combat over something they did? What possible benefit would there be?The answer to that is where it gets scary. The only rational reason there COULD be is if societal pressure and a widespread cultural norm of honor made turning down a legit-seeming duel so scandalous and scorn-worthy that the challenged feels compelled to accept. This is one of the very textbooks definitions of 'undue influence' which the state is interested in preventing. Indeed, such a society would be terrifying to live in. The only point of a code of honor is to prescribe a course of actions, ironclad, counter to that which one would otherwise take as a rational, self-interested individual. To live by that code of honor -- whether self-imposed or enforced by the scorn of peers -- is to be forever at risk for being 'forced' to take an action you would otherwise not. 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. Note the terror and reluctance Hamilton faced on the eve of his duel with Burr; he feared leaving his family behind, his creditors cursing his name, his political achievements left unfinished. He was TRAPPED, though, by his code of honor. He intended to throw the match, to avoid killing, but he felt he had no choice but to risk his life on the altar of honor. And, indeed, he paid for it with his life.That is far too steep a price to pay for an ephemeral sense of self-worth, the relief of peer pressure, and the schadenfruede of seeing a nominal enemy bleeding at your feet. As a society, why would we willingly, knowingly choose to plunge ourselves once more into such a medieval mindset?(1) http://www.uspa.org...