AK and guns- both unforgivable, and sometimes necessary!

[justcarol67]

No: HPFGUIDX 167162

Carol earlier:
> > <snip> But Avada Kedavra is *the* Killing Curse, the only one
designed for that purpose, and the Aurors were authorized to use it.
(It was no longer "Unforgiveable" in the sense of resulting in a life
sentence to Azkaban for the Aurors. It was still illegal for everyone
else.) Why, then, wouldn't the real Moody, who "didn't kill unless he
had to," use the AK to do the killing? We know for sure that he killed
Evan Rosier. Wilkes, another DE who was part of the "Slytherin Gang,"
is also dead, and if Mad-Eye didn't kill him, another Auror must have
done so. And what other spell would that Auror have used? The AK is
quick, efficient, apparently painless, and virtually fool-proof
(unless your aim is off, like the Big Blond DE's). Why not use it
rather than, say, conjuring a poisonous snake or a pair of hands to
strangle the DE or whatever other method you have in mind?
<snip>

Jen responded: 

> Crouch Sr. authorizing the use of Unforgiveables made them legal but
it didn't make their use right.  He convinced others the end was worth
the means and started fighting 'violence with violence', taking away
free-will of suspects to achieve his end.  It's pretty clear the man
lost his moral compass along the way when he started using the
Imperius to control his own son. <snip>

Carol responds:
I agree that Crouch Sr. "lost his moral compass" in authorizing the
use of Dark curses on Dark wizards and that his own prolonged use of
an Unforgiveable Curse on his son (himself seduced into Darkness by LV
or Bellatrix and willing to use all three Unforgiveables at every
opportunity) came back not only to haunt but to destroy him. I am by
no means excusing Barty Sr., much less his despicable son (though I
see their alienation from one another and their respective fates as a
tragic consequence of Voldemort's ability to cause discord and stir up
hatred within families and among friends). 

To reiterate my position on the Crouches, I said in message 167077:

"I agree regarding Moody, but the case with Mr. Crouch may be
different. He's the one who authorized the Aurors to use the weapons
of the Death Eaters against them and who kept his own son under the
Imperius Curse for years after helping him escape from Azkaban. And
that same son had used the Cruciatus Curse to help torture the
Longbottoms into insanity and later had no compunction at all about
demonstrating all three Unforgiveables to his students (torturing the
spider in front of Neville is an act of supreme cruelty, IMO),
Imperioing his own students, Imperioing Krum to make him Crucio
Cedric, and AKing his own father. The Crouches *seem* to illustrate
Alla's perspective that the Unforgiveables are altogether evil and
corrupt the soul. Certainly, Barty Jr. was irredeemably evil and his
father, though he repented, did so too late and paid the price."

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/167077

I agree completely that Mr. Crouch made a terrible mistake. (He seems
to me like a tragic hero in miniature, a man with good intentions
whose fatal flaw or error brings about his own downfall.) IMO, in his
own mind, Crouch Sr. was not so much authorizing an Unforgiveable
Curse as authorizing his Aurors to kill if necessary--fighting
violence with violence, as you say, but to him it was probably like
giving a policeman a gun rather than a nightstick to defend himself
against a criminal who has every intention of killing him. But Mr.
Crouch went too far. He should never have released his son from
Azkaban and held him under the Imperius Curse for all those years, nor
should he have authorized his Aurors to torture or Imperio the Death
Eaters if indeed he did so. Two wrongs do not make a right, and
neither the Aurors nor Mr. Crouch should be using the Cruciatus or
Imperius Curses under any circumstances, IMO. 

But killing a DE who can't be brought in any other way, assuming
that's the case--assuming that Moody really could not subdue Rosier
(or Wilkes) in any other way and was himself in danger of being
killed--is different from torturing him or invading his mind to
control him. It is killing in self-defense (as a Muggle policeman
would under similar circumstances). Should Moody have set Rosier's
head on fire with an Incendio to avoid using the Killing Curse?
Wouldn't that have been far more cruel and evil than resorting to a
quick, efficient AK if, indeed, he had no choice but to kill him?

All I am asking here is *what better spell Mad-Eye Moody could have
used if he had no choice but to kill Evan Rosier,* given Crouch's
authorization of the AK for Aurors and assuming that killing in
self-defense is not murder. 

We don't see Moody suffering any consequences worse than scarring, a
lost eye, a lost leg, and paranoia--unless you consider imprisonment
in his own trunk for nine months a kind of comeuppance for having
killed a Death Eater or two, or used an AK to do it. Which I suppose
means that Bellatrix, et al. will have to go to Azkaban rather than
being killed because killing is always evil, or they'll have to be
killed using some other spell than the AK because the AK is evil in
itself. It would be nice, and I'm not being at all sarcastic, if the
DEs could just kill each other off, but I don't think that's going to
happen. Nor do I think that Scrimgeour, for example, would be deterred
from killing a DE if he encountered one who wouldn't submit to
arrested. And, assuming that the authorization is still in effect
(he's the Minister of Magic, after all) I think he would use an AK to
do it.

I absolutely do not want Harry or any of the other kids to have to
kill anyone by any means. I hope that Harry can destroy Voldemort by,
say, forcing him to pass through the Veil. And if he kills Snape, I'll
lose my faith in JKR completely.

But if a bad guy must be killed by a good character, how is killing
them in some other way, such as Sectumsempra or blowing off the bad
guy's head, better than using an AK? Maybe Harry should just buy a
Muggle pistol to avoid using an Unforgiveable?

Jen: 
> (I'm not ruling out misdirection with Snape here, that she needed to
associate him with the weapons of Voldemort to make his betrayl appear
absolute and final.)

Carol:
I agree that having Snape cast an AK is part of JKR's attempt to make
him look as evil as possible to Harry and to many readers (before the
big reversal in DH :-) ), but that's not what I'm trying to get at
now. We can ask the same question regarding Snape as I'm asking with
regard to Moody--if, indeed, he had no choice but to kill DD (or
killing DD was the lesser of two evils, a choice but a terrible choice
that causes him mental anguish) what other spell ought he to have used?

And I ask again how Voldemort's poisoning of Hepzibah Smith was in any
way better or less evil than his use of AK to kill his other victims
(Myrtle excluded). Unless the poison killed instantly, she probably
suffered more than Cedric or Frank Bryce or any other AK victim.

Carol, who still thinks it's the killing that matters, not the
specific use of Avada Kedavra (which does, however, symbolize killing)