If you had read the thread in it’s entirety, that was already discussed. It is not the goal of armed defense to kill, but to stop the attack. That is consisted both with US Civil Law and Catholic moral theology.
What you are referring to, and what Aquinas referred to, was Capital Punishment, which is a form of Self Defense, but one restricted to the State. That is the only time a specific intention to kill is allowed under Catholic Moral Law.
I presume that your police are not authorized to try and execute an attacker, yet the police carry guns. The police do not exist for executions, but for armed defense; those are different things (mostly, see below)
The blameless defense of an individual does not include the intention to kill in self defense.
It is not just Capital Punishment which constitutes the intention to kill. In explaining the citizens right to self defense, Aquinas says…
But as it is unlawful to take a man’s life, except for the public authority acting for the common good, as stated above (Article 3), it is not lawful for a man to intend killing a man in self-defense, except for such as have public authority, who while intending to kill a man in self-defense, refer this to the public good, as in the case of a soldier fighting against the foe, and in the minister of the judge struggling with robbers, although even these sin if they be moved by private animosity.
So the police and army by the very fact of being armed to kill in their defensive actions, constitute an ‘intention to kill’ according to Aquinas. A private citizen deliberately armed to kill in the event of ‘struggling with a robber’ is therefore forearmed with the ‘intent to kill’.
And what would stop the circulation of guns among criminals anyway? It’s not like they are even hard to make. I’ve made flintlocks from ‘scratch’ using materials I can get at any junk shop and tools from my local hardware store.
If you add to that what is being done with 3-D printing, how exactly do you envision any criminal who wanted a gun being unable to obtain one.
Here are blueprints for the Britsh Sten Gun, a WW-II submachine gun that was specifically designed to be manufactured in garages.
I could easily make one in my garage with simple tools.
Shortly after WW-II, in British occupied Palestine, Zionists were making them by the hundred in the basement of a laundry that served British officers. The sounds of the machinery below were drowned out by the sounds of the washers and dryers above, all while the very men who were supposed to be keeping arms away from the feuding sides were dropping off their shirts to be pressed
And even in Australia, it doesn’t seem hard for a criminal to get their hands on a gun, if they wanted
Anyone with possession of a gun that is not police/military/security, farmers or others professionally required or sportspeople… is a criminal and severely dealt with by the law. The State that phil at Dayboro and I live in has recently seen the conservative State government come down so hard on outlaws in the community, confiscating guns and the proceeds of crime down to lawnmowers and kitchen appliances. Outlaw bikie gang members are now arrested and prosecuted just for being together in public. You cannot imagine how empowered the ordinary person feels by this type of action by the Government and police. Nobody here would ever go the way of saying well the criminals have this type of firepower so we the people need to be armed even better to deal with it.
That certainly doesn’t make people feel empowered in the US example of arming the citizenry. Everyone is terrified out of their minds for their Granny’s and kids. That seems to be a constant fear brought up to justify guns but seems that regardless of the number of guns in the community( 89 to every 100 people), the fear seems to be compounded so far out of proportion to the reality. Owning guns has made the citizenry more paranoid and more ‘what if’ and ‘the sky is falling’ than anyone in countries that have the ‘no gun’ solution ever seems to be.
