Originally Posted by jimmy-3-way

Killing in self defense requires the pretense of desperation and the threat of eminent death yourself.

Creativity would imply you had the leisure to ponder and thus you would be exercising deadly force, not countering it WITH deadly force.

While I take your point, a court would look upon most shoot outs as deadly force versus deadly force, while sneaking up on someone and murdering them would be...murder. Because the act of sneaking up implies that you were just as able to sneak away, and if your comrades were held at gun point you would have no way of knowing the circumstances. IE - the persons holding them at gun point had earlier identified themselves as an undercover cop.