rcaetano wrote:
> IANAL but I guess it's not too different from my country. How does it
> work in France? If a naked intruder invades a gendarme's apartment and
> _struggles_ with him (instead of, say, surrendering or running), what
> will he do? Hug the invader and make sweet love to him?

Did you take a 'gendarme' as an exemple randomly ? Could it be you know 
that while in service they're the only people in France who have the 
right to use deadly force, and standard police doesn't ?

But it doesn't matter here. Outside of service they're ordinary citizen, 
and even somewhat below ordinary citizen. I mean by that that an 
ordinary citizen could offer as a defence that he freaked out in a 
potentially dangerous situation and didn't control what he was doing. An 
ordinary citizen could say he didn't know exactly how far he could go 
under self defense law. An ordinary citizen could say he wasn't 
physically strong enough to defend himself properly without a weapon, 
whereas a policeman or 'gendarme' has all the training needed. And there 
would no possible excuse to have his service gun at home and loaded 
instead of in the safe at his worplace (I'm not saying it never happens 
that they keep their weapon at home instead. But if they do it and 
something bad happens, they're in deep shit).

Maybe indeed there's a difference betwen self-defence law in France and 
what I read in http://www.lectlaw.com/def/d030.htm. It seems to me there 
is no "reasonably necessary" and "reasonably believes" in the french 
interpretation. You must have the proof the means you use are necessary 
before you act, not just believe that they are.