I got lambasted at my local clay club two months ago. There was a report that young Russian soldiers had entered a house and shot dead all the male civilian occupants and one of the clay club members was saying how bad this was.
I replied that maybe shortly before gunfire had come from that house, or an anti-tank rocket from its garden, and killed or immolated the "comrades" of those young Russian soldiers in the truck or tank in front of them. So their response was to deploy to neutralise the threat and then make the area safe.
And, as I explained, if everyone in the house claimed it wasn't them that fired the shot or launched the HEAT round from the garden...yet most in the house are men of "military age" what do you think those Russian soldiers are going to do?
"Well," was the reply was that it was still not right as, "These Russians were invaders".
This is not much far removed from that. What does anyone think is going to be the outcome? If soldiers passing by get shot from a house at what are they expected to do? Knock on the door and share a cup of tea?
It is the nub of it. You bear arms openly you may, just, perhaps be treated by the strict letter of the laws of war. Even though, as Churchill supposedly said, your surrendering to avoid being killed is trying to now stop your enemy doing to you what just before that moment what exactly you were trying to do to them.
But if instead you use those arms and then deny having done so and cast away those arms and any other thing that identifies you as having taken oart in that firefight or ambush? Then by the strict custom of those laws of war you can be summarily shot.
It is what has been reality since the time of rifled muskets and what are now called "unlawful combatants" and once were called "Francs Tireurs". It's not pleasant, it's not fair. It's not "right". But it is how it always ever was.