Reply #8: 'Disproportionate firepower' is the term for violation...

[14thColony]

of the 1949 Geneva Conventions' requirements that all signatories use proportional force when engaged in armed conflict, especially in circumstances where civilians could be harmed by overzealous use of force.

Proportionality says that if a sniper is shooting from a rooftop of a house on a crowded residential street, you can't respond with an airstrike to dislodge him. Not only is the force applied out of all proportion to what is required to eliminate the threat, but there is a virtual certainty that 'protected persons' (civilian non-combatants) will be injured or killed, when a more proportional response (using your own sniper to kill him, or engaging him directly with a heavy machine gun) would have done the job just as well. Using the airstrike would be 'disproportionate' and is a violation of the Geneva Conventions.

In your example, since you are threatened by deadly weapons, responding with shotguns and machine guns is perfectly legal. Calling in a 155mm artillery strike on the crowded market that the gang happens to be standing in is not legal.

Since Israel voluntarily signed the Third and Fourth Geneva Conventions in 1949, Israel has agreed to be subject to their enforcement.