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Law enforcement agents are held to a higher level when it comes to situations as mentioned above, so you can't really compare a cop pulling a gun on an armed person while in the process of committing a felony versus a private citizen pulling a gun on somebody breaking into their house in the middle of the night. But even in the case of a suspect holding a weapon that is not raised I would think that at some point in time a law enforcement agent could justify pulling the trigger if they refused to drop the weapon (I'l try to pose this question to my uncle who is a retired federal agent).
I also understand the point about waiting until someone pulls a weapon on you before shooting them, but you also need to realize that it is often too late once that happens. This isn't Hollywood and warning shots and shooting the gun out of his hand is only practical in the movies. The average gun or other weapon fight inside a building puts the two people within arms length of each other and lasts a matter of seconds......if you wait for the intruder to pull a knife it will probably be sticking out of your chest before you have time to react.
From my experience most people try to use some real world example of a guy that shot an intruder in his house and wound up in jail, but they conveniently leave out the very blatant details as to why the guy went to jail. Kind of like the story about how you shouldn't shovel the snow from the sidewalk in front of your house because that makes you liable if somebody slips and falls then. Did something like that happen....sure, but the guy was pissed he was told to shovel the sidewalk by the city so he sprayed it with water to intentionally coat it with ice afterwards....and that's the real reason he got in trouble.
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