That infamous scene with Damon and Jeremy at the end of S2E1 is largely misconstrued

One of the biggest points people use against Damon to say he's irredeemable is the scene where he snaps Jeremy's neck at the end of S2E1. People always talk about how he "killed Jeremy" and he should never have been forgiven after that. And for a long time I thought this was actually a fair point even though I'm team Delena.

However, I was watching this episode again recently and finally noticed something I either didn't notice or forgot about before. His intention was never actually to permanently kill Jeremy. His intention was to turn him into a vampire which is something he knew Jeremy had already attempted to do himself. Right before he does it he says something along the lines of "it's okay, he wants to become a vampire" and he knew that he had taken Anna's blood.

It was still reckless and impulsive and not an okay thing to do. And Jeremy would have probably actually died if it wasn't for the ring because apparently Anna's blood had already left his system, unless maybe the ring supercedes vampire blood. But it's clear he was under the impression that Jeremy would turn. It's not quite as horrible a thing as people make it out to be. It's also clear that he feels very guilty about it and is angry with himself when he gets back to the Salvatore house after.

Tldr: Damon did a bad thing but it's not as bad as people make it out to be. He was trying turn Jeremy, not just kill him and he also knew that Jeremy had already tried to turn himself earlier that day.