AH is a game about aerial gun fighting. When my guns get a shot at the target I take it. The whole notion of not taking a shot when the gun bore is on the target corrupts the game and cheapens it (which is to say -has been the norm ever since AW migrated to AH). That is my opinion and I feed it to you vigorously.
I can actually see where you are coming from. Hear me out here friends.
I typically avoid HO's like the plague, not because I think it is some immoral cartoon sin, but because the math simply does not add up. Why would I give someone a good chance to kill me when I know I can outmaneuver him. With this however, I believe it to be very foolish to point your nose at your opponent and cold merge while expecting an unknown pilot in the MA to be holding guns. In the DA, I see lots of pilots, and do it sometimes myself also, clean merging in incredibly synthetic dogfighting scenarios where they simply fly by one another going 100 mph, wave, and say "Cheerio!" and continue to fight. This would never happen in the MA. You would never fly directly nose to nose with an enemy. If you do you might as well fire. I think that's the point Yeager was trying to make. You should avoid the HO merge at all costs but if you do happen to find yourself in one either a) fire or b) evade away from it.
Having said that, if a pilot is constantly finding himself in HO situations he really needs to reevaluate his strategic approach to dogfighting imo.