The intent to kill is not illegal. Anyone who shoots anyone has an ostensible 'intent to kill'. It is similar to calling something a 'hate crime'. All crimes are hate crimes. This is no such thing as a 'love crime' except the one Jeb Bush just made up. How could anyone argue, "Yes, I killed him. But I did not 'hate' him at the time of the crime." That is even worse!
In that sense, there is not anyone who shoots at anyone without a 'defacto' intent to kill. How could anyone argue, "Yes, I shot him. But I did not mean to hurt him." Under this law, all shootings everywhere are 'premeditated murder', if the person happens to die from it.
Intent coupled with one or more actions taken to carry that intent out is illegal. That's called attempt.
You're more than welcome to start tilting at the deeply-established concept of premeditated murder, but you'll soon envy Don Quixote.
The difference here is that he didn't just fire off a couple of additional shots, he carefully considered what kind of shot he was going to fire. That is a pretty good illustration of the difference between first degree murder and premeditated murder.
More generally: if an argument escalates to violence and one person gets so angry that he yanks out his firearm and shoots at the other person, that is not premeditated murder. On the other hand, suppose that person knew the other person was a hothead and that he would yank out his bowie knife if he got mad enough. Suppose that this person instigated an argument and pushed it to the point where he knew the other person would pull out his knife, so that he could then shoot that other person and claim self-defense, that is premeditation. Even if the plan forms half-way through the argument, there was premeditation. It's sort of like the difference between general intent and specific intent.