Self-Defense Capacity

Daniel Larusso: You mean there were times when you were scared to fight
Miyagi: Always scared. Miyagi hate fighting.
Daniel Larusso: Yeah, but you know karate. 
Miyagi: So?
Daniel Larusso: So, karate's fighting. You train to fight.
Miyagi: That what you think?
Daniel Larusso:...No.
Miyagi: Then why train?
Daniel Larusso:...So I won't have to fight.
Miyagi: Miyagi have hope for you yet.
--Karate Kid

'Peace on Earth' is a wish often made this time of year. It is a wish for a perfectly free society. In a perfectly free society, people pursue their interests unencumbered by the use of force. Perhaps the vision becomes clearer during the Christmas season because it resembles heaven on earth.

Unfortunately, this vision competes against the earthly reality of forceful intervention. In pursuit of personal gain, some people seek to forcefully intervene on the affairs of others. They may intervene directly by using their own forceful measures (e.g., guns), or they may intervene indirectly by employing strong armed agents (e.g., government officials with guns) to do their dirty work for them.

As long as such threats persist, then people have the right to defend their person and property against such attacks. Many people choose to develop capacity for self-defense. Capacity for self-defense includes both mental and physical components. Mentally, individuals can develop awareness of threatening situations as well as the confidence and willingness to fight back if attacked.

Physically, an individual can develop skills for stopping aggressors. In some situations, 'talking down' an aggressor, running away, or signaling self-defense competence may be adequate to ward off attack. In other situations, 'fighting back' is necessary. Skills in hand-to-hand combat and weaponry build physical self-defense capacity.

Throughout history, those with governing power have sought to disarm or limit self-defense capacity. Limitations have commonly focused on keeping state-of-the-art technologies out of the hands of those seeking to defend themselves. When hand-to-hand combat methods were state-of-the-art, their practice was forbidden in many societies--except of course by the ruling class. Bladed weapons naturally followed.

For the last three or four hundred years, the focus has been on guns. In the US, the British started the ball rolling by trying to confiscate long and short guns from the Colonists. The Second Amendment, of course, was written partially in response to their unsuccessful efforts. US citizens have generally understood its implications, having maintained their status among the most well-armed citizenries in the world for the past 200+ years. Today, Americans own approximately 300 million guns (US population = about 315 million).

State-of-the-art as targeted by anti-gun coalition is currently 'assault rifles.' Once again, the primary argument is that people would be just as safe without them. People seeking to build self-defense capacity appear to disagree (and now here).

When securing a FREE state (see Second Amendment), each individual determines how to build self-defense capacity.

Those who forcefully seek to limit those choices become the aggressors.