Possessing any
object specifically for the purpose of self-defence, lethal or non-lethal, is a
criminal offence in Australia!!! There are many women, raped and/or murdered,
who would have been liable to prosecution had they been carrying anything that
might have saved them.
"The Gun Is
Civilization"
By Maj. L. Caudill USMC (Ret)
Human beings only have two ways to deal with one another: reason and
force. If you want me to do something for you, you have a choice of either
convincing me via argument, or force me to do your bidding under threat of
force. Every human interaction falls into one of those two categories, without
exception. Reason or force, that’s it.
In a truly moral and civilized society, people exclusively interact
through persuasion. Force has no place as a valid method of social interaction,
and the only thing that removes force from the menu is the personal firearm, as
paradoxical as it may sound to some.
When I carry a gun, you cannot deal with me by force. You have to use
reason and try to persuade me, because I have a way to negate your threat or
employment of force. The gun is the only personal weapon that puts a 100-pound
woman on equal footing with a 220-pound mugger, a 75-year old retiree on equal
footing with a 19-year old gangbanger, and a single gay guy on equal footing
with a carload of drunk guys with baseball bats. The gun removes the disparity
in physical strength, size, or numbers between a potential attacker and a
defender.
There are plenty of people who consider the gun as the source of bad
force equations. These are the people who think that we’d be more civilized if
all guns were removed from society, because a firearm makes it easier for a
mugger to do his job. That, of course, is only true if the mugger’s potential
victims are mostly disarmed either by choice or by legislative fiat–it has no
validity when most of a mugger’s potential marks are armed. People who argue
for the banning of arms ask for automatic rule by the young, the strong, and
the many, and that’s the exact opposite of a civilized society. A mugger, even
an armed one, can only make a successful living in a society where the state
has granted him a force monopoly.
Then there’s the argument that the gun makes confrontations lethal
that otherwise would only result in injury. This argument is fallacious in
several ways. Without guns involved, confrontations are won by the physically
superior party inflicting overwhelming injury on the loser. People who think
that fists, bats, sticks, or stones don’t constitute lethal force watch too
much TV, where people take beatings and come out of it with a bloody lip at
worst. The fact that the gun makes lethal force easier works solely in favor of
the weaker defender, not the stronger attacker. If both are armed, the field is
level. The gun is the only weapon that’s as lethal in the hands of an octogenarian
as it is in the hands of a weightlifter. It simply wouldn’t work as well as a
force equalizer if it wasn’t both lethal and easily employable.
When I carry a gun, I don’t do so because I am looking for a fight,
but because I’m looking to be left alone. The gun at my side means that I
cannot be forced, only persuaded. I don’t carry it because I’m afraid, but
because it enables me to be unafraid. It doesn’t limit the actions of those who
would interact with me through reason, only the actions of those who would do
so by force. It removes force from the equation…and that’s why carrying a gun
is a civilized act.
By Maj. L. Caudill USMC (Ret.)
