> when it comes to self-defense, the resulting harm is praiseworthy and not to overall be deplored.

Bullshit. There is nothing at all praiseworthy about shooting a person, self-defense or otherwise. This is one of the most pernicious ideas advocated by those who defend guns, and makes it very difficult to discuss the related issues rationally. There is nothing praiseworthy about blowing a hole in another human. It should always be deplored, and we can do better than this. At best, shooting someone is a failure of finding a non-lethal avenue of resolving a problem. At worst, defending it as praiseworthy in certain circumstances reveals a moral and ethical failure to value life, and a potential bloodlust for taking life in circumscribed scenarios that absolve people of the need to recognize that what they've done is wrong.

Again, we can do better.

Firstly however, I'd like to apologize for the tone of my response below. While I stand by my post's general idea I feel it was poorly worded and came out unnecessarily hostile and combative, along with overly dismissive of your point of view. I'm going to leave it up unedited if for no other reason than to serve as an example of how not to engage in these discussions. In particular, I really shouldn't have made any assumptions about your specific background and again, my apologies.

The exact reasons why I disagreed so strongly with your post are proving difficult for me to illustrate beyond what I've already written. In essence, by painting the act of self defense as being morally or ethically ambiguous, I feel that you are essentially dismissing the experiences that those like myself, who have had to endure violence first hand, have had. I fully accept that I may be misreading your intent here but it comes off as somehow equivocating a defensive response to violence with using violence to prey on others.

Its also upsetting to me because I run across similar sentiments in my daily life that I find troubling. While I consider myself fortunate to both work and socialize with people of many different classes and races I find certain attitudes held by most of those who had the luxury of middle-upper class upbringings regarding being poor to be problematic. I understand this may not be the case with you and I overreacted.

All too often however I come across people espousing views on what it's like to be poor or be surrounded by violence without ever having been poor or surrounded by violence. It comes off as dismissive of my experiences.

It also showcases the problem of racial and economic segregation that is becoming increasingly widespread in the US whereby the burden of being poor and living around violence is increasingly being cordoned off from the rest of society. To me this is expressed by views such as yours that hold self defense as morally ambiguous. It's telling that not a single person who I grew up around would ever consider their right to self defense, even if using deadly force, to be problematic. The only people who I've ever heard espouse these views have never encountered violence at all. I understand that this may not be you, and that there probably exist people who have been victims of violence and still view deadly force as unjust, I've just never met any myself and this surely distorts my perspective.

I'm unsure if this post makes a coherent argument that explains my views succinctly but I hope it helps.

Either way, sorry about the tone of my previous comment.

I will also add that I spent a good part of my youth living in an area of Oakland, and before that Houston, that was brutalized by a bizarre concoction of gang violence and police corruption mixed with a healthy dose of community apathy.

With all that being said I find your comment extraordinarily naive, paternalistic and offensive. To suggest that citizens, especially those of communities that have been systematically disenfranchised both socially and economically, should feel shame in defending themselves from criminal elements that seek to prey on their condition is absurd.

I certainly don't celebrate the death of another human being and hope that we as a society can find non violent ways of addressing grievances, but to conflate self defense, even when it results in unfortunate death, as bloodlust is insulting.

I usually tend to refrain from drawing conclusions about a poster's personal background on the basis of comments since it's rife for misunderstanding but in this instance I find it hard to bite my tongue. You sound like the product of an extraordinarily privileged life. Perhaps not Gates or Zuckerberg levels of privilege, but privilege nonetheless. The type of privilege were you viewed the police as friends of the community, the type were you didn't have to fear being shot, or stabbed, or bludgeoned, or run over multiple times (something that actually happened to a childhood friend) by the gangs that controlled your neighborhood. The type of privilege were as a child you could be outside after sunset, the type were you didn't have to run from the bus stop straight home every afternoon to avoid being jumped.

The funny thing about privilege is that those who are its biggest beneficiaries are often the least aware if its existence. To suggest that those of us who didn't grow up with the privilege of safety from having physical violence visited upon us or our families and friends as a regular occurrence should view the idea of self defense, even when resulting in death, as being ethically or morally ambiguous represents an almost sociopathic level of delusion.

I was born & raised in & around Los Angeles. My parents were pregnant before graduating high school with my older sister. 15 months later, I was born. The family was all-American, all-military. Air Force. Dad worked for his dad in a print shop. Mom worked in a nail & hair salon. They offered us the best they could. I learned at a young age what bankruptcy was, & the impact it had on adults who were struggling to keep their heads above water.

My earliest memory is walking out of our apartment in Canoga Park to find my mom's car up on blocks because someone stole the wheels & tires off her little Mazda. I think I was around 3. Years later, I was still squeezing my now-6-foot-tall self into the back seat of that car. There was a lot of violence & crime in Canoga Park.

But that was child's play, & nothing compared to the violence in my home.

Until I was nearly 11, my father was an uncontrollable force of violent rage. The kind that results from a severe chemical imbalance, not the alcoholic kind--I've seen alcohol pass my dad's lips maybe 3 times in my whole life. He never touched the stuff. Never touched drugs. Never even smoked a cigarette. He was a gym rat, & an enormous man. Lucky for me, though his massive hands were rarely quiet, I was not the target. My mother, on the other hand, learned to take her hits well--both from life & from him.

My earliest memory of a firearm was the one I saw my father point into my mother's face. I was about 5. We'd just moved into a new home they had built. My sister & I watched in horror from the hallway as he pressed the muzzle into her face. My sister, just 6 years old, ran into the room & began yelling at him to stop. Terrified, I hid behind one of those tall floor speakers that were so the rage at that time. Shaking uncontrollably, I couldn't help but peek out from behind the speaker, just waiting for the gun to go off. Words I do not recall were yelled at my sister, & she went scurrying back down the hallway. She & I were like twins. & twins stick together. I overcame my petrifying fear & ran back down the hallway after her. We went to my room. She was never very good at thinking through anything--still isn't. She was unbelievably good at simply acting with no thought of consequences. I, however, was always the thinker. Hiding in my room with my sister, away from the horror unfolding in living room, I was able to think. We grabbed my [other] infant sister, & I kicked screen out of my bedroom window--oh, praise the southern Californian ranch-style, single-level homes!--so we could escape the house. We ran from the house, trying to find a neighbor with a phone. We hadn't really learned about 911 as I recall, or perhaps we were just scared to fucking death, & couldn't recall the digits. My sister & I discussed how we needed to call my uncle, the only other bodybuilding man we knew who was even bigger & stronger than our massive dad. But we did not know his phone number. At this point, my memory gets pretty hazy. I cannot for the life of me remember how we wound up back inside the house. But we did. My mother somehow talked my father into leaving the house--and the gun. While he was gone, we rode with her in that shitty little Mazda some distance away. We thought we were leaving--it would have probably been the dozenth time I could remember. I realized we weren't when my mother pulled up to a dumpster behind a store, & I watched her throw the gun inside. She was, of course, punished pretty severely when my father found out.

From age 5 to 10, living in that house my parents built that my father so routinely did his best to destroy, my father worked in the valley. He would stay close to work Mon-Thur, & only come home Fridays for the weekend. So, it was basically 5 years of 4 days of peace with a mother who grew increasingly hardened, & a father who'd come home just as we were all feeling relaxed to fuck that all up for 2 days & 3 nights. Of course, I never had the slightest idea that in many ways, he simply couldn't help it--and please don't misunderstand that statement as being any kind of excuse for his behavior.

When I was 10, in the 7th grade--I skipped from 3rd to 5th grade--we moved to a new house. I began to learn very quickly about gangs. I knew kids with guns at school. Kids had no shoes because they'd been stolen while walking to school that morning. Same with jackets in the winters. I learned to identify the kids in my schools who were involved in gangs. I learned how to keep my ears open & pay attention to what was around me. I still got the shit beat out of me from time to time. I learned not to be afraid of any single one of these fuckers, & they knew they had to knock me out to shut me up because I wasn't going to back down just because some punk or bully was wearing colors. I also learned about crooked cops. They were everywhere. Oh, there were definitely some good ones to be found. But at 35, I still eye every cop with suspicion. I can't recall a time since I was about 8 that I felt police were a friend of the community.

With a military family, it was inevitable I would learn to fire guns. Everyone in the family had them. I learned to take them apart, clean them, & rebuild them by the time I was 10. I began shooting them when I was about 12. I've fired many. I don't own a single one, & I probably never will. First impressions stick harder than anything else.

It was during this time my father swallowed a bottle of pills. He'd apparently had enough of himself & couldn't cope anymore. The pills were supposed to help him somehow find balance. Instead, they drove him way over the edge into what I assume he thought would be the eternal arms of endless rest.

He failed. I was made to visit him in the hospital. My mom brought my sisters & I to see him and, sitting in a cold room at a table, I saw my father cry for the first time. I hated him for it, & refused to allow him any of my sympathy. I became a little terror for a while. I kind of checked out emotionally & mentally. School, which had always been an effortless straight-A achievement, took a nose-dive. Suspensions. Cut classes. I'd leave school part way through the day & walk miles back home, coordinating my arrival with when the buses dropped my sisters off.

As my 11th birthday approached, I recall a clear, radical thought: I simply couldn't keep looking to my parents for answers. They were a fucking mess, & barely able to take care of themselves. If I was going to figure out how to navigate life & the world around me, how to not let my life so far have any chance at fucking me up, I was going to have to start tackling it on my own. So, that's what I did. I started reading everything I could get my hands on. The Bible. History. Science. Math. Literature. Philosophy. I began to learn the contours of what I could get away with, & what would make my parents' eyebrows raise. I was looking for something, anything tied to something stronger that could pull me ashore. I found that in knowledge, education, studying, questioning everything I was told, interrogating everything--including myself--to discover just what it was made of.

When I was 17 & learning how to drive, my dad told me he was proud of me for the first time I could recall. Like, a genuine moment I could tell he was facing the fact that I'd just told him & my mom I couldn't stay at home anymore & had to go. I nearly drove the car off the road as, for the first time in 6 years, I teared up & began crying. We were both choked up, & I tried--as I usually do in difficult situations--to lighten the mood by joking that was one hell of a way to risk our lives.

That bottle of pills was my dad's salvation. He was never the same after that. He never raised his hands again. He was transformed. He's such a different person in many ways today because of that moment. I'm proud of him for eventually finding a way out of the darkness. Sadly, he's never been able to forgive himself, even though my sisters & I most certainly have. Some years after my sister & I moved out of the house, my mom told me that he spent almost every night of that first year we were gone crying himself to sleep. In his mind, he's never really stopped being that monster he was before he tried to die.

That bottle of pills was my salvation. I was never the same after that.

---

So, random internet stranger, I am not the product of an extraordinarily privileged life. Except that I was born white. & male. & had a computer at 8, which was the luckiest break I ever had (after being white & male). I never thought growing up that I would ever make it to being 20 years old.

And no, random internet stranger, what I said was neither naive nor paternalistic. Nor is it borne of some sociopathic level of delusion. That you are offended by someone taking a strong stance against violence of all forms is for you to own. We don't have to agree, but please do yourself & everyone else a great favor by not thinking you could possibly ever definitively & accurately intuit someone's personal background on the basis of their comments & the positions they take on things.

I recognize precisely where my privilege lies. I have long known of its existence, before it even became popular to talk about privilege. That you imagine a life of posh privilege as being the life that would cause a person to take a firm position on something shows only a gaping lack of imagination on your part.

Interestingly enough, while we clearly differ on this issue we both seem to share some similarities in our childhood experiences. I suppose the lesson for me from all this is the understanding that while it may be convenient to assume that those who hold differing opinions from myself must have had vastly different experiences, this isn't necessarily the case. While we probably won't find much common ground on the issue at hand I think it's rewarding to engage in these discussions, my overly dismissive language notwithstanding. It's enlightening to know that even those with somewhat similar experiences can have vastly different viewpoints and reactions as a result of those experiences, this certainly makes for an interesting world.

I too tend to dislike speaking about my private life and I regret that my post resulted in you feeling the need to talk about yours, although I appreciate you taking the time to prove how misguided my initial post was. I'm not particularly good at expressing my views, whether written or spoken, and thus don't engage in these kind of discussions often. While its wonderful to be able to engage with others online, it is too easy to be dismissive or hostile to others in a way I would never be in person. I will certainly try and keep that in mind the next time I post.

I find your strong stance against violence in all its forms to be admirable. It's not something I find myself capable of accepting but as you said that is more of a reflection on me than you. Perhaps you are a better man than I.

In any case, I apologize for the content of my initial response. I'm embarrassed by my rush to judgement and hope that you find my apology sincere.

However, allow me to assure you there's no chance I'm in any way better than you. We are different, that's all.

I spent a long while replying, and then editing that reply down because I learned there's a comment length limit on HN. After finishing that, I saw your other reply. I appreciate your kindness. I wanted to reply further (and still do), but it was getting late on the East Coast, and I needed to step away and somewhat just deal with speaking so frankly about my past.

For what it's worth, I'd be happy to keep talking offline if you'd want to. My email is in my profile. I'll return to reply to some other comments and issues raised here.

I completely understand your unease with sharing such personal detail, I myself tried to make my post intentionally vague which results in much less valuable substance than what you have shared. Your experience is powerful and well told and although different in terms of the source of our childhood misery, I drew parallels with my own. I understand if you decide to delete it however.

I'm rather new to HN and wasn't aware of a comment length limit either, thanks for pointing it out.

I'm glad to hear that you and your father have made peace.

I look forward to reading your subsequent comments, and in particular I look forward to the next time we might disagree. I assure you I will put more care into crafting my response as I greatly value having someone who can challenge my views, even if that only serves in them being strengthened.

Enjoy the rest of your night.

Does that mean we vilify their ownership and gradually make the many responsible owners felons for the actions of the miscreant few? I'm not going to argue that these devices are somehow as destructive as guns, but an object's design origin shouldn't nullify its value for current use.

We can do better on violence and valuing life as a race and society, but insisting it start with eliminating a set of hobbies whose participants are overwhelmingly responsible, law-abiding, and civic-minded is itself a pernicious idea.

I can no longer edit this post. Apologies for the mistake.

What's you "better" for when a thug is using lethal force on an innocent?

This is one of the most pernicious ideas advocated by those who defend guns, and makes it very difficult to discuss the related issues rationally.

Yep, as long as you have such disdain for legitimate uses of guns you're certainly not going to be able to discuss the issue "rationally", you've already made up your mind.

And if you think I view all human life as equal, you're sorely confused, which is further supported by you suspicion of bloodlust being a part of this.

There are many people for whom I'd give my life, without the slightest hesitation, to ensure their safety and survival. Obviously, my teenage sons. And my family members. And my closest friends. Hell, even my ex-wife.

There is no way I would take a life for anyone. That's a universe away, and a wholly different thing.

I would do all I could to de-escalate a potentially dangerous situation. I would physically fight and attempt to subdue an attacker who threatened me or those I love most dearly. I'd do all I could to diffuse a violent confrontation and disable a threat. But I would not kill for it.

I reject the notion that, where a human life is concerned, there is a "legitimate" use of guns. And yet, despite what you assume, I am most capable of discussing the matter rationally and unemotionally. That I take a strong stance against violence and, as you put it, have made up my mind on that point, in no way prevents me from engaging the matter in rational conversation. Moreover, as with all things, I am and have always been open to allowing my currently staked positions to be changed by a preponderance of convincing evidence and argument that proves more rational, reasonable, defensible, and warranted. As far as taking lives is concerned, however, that climb is far steeper than many other issues.

That you don't view all human life as equal is your own issue to grapple with. I'm in no way confused. I think you may have overreacted to my using the term "bloodlust" in a very specific and narrow context, but I anticipated it being something that would likely incur a rather visceral response. I can only encourage you to view all human life as equally worthy of protection, and really, really difficult to take flippantly.

There is no way I would take a life for anyone.

These simultaneous positions are rational???

In what situations would you be able to a) give your life for another in which that selfless act would both "ensure their safety and survival" but could not entail the taking of a life?

Do you really consider the human life of someone trying to kill your loved ones as equal to those loved ones?

No, I believe in the concept of the outlaw, the person who's put himself "outside the law" in a sense, at least for the duration of his lethal threat, and who can be legally opposed with lethal force (which actually means the whole situation is within the law, hence my weasel words). I do not view such human lives as equal to those of the innocents they predate on, for the duration of their lethal threats.

(Although, to make crystal clear, my legal and moral response is to use lethal force on them if necessary, killing per se is no legal, but the job of the judiciary after due process. Of course killing is a likely outcome when using lethal force, but stopping the lethal threat is the legitimate outcome, killing an unfortunate common result.)

Yes, I consider all human life to be equal, whether it is the life of a loved one, a stranger, an asshole, or what-have-you.[1]

[1]: I'll admit that I have a difficult time coming up with a realistically successful non-lethal solution to the problem of individuals like Hitler, Stalin, et al. I admit the need for certain nuances, and find there to be a strong moral and ethical case to be made for removing a singular threat posed to millions of human lives. However, I still remain firm on the principle that taking a life, even of one such as Hitler, should be a last resort after all other options have been exhausted. And even then, I would hope the decision to be one that those who made it agonized over, and accepted with heavy hearts that they'd decided to kill.

(Although if you want to maintain the lowest risk anyone will be killed, you'd never call the police in the US, full stop.)

I believe strongly that LEO should be barred from carrying lethal weapons, and most certainly should be barred from possessing and utilizing former military hardware.