Blake Wylie found an interesting position on self defense today. Copied from NashvilleFiles

My take on the matter is simply this: It seems reasonable to me that if I am futzin’ around with a firearm or some other kind of lethal weapon, whether that weapon is on my person, in my vehicle, under my bed, or wherever, then I am probably concerned more with fear than I am with loving and caring about my family and other ones who are dear to me.

The actual link to the above post is here. This particular blogger seems to have a hard time distinguishing between fear and preparation. Certainly, if you didn’t fill up your car with gas, you should fear being stranded. Having sense, we all know that filling up that vehicle precludes that possibility. Likewise, if you cannot protect your family, you should fear for their safety in an otherwise hostile world. If anything, owning firearms, which we do, puts to rest that “fear”. Of course, it’s not an emotional decision to own firearms. Opposedly, it’s quite the logical one. In my view, it’s part of running a responsible household. But in all fairness to the blogger, he is intellectually consistent

In moments of meditation, the worst thing I can think of would be for harm to come to someone I love. Yes, that would be tragically painful. On the other hand, I nonetheless cleave to the belief that countering violence with violence is not a solution to the problem of fear.

Well, in the real world, there are times where violence solves lots of things. Moral superiority is rather meaningless if you’re needlessly dead. In reality, fear in the debilitating sense has no role in self defense. The ability to reason is what prompts one to self defense, not the emotion of fear.