An interesting piece on arms and self-defense

Found this linked at The High Road.  I'm partway through it, will have to finish it later; did want to put up this quote which touches on something we've yelled about before:

This position seeps down through the “sub-political” issues of self-defense and personal responsibility. Not-really-pacifist “pacifist” liberals, I find, often get wrapped up in a recurring ideological process of shedding and assigning guilt.  I wouldn’t touch a gun. I’ll just call my paid servant the policeman to come and shoot my assailant for me.  My hands stay clean of gunshot residue and other stains; he wields the horrid gun and the moral responsibility, and quandary, of using deadly force – which I’ll endlessly analyze with my colleagues over dinner.  And if it really was my ass that was saved, we’ll all congratulate ourselves for maintaining our “pacifist” guiltlessness, while romanticizing the guy who did the dirty work for us. Katherine Bigelow speaks for many, who actually think there is some kind of extra moral virtue in this way of living in the world.  I find a more cogent description in the Sartrian term “bad faith.” 

For myself, since I neither am nor pretend to be a pacifist, if I were in some mortal danger that called for the self-defensive use of deadly force, I would rather take on myself the responsibility for using that force – moral quandary, dirty hands and all – than shift it onto someone from a quasi-professional caste created to be my absolving wet workers. 

That last bold is mine, and I think it's a very important thing.  I've yet to meet anyone- including self-declared pacifists- who, under threat, would NOT call the cops to come save them.  Guns, nightsticks and all.  And they feel very moral about not dirtying themselves with violence and weapons.

 

Which is one reason I so dislike so many who call themselves 'pacifists'.