Well said! I agree with pretty much everything you said and I come from a martial arts background so I can totally vibe with the sentiments and points you made. The world is a dangerous place, we should be able to defend ourselves in a free society. Hell. It's an inherent human right regardless of what government you live under, but.. I'm sure you get what I mean.

I definitely think the answer is to help educate people to be more responsible and ethical. Those who want to cause violence will find ways and we shouldn't make ourselves further victims by being unable to defend ourselves as well.

There's a reason I think certain power structures become the super powers of the world, Rome was one and they required their citizens to also serve as soldiers, in the US we are suppose to be similar.. All people are considered a part of the militia. So.. I think in order to truly ensure freedom and not let tyrants take over even more, we have to all sort of.. Do our part and not just leave that stuff to someone else because they're an "expert" or whatever.. NO.. We all need to do these basic human things in my opinion. We should all be prepared to defend ourselves, unless you're a total pacifist and you don't believe in violence at all. Then that's up to you if you wanna let others take advantage of you and exploit you and perhaps worse.. Maybe even kill you.

Anyways.. I think an important part of all this is like you mentioned, self ownership and self responsibility. Not banning things.

Also I wouldn't expect to hear much from others as this is a pretty old thread! Looks like it was 5 months ago I posted this.. But that's cool once again to see how evergreen this can be when people comment on my posts from a long time ago. :)