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Comment by xg15 | Hacker News Reader

I've grown really tired of the term "self defense" in the context of the wars recently.

Not because the concept would be wrong or there would be no need for it - of course a state has to be able to defend its population against attacks - but because as soon as there is a situation where it applies in war, both sides seem to stretch it to absolutely unrecognizable lengths and use it to justify essentially everything in warfare.

That's why I'm wary if someone makes a theoretical argument about personal self-defense that's tailor-made to justify killing. It feels too much like the same tactics in war propaganda.

There are nonlethal ways of defending oneself or others, too, btw. Learn martial arts, knock them out, use a taser if you have too, then grab your kid and run. None of that requires shooting them.

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>There are nonlethal ways of defending oneself or others, too, btw. Learn martial arts, knock them out, use a taser if you have too, then grab your kid and run. None of that requires shooting them.

Agree with the general sentiments of your post. A lot of pro self-defense talks online read like thinly veiled "bad ass" fan fiction where someone salivates over the idea of killing someone in a legal manner that they face no consequences for.

But I don't think this last part is very realistic and possibly even very dangerous. Martial arts aren't anywhere near as effective as people make them out to be if you are not highly trained and essentially useless if the other person is armed even with a knife. They are better for training confidence/athleticism than self-defense. Tasers are frequently shrugged off by aggressors (no shortage of videos online showing this) and if you miss you just escalated the situation with no other way out. A gun is really the only thing that puts even the weakest victim on par with the strongest aggressor. But situational awareness for where you are and who is around you is 100x more important.

For me, the inherent problem is that people have a right to self defence (and I'd argue to self defence by proxy of a states army), but states have no such right.

A lot of the more horrific acts of war seem designed not to defend the people who happen to live in a state, but the state apparatus (or the interests of that states stakeholders) itself.

States do have a right to self-defense: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-defence_in_international_... What state does not?

It's the individual that generally has no right to self defense, if measured by the ability to mount an effective armed self defense. In most countries, the individual is as expendable as a red blood cell is to the overall organism. They are not prevented from fighting back per se, but this natural right is severely and harshly limited.

States may have a legal right to self defence, but considering that states are both the primary producers and enforcers of law; it's hardly surprising that they'd give themselves the right.

Morally, I'd argue they have none.

Many of these ways are promoted by people without any experience fighting, struggling, or even being competent in exercising, in my experience.

Were it so simple, police forces would simply act out Hollywood-esque movie moves. But in reality, individual officers must often resort to firearms to stop assailants, or in some countries, mass unarmed officers must swarm a single assailant.

In regards to states' self-defense claims, they have every incentive to claim it as a casus belli. It's too powerful and righteous to not try to get it to 'stick', and big lies do sometimes work. That doesn't obviate there being actual cases of self-defense, it's just not something that can be taken for granted, and when information is a battlespace all its own, I guess we shouldn't be surprised.

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