The JWs believe the Bible is a handbook. It's not. Under the law of Moses, self defense was looked upon as completely allowable. There were certain restrictions, such if an intruder entered your home at night, the homeowner could assume the intruder was willing to take a life if discovered. If caught during the day, however, killing him would be manslaughter unless some disability on the part of the homeowner was a mitigating factor. An old man could probably mitigate taking the life of a younger and much stronger man.
The New Testament was primarily written to the churches and religious leaders. Self defense can certainly be shown to be allowable in the sense of, if you don't have a sword, sell your cloak and buy one. Back then, your cloak was essential to your survival against the elements, and most people only had one, while the wealthy had several. Still, there's no specific prohibition that I'm aware of where one is forbidden to defend one's self and family. In fact, any man who wouldn't defend himself and his family is a coward, and any woman who wouldn't defend her children is equally as detestible.
In one case in the mid-west, a man was advancing on a woman with a handgun. She couldn't bring herself to shoot and the intruder knew it. So as she stood there shaking, he advanced on her, grinning. Then things changed. Her young 4-year old son came into the room and the intruder turned to grab him. Before he could take a step, she emptied the six-shot revolver into him, killing him on the spot. She couldn't shoot to save herself, but her child was different.
I've often thought about that woman and what happened in her future. I just know the intruder should have left as soon as the child came into the room.
As a journalist, a number of years ago I interviewed a former burgler turned security consultant. When I asked him what caused him to give up his life of crime, he told me he was in someone's home one evening, a heavy cloth bag at his side in which he was putting various goodies. "I didn't think anyone was home," he told me. "I was a burgler. If I'd wanted to meet people," he added, smiling, "I would have been a mugger." As he was dropping things into his bag, he said, he heard the scariest sound a burglar could hear. "It was the sound of an automatic pistol chambering a round." He couldn't tell exactly where the sound had come from, but it was enough to cause him to flee, leaving his bag in the person's living room. "I never burgled after that," he said. Like anyone else, intruders can be scared. "It's not like it is in the movies, where the bad guy is all but invincible." The homeowner might have been frightened, he said, but for him it was a "lifechanging event."
Guns? I pity those people in the U.K., Australia and Canada. I was surprised to learn that many people in the U.K. were buying deactivated handguns and rifles and paying more for them than we Americans are paying for the real guns. It's a right we cherish and we certainly don't want to go down the path of Australia. Forty-five years ago, one could go into a store, buy a gun, box of ammo and a cleaning kit, take it home and no one batted an eye. The last time I bought a handgun, I was treated like a criminal. It took me hours to fill out the paperwork, and when I returned a week later after a background check, the clerk wrapped it up like it was a bomb and stapled up the paper bags the gun was encased in. Then they escorted me to the door and told me to put it in the trunk. They also wouldn't sell me ammo at the same time as the gun. This wouldn't have happened in the South, but in my state, if it weren't for the U.S. Constitution, I think guns would be illegal.
But everyone has the right to self defense in my view.
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