Violence for self-defense is necessary

The argument

It is no secret that women often take self-defense training lessons to resist sexual threats and assaults. Those lessons help potential victims of abuse and harassment learn the skills to fend off an attacker, and the fact that such training is offered and taken up so widely tells against any absolute prohibition on violence. Nobody treats these classes as instruction in wrongdoing. Even teenagers and young children are often taught how to defend themselves, physically and verbally, in order to avoid potentially dangerous situations — and a society that teaches its children to fight back when attacked has already accepted that some violence is legitimate. The circumstances in which that violence is used are what make it defensible. Physical violence in the form of self-defense is in most cases a last resort, employed by people in situations of extreme danger to them, once the alternatives have failed or were never available. Violence of this kind is not chosen over some peaceful option; it is what remains when the choice has been taken away by the person attacking. It is necessary because it saves one's life from harm, and the harm it prevents is greater than the harm it inflicts. The law in many countries recognises exactly this distinction. In some countries people have the legal right to defend themselves using a sufficient level of counteracting force or violence in order to prevent a violent threat, and the qualification carried by "sufficient" is important: the permission is proportionate rather than open-ended, extending only as far as ending the threat. What this shows is that the moral question was never about violence as such but about the circumstances of its use. Violence in self-defense, and in defense of others, are justified acts.

Premises

Counter-arguments

In some cases, unjust violence is claimed as self-defense by people. Hate crimes against minorities and marginalized people are often justified under the umbrella of self-defense. This why self-defense violence laws shouldn't exist, or it should be made sure that not all acts of violence are acts of self-defense. There are sometimes power dynamics involved between the abuser and the victim. The abuser can shift the blame on the victim's act of self-defense by playing innocent. People take advantage of self-defense laws by harming people and then blaming them for it, which is why violence isn't right even in the act of self-defense.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] That people train in self-defence shows they prepare for attack; it does not establish that the force eventually used is necessary, which turns on the circumstances of a particular encounter rather than on the practice being widespread. [Rejecting P2] Legal recognition marks what a jurisdiction permits rather than what is morally justified, and the proportionality condition the premise cites is the qualification that matters — the counter's objection concerns exactly the force claimed as defence that exceeds or invents the threat.