In my opinion, neither money nor greed (cupiditas) is the root of all evil. The root of all evil is envy. The non-coper hates the coper, and thus the non-shooter hates the shooter. I see no other explanation for the pointless and irrational activism of the gun grabbers on the political scene. They know that their machinations can have no effect upon crime. Guns have no effect upon crime, but they do make all men equal, as the saying goes. This puts the coper on top, and infuriates the non-coper.

- Jeff Cooper

There was a time in my life when, as an ardent defender of the Second Amendment right to Keep and Bear Arms, and as a martial artist who understands the utility of tools and weapons, I spent a tremendous amount of time arguing online about weapons.  There is no shortage of vigorous, heated, and even rancorous debate about any topic you can imagine on the Internet.  Firearms, knives, and other tools for delivering force are no exceptions.  I have logged countless hours arguing point by point against the ignorance, myths, misinformation, and outright lies regarding firearms and knives.

I rarely do it anymore.

Americans are unique in the world in that theirs is the strongest tradition of individualism and self-reliance extant.  This is not to say that there aren't residents of other nations who share that spirit.  There certainly are such people. I've had the pleasure of speaking to many of them online.  Unfortunately, however, the default "popular culture" of most foreign nations is deeply laced with hoplophobia.

Firearms columnist and shooting expert Jeff Cooper coined the term "hoplophobia" to mean those who possess an irrational fear of tools and weapons.  While the United States has no shortage of them, the majority of the hoplophobes one encounters online in internationally trafficked venues are foreigners.  This is what one would expect, as foreign citizens and subjects have for years, if not generations, lived in societies whose governing bodies do not allow them to possess the tools of force.  They have been told from every side and at every opportunity that weapons are tools of miscreants and thugs.  They have believed the propaganda that individual weapons are not really useful for self-defense and not items with which the average person can be trusted.

The issue touches much more than the legality of various arms.  The dominant cultures of most nations promote a level of invasive government control that the average American would not tolerate.  (This is changing as more and more of my fellow Americans are "reeducated" to accept "global standards" of individual rights, embracing everything from the gun control schemes of the United Nations to "international laws" that promote the welfare of other countries at the expense of the United States.)

For some reason, a disproportionate segment of Internet trolls seems to be comprised of people from the UK.  Again, I do not imply that all those in the UK should be dismissed as trolls, for I know some earnest UK weapons aficionados who are themselves afraid of the increasingly totalitarian nature of the society in which they live.  Sadly, however, if we look simply at probabilities, the average UK 'net denizen is more likely to possess both a fear of weapons and a general hostility for Americans.  

Like his counterparts in neighboring countries, the UK subject does not understand what he considers an "obsession" with weapons "common" among Americans.  He has never had the individual freedom shared by his American neighbors, for the UK (particularly in recent years) sets the standard for increasing infringement of individual rights -- a trend that, I fear, my own nation is in danger of following if more is not done and said about it.

It has always amazed me that a fighter or martial artist -- someone who ought to understand, by virtue of his or her avocation, the utility of tools as force multipliers -- could be afraid of weapons and consider their possession something that should be legislated.  I shake my head at the number of "martial" artists who pontificate from ignorance on the "usefulness" of weapons training, or on what they allege to be the dangers of carrying a weapon.  Almost always the individuals haughtily dismissing weapons or training in their use possesses no such training himself.  He possesses, therefore, no knowledge of the objects of his derision.  Most gun control advocates, regardless of nationality, are ignorant of firearms and other weapons, spouting myths and misinformation as facts.  

Anyone who takes the time to learn weapons learns the limitations and the applications of those weapons -- and therefore does not fear them.  It is irrational fear, and sometimes jealousy or even contempt for the tradition of individuality Americans enjoy, that drives weapons prohibitionists.

This problem is not entirely the fault of the hoplophobes, however, particular in the case of such martially challenged "fighters" in the UK.  Theirs is a society that teaches them -- and constantly reinforces through every media outlet -- that the knife and the gun are the toys of madmen and ne'er do wells, objects that have no utility in self-defense, devilish constructs more likely to harm the owner or the owner's loved ones than muggers and burglars.  Having little opportunity to train with weapons and perhaps suffering a form of cognitive dissonance in facing this lack, the hoplophobe rationalizes his situation through a variety of excuses and fallacies.

The most common fallacy among the ignorant, especially prevalent among UK hoplophobes, is the idea that those who advocate weapons training and who are themselves armed suffer from some form of insecurity.  This might be described either as a general insecurity or as a lack of confidence in one's training as a martial artist.  The latter is the attitude found among UK martial artists who do not like to think that their own training and abilities could be countered easily by someone wielding a weapon.  They must therefore dismiss as somehow inferior other martial artists who grasp the significance of weapons as tools of force.

Far from feeling insecure in either his martial abilities or in the size of his manhood (Freud was wrong -- sometimes a sword is just a sword), the weapons exponent understands that he or she can never account for every situation, nor for every variable.  The armed citizen knows that sometimes the ability to multiply force is necessary to overcome multiple opponents or an opponent who is much more vicious or more powerful.  The armed citizen does not suffer from the overconfident bravado that unarmed "martial" artists possess.  

The armed citizen is not foolish enough to believe he or she can "control" every situation.  Of course, this does not make the weapon a magic wand, the waving of which will automatically bring victory in every instance.  This is frequently offered as a straw man argument by hoplophobes, who reason fallaciously that weapons are useless for self-defense because they cannot be deployed and used successfully in every hypothetical scenario.

Closely related to these themes is the misconception that those who carry weapons are automatically thugs.  Certainly there are plenty of armed criminals in the world, but fortunately -- at least for now -- the armed and law-abiding citizens outnumber them.  The problem is found in the attitude, both in hoplophobes abroad and found domestically, that weapons are themselves the cause of violence.  They aren't.  A weapon no more transforms you into a violent criminal than the possession of an oven makes you a chef.  Weapons are inanimate objects, possessing neither volition nor intent, useful for nothing unless combined with human action in the pursuit of human goals.  Those goals range from taking your wallet to stopping a gang of high school dropouts from raping your wife -- but only the human beings in the equation determine the variables.

The other common argument employed by hoplophobes and even those who simply aren't interested in weapons is that of necessity -- specifically, that you simply don't need a weapon to protect yourself.  This, again, is bred of ignorance regarding the utility, applications, and limitations of weapons, combined with a total lack of understanding of the true nature of "street" violence.  

I once exchanged barbs online with a troll who questioned my description of the need to keep a street person outside of one's personal space.  Any individual who approaches you after you have explicitly and assertively told him or her not to do so is, in effect, assaulting you.  He or she is approaching to striking distance despite your demands to the contrary.  In Wing Chun we are taught that someone entering this range against your stated wishes must be preemptively attacked, lest you lose the initiative in the altercation.

The individual with whom I argued actually told me that this indicated fear.  He quoted Yoda's words from The Empire Strikes Back in which the green muppet said, in the voice of Frank Oz, that fear is of the dark side.  There can be no substantive response to such obvious ignorance.  How do you teach someone the reality of violence when they live in an unrealistic fantasy world, stating uninformed opinions with blissfully unaware authority?  (For the record, in case you find yourself agreeing, life is not a fucking Star Wars movie.)

If you do not understand the nature of violence or the use of weapons -- or worse, if you believe you will never "need" a weapon because the few times you've faced them you have managed to escape relatively unscathed -- you cannot and you will not understand.  There is a gap of knowledge separating you from those who do grasp the topic.  A gulf, a profound lack of education and training on the matter, separates the hoplophobe from the hoplophile.  Bridging it is no easy task and is seldom accomplished through arguing the matter.

This, after all, is the .22 caliber catch.  Weak minds fear what they do not understand.  Weak ideas cannot withstand the application of logic, reason, and facts regarding weapons, regarding violence, and regarding the appropriate use and delivery of force.  Foreign cultures whose default popular cultures are alien to the tradition of individualism produce many individuals who will forever labor under the profoundly flawed ideologies produced by this weakness, however.  They will therefore lash out in fear and in childish acrimony whenever confronted by those who possess and who have learned what they will never have.

The non-coper hates the coper.

The coper pities him for it.