The context for self-defense

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1. Mahatma Gandhi had this to say about self defense and defense of family...

I have been repeating over and over again that he who cannot protect himself or his nearest and dearest or their honour by non-violently facing death may and ought to do so by violently dealing with the oppressor. He who can do neither of the two is a burden. He has no business to be the head of a family. He must either hide himself, or must rest content to live for ever in helplessness and be prepared to crawl like a worm at the bidding of a bully.
http://www.mkgandhi.org/nonviolence/phil8.htm

Gandhi’s Satyagraha and a Federated World Order

Glen T. Martin

Like most philosophers of nonviolent social change, Gandhi never repudiated all use of force. He believed it was morally acceptable and pragmatically important for Indian soldiers to fight on the side of the British in World War One.iii He declared that if one lacked the courage to stand against injustice by nonviolent means, one should acquire the force of arms. Worse than using force is cowardice – refusing to stand against injustice out of fear: "I have been repeating over and over again," he writes, "that he who cannot protect himself or his nearest and dearest or their honor by nonviolently facing death may and ought to do so by violently dealing with the oppressor."iv For Gandhi, bodily life, as well as complex social life, occasionally required himsa. Ahimsa should not become a fetish that made practical functioning an impossibility.v

The perspective here should be clearly distinguished from the idea of violence as a "last resort," often appealed to by the defenders of violence as the final option when all else has failed, opening the door to militarized organized violence in defense of freedom or in revolutionary opposition to an oppressor. For Gandhi, nonviolence means an activation of a universal potential of our humanity, the realization of the deeper selfhood within us that we all share. Ahimsa, like satyagraha, means that ourselves and our institutions must be focused on clinging to the great Truth of our common humanity and our universal human situation.

If we do this, then any use of force will necessarily be premised on the minimum necessary to protect everyone involved. Under democratic government, a civilian police force could be trained in the minimum use of necessary force, protecting both the individual arrested and all bystanders. Gandhi stresses that the crucial element here is the intention behind the use of force. The necessary minimum use of force can never be militarized or directed toward intentional harm of a perceived "enemy." "The essence of violence," he declared, "is that there must be a violent intention behind the thought, word, or act, i.e., an intention to do harm to the opponent so-called."vi An individual defending his or her family or civilian police seeking to arrest a person might use the minimum necessary force with the non-attached love (agape) of the New Testament or the karma yoga of the Bhagavad Gita – that is, without hatred or malice that desires to inflict suffering on a perceived enemy....emphasis added

The concrete world in which we live requires that we deal effectively with dangerous institutions like militarized nation-states, dangerous forces like terrorism, and occasionally dangerous people. The task is to deal practically and justly with all these dangers without ourselves sinking into the cycle of violence and the corruption that it often entails. It requires not only personal clinging to truth but the conversion of our institutions to fundamental satyagraha as well. http://www.radford.edu/gmartin/Gandhi.and.Federation.art..htm

Firearms have a place in a list of tools to be used for legitimate self defense. It may be quite possible that if a person has the training, the skill and the physical ability he/she may be able to stop an attack without the use of lethal force. Obviously this would be preferable. However there are circumstances in which there is little choice but to use lethal force such as a firearm. Fortunately in many such situations the attacker will run when he finds himself faced by an armed individual who is willing to resist.