A last word on weapons and defence

I am not sure how your points touch my central contention, so I shall just lay out my overall argument here, and then leave it at that. You can own knives in the UK; you just can't carry around knives on your person in the street with the intention of using them as weapons. The law does not prohibit (for example) a boy carrying a penknife on his person for ordinary purposes. I think the UK has got the balance about right. I can see no virtue whatever in enabling people to carry out violent attacks on others. The self-defence argument falls through, given that you are much safer in a society which prohibits these weapons than you are in a society which does not. I don't agree with LaudateAgno's argument that we have a duty to possess weapons in order to be able to attack authority figures who cross a line. In Britain, MP Jo Cox was shot and stabbed dead by a White Supremacist in 2016, and MP David Amess was stabbed to death by an Islamist extremist in 2021. I don't think these attacks on elected legislators made Britain a more civil place to live, or protected our freedoms, or anything else, and I am glad that these attacks are mercifully rare. This does not mean that violence may not sometimes be legitimately used against a state. It was, I believe, perfectly justifiable for violence to be deployed against the Third Reich, due to the monstrous and inhuman nature of the regime. It is also justifiable for violence to be deployed in defence of Palestinians against Israeli violence. (But not against those who are not directly involved - I do not approve of the indiscriminate murder of civilians, as happened on October 7.) I would be in favour of an international coalition of the willing to drive out the Israeli army from the West Bank and Gaza. Indeed, the Genocide Convention obliges all countries to prevent and punish genocide. America and its lackeys have done the precise opposite. So far as I can see, the only people in the Middle East currently obeying international law by seeking to prevent and punish genocide are the Houthis.