There is something else here. I grew up in a situation where violence was a fact of everyday life. Violence waited for you when you walked to school. Violence waited for you in class. Violence waited for you on the way. Violence waited for you on the way to football practice. Beatdowns at the bowling alleys. Shootings at the roller skating rinks. You could not go and see your girlfriend if she lived in some other neighborhood without bringing five other dudes with you -- one of them possibly strapped. I was not a violent kid. I was, and am, a softie. But after about a year of living in that environment, I basically became acculturated. When I became a professional and an adult, I basically spent years trying to deculturate and act like I was civilized. This isn't a matter of punching people because they looked at you wrong. (Thought it kind of is.) It's a matter of understanding that what you once considered vital has no meaning in the wider -- much less violent -- world. I am the furthest thing you will meet from a street dude. And yet I still find myself in conversation with myself over how to comport myself like a civilized person. Add on to that thinking about how to comport yourself when you are a big black dude, and you see what kind of weight might be there. It's not so much that I am uninterested in defending myself. It's that I spent a good part of my younger life doing exactly that. My takeaway was that defensive violence often isn't, and even when it is, even when all your dreams of triumph come true, it still takes a toll on you.

I guess my point is, I have a hard time with a construction of violence that begins and ends in the moment of violent confrontation. My belief is that an intelligent self-defense begins long before that dude with the AR-15 in hand appears. If we're down to me licking off shots, then we are truly lost. And I say that as a dude with a huge poster of Malcolm X on his wall.

Jeff: You didn't answer the key question that Saint Augustine poses to all those who swear off violence. I really do think it's important to ask yourself this: At what point is it justifiable to meet violence with violence? At what point is it immoral not to respond to violence with violence? (We both have our touchstones on this issue, of course -- you the fight to end slavery in America, me the fight to end the Holocaust, though each of us is interested in both issues.)

Anyway, I'm not going to get you to answer, so I'm moving on. I don't doubt for a second that defending yourself takes a toll on a person -- one of the misperceptions many on the left have about the concealed-carry debate, for instance, is that advocates of concealed-carry think it's some sort of great thing. It isn't: It's a tragic response to a tragic situation.

I'm sure there are ideologically-driven Second Amendment absolutists who do think of a comprehensively armed society as a kind of ideal, but I'm far from that camp. I'm just searching for ways to limit the damage criminals and the deranged do with guns. One answer I've come up with is to defend yourself against them, whenever possible. As I wrote this week -- was it to you? I can't remember -- I came to this in good part because the whole current gun control debate is absolute bullshit, in that all of the measures being suggested wouldn't actually do much of anything to solve the problem. None of these measures will change the fact that there are 300 million guns in circulation today, and that these guns, even improperly maintained, will still be capable of firing in 100 years. (And, predictably, gun sales seem to be spiking across the country as people begin to irrationally fear President Obama once again.) Your question about how a legal gun becomes illegal is a very interesting one -- loose laws, and poor enforcement of existing laws, are two answers. Which is why I'm for stringent regulation. But again, stringent regulation going forward doesn't solve the problem of guns that have already fallen into dangerous hands.