Self Defense

Self Defense-A History

When God created man, the need to defend himself or herself started. As early as the dawn of time you had to protect your possessions from someone else: your life, food, shelter, animals, children, a woman. At first it was done with fists, then sticks, clubs, a stone attached to a club, a piece of metal attached to a club, a wooden arrow, an arrow with a metal tip…. On and on it went until one day we have a nuclear bomb- all in the name of self-defense. We have come along way haven't we? How did we get where we are today in the name of self-defense?

As long as it was a fair fight between two rivals the stronger would always prevail. The weaker by human nature would search for a way to overcome the stronger. He would invent weapons to give him the edge to survive for self-defense. Farmers would use their tools to overcome warlords; peasants would do the same to overcome tyrannical royalty. And so it went from the beginning of time. God made it so.

It was a combination of survival: killing to eat, killing to continue living, to defend oneself, to survive, overcoming one's enemies; and the need to conquer: conquer other peoples lands, to impose your will over another-survival of the fittest. As man became more sophisticated so did his self defense weaponry!

War only complicated things and speeded up the weapon development process. Instead of an individual defending himself now it was a community, a tribe, a nation trying to survive. At the root of almost all war are ideological differences; religion perhaps the biggest culprit. The proliferation of war and the development of self-defense weapons are intertwined. The development of the atomic bomb at Los Alamos National Lab was in the interest of stopping the war and defending our country.

We cannot detail the extensive history of war but to see how self-defense weapons developed over the years we need to take a peek at an overview of that history. At the root are two types of self-defense weapons: lethal and non-lethal, which one will you choose?