Whether it be an individual or a group, self-defense is to be taken with the utmost seriousness because, in many cases, it can mean the difference between life and death. If someone breaks into your house while your family is sleeping, being able to repel the invasion should be your first priority. In order to accomplish that, you will need to possess not only the training but also the appropriate tools and the will to use them. If the invaders have knives and you possess a rifle that you’ve been trained to use proficiently, your and your family’s odds of survival are high. If they have guns and you have a baseball bat, your odds are significantly lower. However, if you both have guns, the end result will most likely come down to training and the aforementioned will. Either way, your odds with a gun will be better than they would be with only a bat or a knife.

When you are living in an age in which the State—which possesses the most powerful weapons on earth—has declared itself the enemy of every value you hold dear, how do you fight back? Should you even fight back? What would that look like? Could it even work? Depending on who you ask, you are going to receive a myriad of answers to these questions.

Some have chosen the political route when it comes to fighting back. They, or someone of their choosing, may have decided to run for office. Or, several people of like mind are running for offices with the intention of dominating their local area with a majority. Moving forward with this piece, I’m going to work under the assumption that this approach to fighting the State is the perfect path forward and to defend the mentality of those running for office.

Taking into consideration the aforementioned scenario in which those whose existence is antithetical to your values control the political reins and seek to destroy you, the weapon most suited to go after them head-on is the weapon they are using against you: political power. Setting aside the discussion for now of whether you are likely to win elections, the legitimacy of elected office affords you the ability to begin using your newly attained position to fight back against those who hate everything you hold dear, allowing you to at least have a fighting chance. In the same way that a home invader possessing a gun will be best confronted by someone with a gun, especially a bigger, more powerful one, taking on the power of the State demands you have similar or better firepower. It takes State power to beat State power. Anyone who tells you differently is trying to sell you something or, even worse, lead you down the path to destruction.

There are a lot of people who will tell you, "Using State power is immoral," while not providing solutions as to how to at least mitigate the growth of tyranny we have experienced for most of our lives, especially in the last 3+ years. When the State is pointing both barrels of the shotgun at you and someone is telling you it would be immoral to wrestle that shotgun away in the form of obtaining and using political power, that person doesn’t have your or your family’s best interests at heart. To the contrary, they are demanding you adopt their "morality" and politics because, in my opinion, they have chosen a leaky life raft and they don’t want to go down alone. The fact that someone doesn’t possess a survival instinct is not your problem.

You are responsible for yourself and the ones that God has put under your protection. If you make the decision to not reach for the gun and cling to your “principles,” you are the one who will have to answer for any destruction that befalls you and the ones you say you love. The time to choose sides is long past. Remaining neutral is the path to destruction. You are either going to stand and fight, or you’re going to meet your demise pathetically choking on those principles you held dear above all else. That wild animals would choose to do everything and anything to protect their own, while many logical thinking humans would not, may just signal that we’re at the end. Whether it’s the end of an epoch or the end of men who would fight for their own is yet to be determined.