Now this is an Olson that I'd like to meet.

...civilized people go armed to say 'I am self-sufficient. I'll never burden others.' They're also saying 'If you need my help, here I am, ready'- yes, a contradiction, but a pretty noble one, I think. Independence is the source of freedom, the first essential ingredient of mental health....

"Armed people are free. No state can control those who have the machinery and the will to resist, no mob can take their liberty and property. And no 220-pound thug can threaten the well-being or dignity of a 110-pound woman who has two pounds of iron to even things out. Is that evil? Is that wrong?

"People who object to weapons aren't abolishing violence, they're begging for rule by brute force, when the biggest, strongest animals among men were always automatically 'right.' Guns ended that, and social democracy is a hollow farce without an armed population to make it work.

"Wear a gun to someone else's house, you're saying, 'I'll defend this home as if it were my own.' "

Spoken by Clarissa Olson in The Probability Broach by L. Neil Smith.

Evidently it takes a libertarian to write science fiction that isn't set in a totalitarian environment.

This guy's essays are pretty darn good, too.
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