Self-Defense

The use of force by an agent to stop an ongoing or immediately credible violation of a boundary -- over body, property, or agreed terms -- where consent was required and is being denied. Self-defense is not punishment, revenge, or deterrence: it does not close a moral debt or threaten harm for possible future acts; it halts harm in progress. Force used in self-defense must be proportionate to the threat -- enough to stop the violation, no further -- and causally directed at the agent who is crossing the boundary. When these conditions hold, the defender does not create a new crime by refusing to submit to the attack; the aggressor, by initiating the violation, bears responsibility for harm that results from proportionate resistance. Self-defense does not license striking agents for what they might become, preempting without a victim, or collective reprisal; those reduce to coercion or war. After the violation is stopped, what follows belongs to Justice -- restitution and the victim's sovereign choice of collection or release -- not to continued force beyond what stopping required.