This may be a sideline discussion, but this reminds me of a conversation I had frequently after 9/11/01. There was an extreme climate of fear pervading the country, and it was being stoked by the top echelons of government. Our attitude towards civil rights and privacy were becoming dangerously elastic. Public spaces were feeling more like bunkers. We were told that our putative enemies hated us because of our freedoms, and yet we seemed willing to give up our freedom—not just in the concrete, Patriot Act sense, but in our very ability to live normally and free from irrational fear. If "they hate us because of our freedoms" and "they" use terror as a tactic to effect their ends, then isn't living in fear just giving them a moral, if not a concrete, victory?
I'd say arming ourselves is embracing our freedoms.
I can't understand how such intelligent people do not see the danger that we are facing in the future. This is the most dangerous enemy the world has ever faced because yiu can't just invade a specific land and defeat them.