Don't forget the community is the person who is being defended against. Using lethal force against someone has wide consequences.

The act of committing violence against another person with a weapon itself is traumatic. Most people can't simply turn off their instinct for empathy and kill another person in cold blood simply because the other is an "enemy," and not suffer psychological consequences, possibly even PTSD. Even police officers, professional killers that they are, have to go through mandatory counseling and assessment after a shooting.

Realistically, your argument isn't to lessen trauma, but to simply normalize it. Which is exactly what American culture already does.

> Realistically, your argument isn't to lessen trauma, but to simply normalize it. Which is exactly what American culture already does

No, actually, my argument is that killing or injuring a person in self-defense is less traumatic than being helpless while getting assaulted.

Besides, trauma is relative - "normalizing" trauma is another way of saying "being desensitised" - which is exactly the process therapy itself employs to help people relieve the effects of it.

There's also different levels of trauma involved in the kind of assault you're likelyt to come up against. Being held up at gunpoint is something I can't imagine happening in my life.

Oddly, I've once had a dream that I was being held at gunpoint.

A person unknown to me was holding a submachine gun, and I could literally feel the muscles tensing in my stomach, where the gun was pointed at, anticipating the pain of a bullet. It was one of the most uncomfortable and frightening things I've felt in my life, so much that I still remember the dream quite vividly.

I assume being held at gunpoint in real life would be even more frightening.