The Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman case, featured by mainstream media sources as the latest circus act in their increasingly irrelevant sideshow, actually contained a treasure trove of historical events and personal decisions which laid bare the most basic and vital questions surrounding the use of force.

The generalized term “use of force” can be divided into two and only two subcategories: violence and self-defense. The terms are mutually exclusive. Violence is never self-defense and self defense is never violence, though anti-gun advocates routinely try to characterize self-defense as violence.

Violence results from the use of force by someone to obtain unwilling compliance of an individual who is not violating someone else’s God-given unalienable rights. Self-defense occurs when an individual responds with an appropriate amount of force to some form of violence. Therein lies the grey area - what amount of force is “appropriate” for a given situation?

Even if someone violates your God-given rights, proportionality of force response to force trespass must be maintained. Exercising excessive force even in the context of individual rights infringement becomes violence when not maintaining such proportionality. Shooting someone for stealing you mug of coffee unequivocally exemplifies this concept.

The very difficult part lies in trying to project the future or long-term result of such a trespass of an individual’s unalienable rights. In the Trayvon Martin/George Zimmerman case, two specific historical scenarios were laid forth to the jury to compare. The first involved the perceived trespass on Trayvon Martin’s liberty and pursuit of happiness by Zimmerman in tailing him through his neighborhood on an innocent journey to the store. Trayvon was minding his own business and getting followed by some stranger. That scenario should make anyone uneasy and concerned. Could it be some racist vigilante, rapist pervert or some other kind of evil criminal? Maybe.

So what was Trayvon’s response? Call 911? Go to the nearest friend’s house to report the situation? Run off? Trayvon decided to circle around and confront the stranger - a dangerous course of action for anyone to pursue. Not only did Trayvon confront this stranger but proceeded to beat this stranger silly, pounding his head into the concrete and breaking his nose. We all know the tragic result of this confrontation.

And what about Zimmerman? His unalienable rights trespass experience began during the confrontation. Zimmerman clearly did not want a confrontation as proven by his call to 911. He could have initiated one long before it happened.

So Zimmerman finds himself being overwhelmed by a stronger attacker clearly committed to seriously hurting him or maybe ending his life. Imagine being pinned to the concrete with a bleeding head and broken nose wondering when or if the beating would ever end?

Such are the two scenarios laid forth for the jury to compare. Trayvon Martin was being followed and responded by ambushing the trailer and beating the living snot out of him. George Zimmerman was getting the living snot beat out of him and responded by placing one shot in the chest of his attacker which resulted in his death.

And the jury correctly found George Zimmerman not guilty on all charges, the same conclusion reached by law enforcement immediately after investigating the incident.

Why was this the correct verdict? Because Trayvon Martin’s response can only be correctly categorized as violence. Martin had several other reasonably viable options of response that could have and likely would have avoided confrontation with his follower. By deciding to confront, Trayvon lost the proportionality required for any use of force to be categorized as self-defense.

And Zimmerman? The standard set in statute for justified self-defense shooting is reasonable fear for one’s life or great bodily harm. In George’s case, his broken nose and head wounds inarguability demonstrated that his use of force met this standard. The jury correctly confirmed his actions as self-defense.

So this case gave us one more real example to help us delineate that fuzzy grey line separating violence from self defense. In the case of government violence against its population, the fuzzy grey line expands greatly. The use of government power to force any individual to do anything MUST meet the same standard as we all must meet as individuals. In other words, using government power for any activity that cannot explicitly be characterized as self defense is violence - violence against the governed.

All public safety employees, whether police officers or federal agents, can only justify their activities and very existence in the name of self-defense of the population. Any deviation from this directive necessarily results in violence against the “protected,” generally manifested as harassment but more catastrophic, clearly evil examples litter history.

Income tax uses the force of government to confiscate a portion of the value of labor and intellect from the population. This act can only be justified if ALL proceeds be allocated to activities directly resulting in the self-defense of the people. Clearly all social programs, entitlements, subsidies, ObamaCare and the majority of regulations do not and cannot be characterized as self-defense of the population. By definition, all of these government actions are acts of violence against the people.

Similarly, when government fails to perform it’s duties to use force in real self defense situations, such as what happened in the Wisconsin State Capitol in 2011 or Benghazi last September 11th, or by not enforcing the border integrity of the country, or lying and misrepresenting events, these are also acts of violence against the people. Such realities confront the American people today.

But how can we, The People, stop all of this government violence against us? Formulating the appropriate, proportional response to these transgressions becomes the difficult dilemma. Sooner or later, we must find the answer, just as they did in 1776.