[snapshot]

I'm not opposed to combating violence with violence, and it has to do with individual liberty and free will.

As a preface to this argument, I would like to say that this is a personal moral individual with each and every person. Every person is different and everyone has a different view on what they think is good. This is a moral argument.

Without free will (or some notion of free choice) there can be no responsibility. Rocks aren't morally responsible for their actions if they fall on someone's head and kill them. Even if the rock is no longer a menace to society, we still consider suicide bombers to be immoral while we don't consider rocks to be immoral. If people don't have the choice to do right or wrong, then there is no possible way to act rightly or wrongly. I believe this precludes any argument from morality.

You can have free will without a conscious being to act in such a way. This is why I'm rejecting your analogy to the human body or to a collective group of people. Collectives don't think. They are comprised of thinking individuals aggregated as a concept in someone's mind. A person cannot allay moral responsibility by blaming it on a group. Every person's action is their own and nobody else's. People can be swayed to act a certain way, but no one is immune from this.

Basically everyone is morally equal. To say otherwise is to say that one person has more of a right to make moral claims than another as well as to force other people to act in certain ways. I see no evidence for this. Democracy can't account for this. The use of force can't account for this (for it begs the question). The greater good doesn't account for this (since my definition of "greater good" obviously differs, and why would my opinion of what is good trump yours or vice versa--and you can see I'm not putting forth such an argument). I just see no logical or empiricism to say why some people should be allowed to use force and others aren't.

(Poorly wrapping this up to my first point) Combating violence with violence is not a moral issue Since violence is used to force people to act, the person who has their will restricted cannot be held to the same moral standards as the free individual who chose to initiate violence. Any time someone's will is restricted by another individual, it is always the initiator of the violence that is immoral and never the retaliator.