Where to start with this, Des…? Well, to take your first comment, I guess if just eating more meat was the answer, then all the rest of your post makes no sense. Forget the karate lessons — just shovel Big Macs and bacon into your daughter and she’ll be invincible! Either that, or she’ll become another statistic in early death from heart disease, diabetes, cancer or one of the other top diseases caused by consuming our fellow Earthlings.

Maybe the US obesity epidemic is why so many need guns over there…?

Personally, I’m not American and thankfully we don’t all carry guns here in the UK. I, too, trained in karate for many years. Yes, there are many advantages — fitness, body awareness, technique — but it didn’t teach me much about fighting. That only came later through practical experience.

And moving beyond that to pacifism, well, that only comes much later…