One of my sites was close to being DoS’d by openAI’s crawler along with a couple of other crawlers. Blocking them made the site much faster.

I’d admit the software design offering search suggestions as HTML links didn’t exactly help (this is a FOSS software used for hundreds of sites, and this issue likely applies to similar sites) but their rapid speed of requests turned this from pointless queries into a negligent security threat.

Some people are, yes, but compare what happens when law enforcement agents use their arms, and what happens when regular people use their arms.

A critical part of the state is the monopoly on legitimate violence.

If any agent of the government tells you otherwise, you must educate them and enforce the free exercise of your own rights.

How exactly does one enforce the free exercise of their rights?

Remember that agents of the government are often armed and generally don’t like being told what to do.