Because the ability to defend yourself, and your friends and community, is so integral and vital to a state of freedom, you will find that anything that compromises that ability, is strictly speaking, going against liberty.
That is not an opinion, it is simply sheer logic, and would be the basis upon which to compare measures that restrict that freedom.
And in a sense, the less there is of liberty, the less there is of humanity.
To give another example, just to illustrate, it is possible for humans to kill each other by biting each others' throats and ripping eyeballs out with fingers, etc. or even just punching and kicking each other with hands and feet. A large man can kill a child with a kick (i.e., "natural weapons").
I am not being facetious, but using these examples to highlight what we are talking about really.