Gobblin -
Your question is answered in two parts, as follows:
1. re: an absolute right of self-defense from the criminal element-
The antis answer "No."
In their twisted little world, the criminal (Andrea Yates comes to mind) is themselves a victim. Their actions are not their own fault, but societies fault. They were driven to them by poverty, abuse, having to wear hand me down clothes, insufficient "attaboys" by a parent, whatever.
Since their actions are not their fault, you have no right to kill them in order to stop them. In their intellectual arogance, antis never lower themselves to tell you EXACTLY what you are supposed to do when you confront a madman with a baseball bat, knife, or a gun. Should a gun actually be the weapon of choice for a murderer, the gun is actually to blame. Why knives and baseball bats are not similarly demonized - well, they never bother to address that either.
So, in a sense, criminal violence, in the mind of an anti, has a singular usefulness - as an anvil to beat gun owners into plowshare operators.
2. re: the absolute right of self-defense against an abusive gov't
The antis answer "No."
The state is absolute, the highest authority. The peasant needs to subjugate themselves to the state. Oddly, since they are the intellectuals, THEY will comprose the state, and forner gun owners always seem to make up the group called "peasants."
This idea of the sovereigny of the state traces back AT LEAST to the time of Plato (see "That Every Man Be Armed" by Stephen Halbrook)
But, still, I can't bring myself to say "It isn't about guns" with the antis.
Some of them genuinely fear inanimate guns, and they don't want to live in a world where they have to fear.
More yet understand that their utopian scoiety where THEY comprise the state (for our own good, or course) will NEVER come about until the guns are taken from the citizens, so the citizens can be transformed back into peasants (for our own good, of course)
So ya see, in a way, it IS about the guns. Guns are the roadblock to Utopia. And the guns (and the knives, lances, halburtons, maces , ANY weapon of self-defense) MUST go. They wish to subjugate us FOR OUR OWN GOOD, and as long as we have guns, we will not let them do this for us.