Iawa takes a step back. "I hope nobody's going to leave the shooting to me. I did study with the Vidona, but while I understand the ethical inconsistency of refusing to lift a weapon in one's own defense and instead permitting others to incur the danger both of physical and moral injury on one's own behalf, nevertheless..."

They keep rambling until someone interrupts them. Their point seems to be that they never learned to shoot, feel as though they probably should but are not very motivated to do so, and know how to handle a knife but not in a combat or self-defense context.

[i.e. another character could persuade Iawa to learn self-defense by talking sternly to them about duty, but honestly their best weapon is verbal tangent.]