What if every gun on Earth just disappeared?

This is for anyone just passing through as most here already know and understand this...

Author's note: My inspiration for writing this was a sign I saw displayed at the pro-gun-ownership rally at Richmond, Virginia, on Monday. It said, "Making good people helpless won't make bad people harmless."

There is a myriad of positions taken when it comes to the topic of who should or shouldn't possess guns, and if and how such possession should be regulated. One major point raised by those who oppose more stringent gun laws is that laws are, per se, for the law-abiding, and that criminals are, per se, people who view laws with disregard and contempt.

So more stringent gun laws serve to limit access to guns only by people who respect and obey laws, leaving criminals to continue to access guns via theft (which is how a great many criminals obtain guns) and illegal channels, and to continue to use those guns for criminal purposes and with a larger pool of potential victims who, by those very laws, have been rendered disarmed and therefore vulnerable. This is why it's said, "When guns are outlawed, only outlaws will have guns."

But what if all firearms – every single one in existence – could somehow, magically and universally, be rendered non-existent? No guns in the hands of citizens, no guns in the hands of police, no guns in the hands of criminals and, while we're at it, no guns in the hands of soldiers, regardless of what cause they're fighting for!

What if even criminals, with all their criminal resources and networks, could not obtain firearms, laws or no laws, simply because there were no firearms anywhere for them to obtain? Wouldn't that be a good thing? Can't people from across the entire spectrum of attitudes about gun ownership agree to what a wonderful, civilized thing that would be?

Actually, I think there are many, even among the most ardent and vociferous advocates and defenders of the Second Amendment, who would embrace this (admittedly hypothetical) notion and think that humanity would be better off if all firearms could be made to disappear.

Well, I'm here to tell you that it would definitely not be a good thing, not for humanity and not for civilization. And I'll tell you why.

The elimination of firearms will not make the world a more peaceful, less violent place. Quite the contrary! Those persons who would seek to intimidate or to physically harm or kill another person (whether driven by greed, lust, jealousy, hate, zealotry or mental illness) will still do so. But the tools they employ (be they blades or sticks, hands or fists or whatever) will require a degree of physical size and strength to be wielded as weapons and a degree of physical size and strength to defend against.

Until the advent of firearms, the advantage in combat always went to the bigger and stronger, with the smaller and weaker always at a disadvantage. The invention of firearms was a watershed moment in human history because it changed this equation, and put the smaller and weaker (and that includes the frail and the elderly!) on equal footing, no longer at the mercy of those who happened to be bigger and stronger.

Do we really want a world in which our sisters, mothers and grandmothers, for example, have to depend on being able to muster the physical strength required to attempt to resist a larger, more powerful attacker?

Sure, little David defeated the much larger and stronger Goliath by employing a shepherd's sling, which uses centrifugal force to hurl a projectile with much more energy (and therefore much further and faster) than it could be thrown with just the strength of one's arm.

But even that sling (which was, conceptually, a precursor of the firearm, in that it was a projectile weapon employed from a distance) wasn't the equalizer that a firearm can be. That's why a popular version of "All men are created equal" tells us that "All men are created by God. But it was Samuel Colt who made them equal!"

Historical note: Samuel Colt certainly didn't invent the firearm. But he was an innovator who did perfect the revolver, and the mass production thereof (including the concept of interchangeable parts), so that just about anyone could afford to own, maintain, carry and defend oneself with one. Remember that a handgun is just that: despite the two-handed grip now favored by most pistoleros, a handgun can be effectively employed even by a person who has only one hand! (My own favorite firearms innovators would include John Moses Browning and Dieudonne Saive, with honorable mention to John Garand, Eugene Stoner, Uzi Galil, Gaston Glock and, grudgingly, Mikhail Kalashnikov.)

Firearms changed the entire relationship between predator and prey, at least when the prey is human (and whether the predator is human or otherwise). Through the ages, humans defended against marauding animal predators like tigers and polar bears with little more than sharpened sticks. Such defensive weapons required physical strength to employ, and often required every able-bodied person in the village to meet the threat, and there were still casualties incurred before the attack was stopped.

The universal elimination of firearms would make every corner of the world like the home in Monsey, New York, in which, this past December, a single machete-wielding attacker was able to terrorize and do grievous bodily harm to a whole houseful of people. And that's only one among many tragic examples.

So, my answer, to anyone who thinks it would be a boon to mankind "if only all firearms could somehow vanish," would be "Be careful what you wish for!"

https://www.wnd.com/2020/01/every-gun-earth-just-disappeared/

 

I'll still have my dad's Scottish claymore, cross bow, chain mail and a whole lot of boom.

Ever hear if a show called "into the bad lands"?

 

ya watched it... says lot about such things... but folks just seem unable to connect the dots in their heads...

 

2 guys with the same guns trying to kill each other, the one that lives 9 out of 10 times will be the one with the greater skill. 2 men with cross bows trying to kill each other , the one that lives 9 out of 10 times will be the one with the greater skill. 2 guys with long bows or short bows trying to kill each other, the one that lives 9 out of 10 times will be the one with the greater skill. 2 guys with swords trying to kill each other, the one that lives 9 out of 10 times will be the one with the greater skill. 2 guys using no weapons 9 out of 10 times the bigger more physically honed one will win. Of course Luck and MR. Murphy will always play a role.

The sad truth about guns in most people hands is that it is nothing more than a illusion of safety and security. From what I have seen, a very large percentage of gun owners on not even close to proficient with their weapon. Even fewer would be able to kill their fellow man at close range no matter the circumstance between the shaking and doubt. Then there is the fact that shooting a game animal or a target and shooting someone intent on killing you are very different critters. That being said I believe everyone has an absolute right to buy and own the best self defense tools that they can, with some exceptions. That however alone does not make them more safe and it could be argued that it makes them and everyone else less safe.

 

I thing S.M. Stirling had it pretty close. Interesting read once you accept the premise. He made gun powder and internal combustion engines and most other modern inventions all stop working at the same time.

https://www.thriftbooks.com/w/dies-...YASABEgLI9_D_BwE#isbn=0451460413&idiq=4780110

There are a whole bunch of ways to maintain the upper hand without firearms, even when it comes down to sticks and stones. If you didn't cut your own sling shot from a forked stick, and hunt with a bow and spear as a kid you might be behind the power curve already.

 

There is a lot of SciFi ink on this every topic.

People are clever

They will find a way to kill you.



The sling is a ranged weapon....Goliath never stood a chance.

or this

 

Pretty much answers the above question IMO

 

Start making more guns...it's not that hard!

 

I’d grab my nunchucks.

 

guns are over rated. same with knives and clubs. Too much effort. Too up close and personal.
fire, assorted chemicals and explosives make it way way easier.

knowledge is the true weapon.

 

I have a sling shot a bow a atlatl all kinds of things it don't matter to me.

 

If all the guns on the Earth disappeared I would have more money for fishing gear.

 

Until you run out of arrows like the American Indians did! If every brave had gone into battle with a couple of hundred arrows they would have won.

 

I would be machining my own guns.
Black powder is easy to make and there are a lot of other means of making weaponry not spoken of on the internet.
Face it , in afghanistan on dirt floors men make IEDs and RPGs that are quite effective, If people are determined there is very little to stop them from making weapons.

 

But Uncle Ragnar says...

 

Won't matter if all guns are gone a slingshot never runs out of ammo blood and clay makes rocks nails and plastic broom straw makes bad ass slingshot ammo hex nuts rocks marble clay rebar cut off lead sockets ball bearing green wood cut off mixing clay and sand and fire Harding and a David sling will work if your band break and bands are easy to make.

 

It's not about guns, it's about control. Any idiot that thinks humans didn't kill each other before guns were invented is the product of current American educational system. Cain slew Able with a rock, all manner of inventions enabled us to kill each other more easily than with our hands. The complete moron that thinks taking one tool away from a species who has been killing each other for millennia needs serious psychiatric help.

 

I get that the question is a thought experiment (a rhetorical question that the author has kindly provided his answers to), but it is essentially a loaded question with a conclusion which clearly favours a particular point of view (his)....it is not a genuine invitation to enquiry, nor an objective consideration of the doubtful claim that possession of a fire arm (in and of itself) puts opponents in mortal combat on an equal footing regardless of the combatant's relative size and physical capabilities.

This is a straw man argument...few would sensibly argue that that eradication of firearms "would make the world a more peaceful, less violent place". Humanity, being what it is, has an innate capacity for conflict and violence, particularly when directed against "other"....given that reality, what differs is the relative lethality of the means by which that violence is delivered, and the convenience / effectiveness of its delivery.

Which affirms my earlier point about humanity's innate propensity for violence. This is a well known and demonstrable fact...nothing new there.

The general truism that individual physical strength and size, are factors in hand to hand CQC is a reasonably valid point, if disputation and conflict in life was resolved by physical personal combat alone. However, even in those circumstances, the bigger and stronger may not necessarily prevail. Factors other than size and strength may come into play, so to speak...like skill, cunning, surprise, tactical acumen, deflection, deception, concealment, collective effort, agility, speed, determination, desperation, training, rehearsal, use of body armour and other PPE, and combat stage management, to mention but a few ways in which the 'smaller and weaker' can minimise, indeed, exploit the inherent advantages of the 'bigger and (physically) stronger'.

Not so, and it is absurd to claim that it is so. It would be safer to make the probabilistic claim that the advantage in combat will tend to favour the bigger and stronger over the smaller and weaker...however, as I have already explained, there are often enough circumstances where that general tendency is as like to be negated.

This is a non sequitur. Although granting that the physical capacity necessary to operate a firearm, is generally less, relative to the physical capacity necessary to to wield an edged or blunt sidearm or pole-arm (or projectile weapon like a bow, or sling), it has to be said that even firearms are beyond the capacity of many physically fit and mentally competent people to operate, let alone the elderly, the frail and disabled. The "smaller and weaker (and that includes the frail and the elderly!)" are as like to be just as vulnerable, if not more so to "those who happened to be bigger and stronger", and who are more competent, and less inhibited in using lethal force with a firearm than they are.

I'm surprised that the mentally, and the intellectually impaired were not added to that list of vulnerable weakling classes, whom would be better equipped by possessing firearms to defend themselves against bigger and stronger antagonists? I am wondering why they should not also enjoy the empowerment granted by having possession of firearms?? Oh dear, some obviously already are empowered, they being also members of the NRA

This is a fallaciously emotive appeal to consequences: Appeal to consequences - RationalWiki....unless one also grants the consequence of bigger, stronger individuals, also having the advantage of using a firearm to do the threatening and intimidating, which makes the relative physical power advantage of the attacker irrelevant. The question simply assumes that possession of a firearm of itself negates any advantage of the bigger assailant, without regard to the defender's competency, and will to use a firearm to defend themselves with.

How many people armed with a firearm have been killed by their own firearm when an assailant had disarmed them of it?

NYPD: Officer Brian Mulkeen killed in the Bronx, possibly with own gun
Massachusetts police officer was shot 10 times with his own gun
Chief Acevedo: Wounded HPD officer was shot with his own gun while struggling with suspect
Baltimore officer was killed with his own gun, police say - CNN

These were police officers, trained in the methods of apprehending suspects...police officers who had a signal advantage over their opponents (a pistol), and yet the unarmed assailants still prevailed?

I note that the author is selective in the consequences that he/she is appealing to....One may also turn the author's rhetorical question on its head by asking:

Do we want to live in a world where school children are massacred in their classroom by a puny teenager wielding a battery of firearms, because he/she is smaller or weaker than his/her tormentors and needed the equation equalised?, or a light weight cuckolded male decides to use a firearm to put him on an equal footing with his unfaithful wife's beefy lover, to change a love triangle into a 'love' diad.??? Oh yes, that world already exists.

Really? Using a bronze age fan fiction anecdote as evidence in favour of firearms as an equaliser?
That's a bit like using Batman's peerless skill with a bat-boomerang (stand-off projectile weapon) as evidence in favour of firearms as an equaliser.

Not withstanding the undoubted skills of slingers (such as our own Bishop, and others throughout history, as hunters and warriors), they were not usually employed as one on one duelist weapons....they were usually employed en mass, and generally at large bodies of enemy troops in close formation.

As wry and amusing as the Colt Firearms marketing aphorism is, it is simply not true. (Even excluding the truth claims that 'god' exists, and that humans were created by 'god') the statement is false on its face. Just as not all humans are 'created' equal. not all firearms are equally lethal or equally effective in delivering their lethal potential. Some firearms can be as lethal to their wielder, and innocent bystanders as they are to their intended target.

The 5 Most Dangerous Guns (for the Shooter) on the Planet

Ahem, no! The relationship between predator and prey is a constant, what changes is the potential for harm that one may inflict upon the other, and the potential for one prevailing over the other. A human predator shot dead by his prey doesn't become prey himself, just a failed predator. A human predator who overcomes his armed prey remains a predator....a successful one. Mere possession of a firearm by a human of itself will offer no certain assurance that their predator will necessarily become an unsuccessful one.

Another straw man argument. The Rawandan Genocide and other mass killings with simple edged weapons in recent history is well enough known that that world already exists, even with the widespread availability and distribution of firearms world wide....

Interestingly, the author of the quoted article fails to mention that the victims of the Monsey attack all survived, despite having horrific injuries inflicted upon them, yet in a number of documented cases of an individual wielding firearms, those individuals caused many more fatalities and critical injuries due to the lethality of the weapons used, than that caused by machete in the Monsey incident. Somehow, those tragic examples of injury and death dealing by gunfire didn't make it into the author's analysis. One weapon system does not obviate the other, in the matter of committing death, injury, and mayhem; just that for some, firearms are an even more convenient and effective way of indulging in that kind of antisocial behaviour, particularly in a target rich environment.

This is yet another fallacious appeal to consequences....but that is probably lost to much of the author's reading audience....the article is not so much a missive to change the minds of anti-gun proponents, but to appeal to the confirmation biases of those who are already in agreement with the author's assumptions and sentiments. The best thing for a propagandist to do, is to tell the echo chamber's target audience what they want to hear. Mission accomplished in some cases here it would seem.