Truth be told, I’d like to see all guns — from small handguns and Glocks to rifles and semi-automatic types — melted down and used for scrap.
Tra-la-lah! Wouldn’t it be a wonderful world that found no need for guns at all?
Diane Dimond
February 27, 2011
Will guns make college campuses safer?
[Truth be told, when she puts her feelings put aside she appears to be reluctantly on our side. She realizes that her feelings are not realistic. She appears to be very conflicted about it but realizes that the utopian ideal of no need for guns isn’t achievable.
I found myself spending quite a bit of time pondering her last sentence I quoted above. It’s a big leap to imagine that type of world where there was “no need for guns at all”. But yeah. I think she is right. If there was no need for guns at all the world would be a better place. No violent crime to be defended against, no wars to fight, you could hunt wild game with bow and arrow or easily trap them. I wonder if we were to admit to the vehement anti-gunners their utopian world sounds nice to us too but utopia isn’t an option. We are realists and if they had a plan by which their utopia was achievable we would work towards that goal with them and then when we reach utopia we would give up our guns. Would they accept the deal, put the gun restrictions aside and work on their utopia? Or do they believe the guns have to go first before their utopia can be achieved? I’m betting it is the latter but I think it would be an interesting conversation.—Joe]
That world imagines no place for people perfecting the skill of target practice. I think there are folks who few the exercise of a smooth hole in the center of a paper as the end all be all of their firearms experience. For them, she’s describing a dystopia.
I guess you could say the same thing about nuclear weapons.
Would the world really be safer if every country had nuclear weapons? Or would it be safer if no one had them?
Boyd,
I’m probably closer to agreeing it would a dystopia than not but I still think it would be a very interesting conversation to have. I think the insight gained would have the potential to be fascinating.
ubu52,
I think it is totally different. In the utopia envisioned by Diane there is no need for guns. This is different than no one having guns or nuclear weapons but there still being predatory criminals and governments.
In many scenarios nuclear weapons are a deterrent against conventional war. Hence war doesn’t occur at all. Think of how frequently wars occurred between the countries of Europe before and after the introduction of nuclear weapons into the arsenals. There were other factors such as the U.S. playing the role of policeman and protector but still I think it is a reasonable hypothesis that nuclear weapons saved the lives of millions of people that would have otherwise been killed in conventional wars. Testing that hypothesis is difficult/impossible but I think a good argument can be made for it.
Ubu,
Yes.
Boyd,
Yes, there is the fun factor. I agree that guns are too much fun to simply melt down. But I’d love for the rest to be true.
The irony of a world where there is no need for guns because everyone is law abiding and there are no violent criminal/predatory types (including government), is that such a world would have no need to ban guns – because there is no one who will misuse them, since everyone is law abiding and there are no (human) predators. At most, there would be a justification for a basic safety training requirement and safe storage laws to prevent accidents (and if everyone is law abiding, there would be no accidents because everyone will follow the safety and safe storage laws).
Actually, that would answer Boyd’s concern – shooting for fun or for sport would still be possible in such a utopia, because there would be no need to ban guns.
Regardless of what a world with no need for firearms would be like, the fact is that the real world without firearms brought Attila, Genghiz Khan, and countless other bloodstained tyrants.
Until you can completely eliminate human emotions (or police them) there will always be someone who will break the utopia rules. This utopia is impossible to achieve. Accidents are impossible to stop with 100% accuracy.
Hell, I would flat-out love to live in a world where it would never be necessary for me need to defend myself from an aggressive attack from another person…
But I do not.
And, like a conscious, reasoning, responsible adult, I acknowledge that simple fact, and account for it in my life’s plans. Not all that hard, really…
“Wouldn’t it be a wonderful world that found no need for guns at all?”
The only question left is would she be a Hutu or a Tutsi.
Sympathetic magic. They think if guns went away, aggression would, too. I wonder how they think meat gets to the table. Or whether animal predators hunt and kill without aggression.
M
“Tra-la-lah! Wouldn’t it be a wonderful world that found no need for guns at all?”
Isn’t this statement a fallacy? If this world has no violence then who cares if you have guns.
I love the observation that if there were no need for guns then that would mean there would no need to ban them. Very nice!
Mark Alger,
I am almost certain that would be the type of response we would get if we were to engage them as I suggested. And that is why I think it would be so interesting to do so. I think it would put them into a very difficult position and we could make points of that revelation.
Do we really want utopia? I imagine that guns and knives and all such things would not be allowed because we could hurt ourselves. We would create machines to do anything dangerous. Only professionals would be allowed to operate food processors. etc…
“There were other factors such as the U.S. playing the role of policeman and protector …”
On the contrary Joe, the fact that the US developed the bomb first allowed us (if not forced us) to become the policeman of the world. The world agrees that someone has to do it (in spite of their whining about US “imperialism”). If not us, then who are we going to trust to do it? Germany, Japan, Russia, China, France? None of them have a very good track record when they were the world’s superpower.
So, to expand the argument, wouldn’t it be great if the US didn’t need to be the world’s policeman? I’d like to live in a world like that. But I am a realist. Utopia doesn’t exist.
Reputo,
I’m not sure what I said that you are disagreeing with.
I was saying there have not been any more wars in western Europe since nuclear weapons were added to their arsenals. Hence nuclear weapons could be hypothesized to have saved millions of lives. The U.S. playing the role of policeman might also have contributed to no more wars but still nukes were involved.
Yeah, that would be a great world…for me. Of course, I’m 6’3″ 220lbs and in training, it would be a great world where I could take whatever I wanted with nothing to stop me.