Here's an interesting post from another list, with my reaction.
Carl Jarvis
******
why the gun is civilization.
Human beings only have two ways to deal with one another: reason and
force. If you want me to do something for you, you have a choice of
either convincing
me via argument, or force me to do your bidding under threat of force.
Every human interaction falls into one of those two categories,
without exception.
Reason or force, that’s it.
In a truly moral and civilized society, people exclusively interact
through persuasion. Force has no place as a valid method of social
interaction, and
the only thing that removes force from the menu is the personal
firearm, as paradoxical as it may sound to some.
When I carry a gun, you cannot deal with me by force. You have to use
reason and try to persuade me, because I have a way to negate your
threat or employment
of force. The gun is the only personal weapon that puts a 100-pound
woman on equal footing with a 220-pound mugger, a 75-year old retiree
on equal footing
with a 19-year old gangbanger, and a single gay guy on equal footing
with a carload of drunk guys with baseball bats. The gun removes the
disparity in
physical strength, size, or numbers between a potential attacker and a defender.
There are plenty of people who consider the gun as the source of bad
force equations. These are the people who think that we’d be more
civilized if all
guns were removed from society, because a firearm makes it easier for
a mugger to do his job. That, of course, is only true if the mugger’s
potential victims
are mostly disarmed either by choice or by legislative fiat–it has no
validity when most of a mugger’s potential marks are armed. People who
argue for
the banning of arms ask for automatic rule by the young, the strong,
and the many, and that’s the exact opposite of a civilized society. A
mugger, even
an armed one, can only make a successful living in a society where the
state has granted him a force monopoly.
Then there’s the argument that the gun makes confrontations lethal
that otherwise would only result in injury. This argument is
fallacious in several ways.
Without guns involved, confrontations are won by the physically
superior party inflicting overwhelming injury on the loser. People who
think that fists,
bats, sticks, or stones don’t constitute lethal force watch too much
TV, where people take beatings and come out of it with a bloody lip at
worst. The
fact that the gun makes lethal force easier works solely in favor of
the weaker defender, not the stronger attacker. If both are armed, the
field is level.
The gun is the only weapon that’s as lethal in the hands of an
octogenarian as it is in the hands of a weightlifter. It simply
wouldn’t work as well as
a force equalizer if it wasn’t both lethal and easily employable.
When I carry a gun, I don’t do so because I am looking for a fight,
but because I’m looking to be left alone. The gun at my side means
that I cannot be
forced, only persuaded. I don’t carry it because I’m afraid, but
because it enables me to be unafraid. It doesn’t limit the actions of
those who would
interact with me through reason, only the actions of those who would
do so by force. It removes force from the equation…and that’s why
carrying a gun is
a civilized act.
***
My reply:
Reason or Force.
Far too long we have followed this logic. A weapon will enable us to
force our opponent to capitulate. And we then call the result,
"Civilization".
But Violence does not beget Reason. Violence only begets Violence.
And if we want to call the result, "civilization", we are simply
announcing the end of our Human Race.
The choice should not be between reason and Force. The choice should
be between our current conception of Civilization and the creation of
a Superior Civilization. If we follow the belief that a gun will give
us civilization, then the end result will be the end of the Human
Race. A gun can only create a level playing field if it is the
biggest gun on the block. So we must build bigger guns, more deadly
methods of enforcing our "civilization". Guns, by the way, work well
in many situations, but poison works as well in others. Creation of
new weapons that can seek out an opponent without warning, mutant
viruses, super sound waves, all sorts of new, yet to be invented
weapons must be developed to counter the power of that gun. The end
result is never Civilization. The result is always more and bigger
violence.
The more difficult road to take is the one that calls for total
reconstruction of that which we call "Civilization". And that is the
discussion we need to turn to.
Cordially,
Carl Jarvis