A World Without Guns
Here’s a musing:
What if all the guns in the world magically disappeared? This is totally unrealistic, but the point isn’t to really think about what that world would be like. Rather, it is to see what we can learn about our society and ourselves by pondering this near total impossibility.
So here goes.
Would anyone actually be worse off? Are guns that essential to well-being and living a meaningful life? Maybe the gun manufacturers? What would become of them? Is that really a concern? Or are they just purveyors of death and toxicity? Even more so than the tobacco companies? (What would happen if the tobacco companies disappeared? That’s a topic for another day.) What about all of the mutual funds and pension funds that have gun manufacturers in their portfolios? Does that make us all complicit? Which means no one is complicit because we all share blame equally? And the violence is just a natural and unavoidable phenomenon of our contemporary lives? Of our culture?
Would we still have wars? There were obviously wars before the existence of guns, so is war inevitable in our species? Will we always find a way to destroy each other? Or a reason to destroy each other? Is that in our DNA? The tribalism that once increased our individual and small group chances to survive and procreate? Or, could we or would we ever find a ways to make war obsolete? With or without guns?
Would we still have a plague of urban violence in the U.S.? Or would the outfall of centuries of systemic racism, disinvestment, trauma, segregation, and lacks of opportunities cause different forms of urban violence to replace gun violence?
Would we still have mass killings so frequently in the U.S.? Or would mass shootings be replaced by mass stabbing incidents? Would you rather be the victim of a mass shooting or mass stabbing? Do our personal answers to that question say more about our own personality or our society? Or both? Is it possible to disentangle the two? Are we products of the society we grow up in either by the influence that society imposes or reaction to that influence? Or is it a mixture of both?
Would we be able to easily blame the mental health of the attacker? As if mental health issues are a rarer thing than the violence we blame on them? Something inevitable that we can’t do anything about?
How about school shootings? Would they finally end? I guess without guns they would have to. But would they just be replaced by something equally as horrible? Would we ever ask ourselves what might drive a student to want to kill as many of his peers as possible and maybe a few teachers too? Or is motive just overshadowed by the sheer brutality inflicted? Until the next one inevitably happens?
What do active shooter drills tell us about what we as a society value? Is the individual right to own guns of all kinds more important than our children’s psychological health? And survival? Have you asked your kids what their favorite part of active shooter drills is? I mean for posterity. To capture the tenure of the times? Because if the guns disappeared, then active shooter drills would become a relic of history from a peculiar period. Right? What is it like to be in the generation that finds it normal to have active shooter drills? I’m afraid to ask someone of that generation. The chasm of norms may not be bridgeable. But also, is there an inherent sadness in growing up in a generation where such things are normalized? Or is that just an atavistic perspective?
What would hunters do? Bow and arrows? Crossbow? Slingshot? Poison dart blowguns? They all sound so primitive compared to an AR-15. But those aren’t for hunting, are they? I guess it depends on what you are hunting. Is that a poor comparison? Would that level the playing field for the prey that some humans hunt? Or would it really be less humane because of the decrease in fast-kill-likelihood?
Would men have to find another way to express their manhood? (There would still be pick-up trucks.) Are guns really an expression of manhood? Do some people think so? Is there is such thing as “manhood”? Should there be? Or, should we have a more open mind or wider conception of what constitutes manhood? All that it could be? Or doesn’t have to be? Do we need such rigidly defined gender roles? Are they that rigidly defined now? Maybe not as much as in the past? Hard to say for sure.
Would there still be first person shooter video games? Are they that realistic anyway? Would they be any less realistic if guns all of a sudden disappeared?
Would police be less likely to kill unarmed black people? Is the problem that the tense moments of police encounters make people more likely to pull a trigger? Or is it just systemic racism and the police would find another method? Haven’t some people died from being tazed too many times? Or given some kind of tranquilizer? Or in other ways? Would police still be able to claim they pulled the trigger because they thought the guy had a gun? Guess not. Maybe their best excuses wouldn’t work so much anymore? Would they find other justifications for their violence?
What about suicides? Are guns the most effective and irreversible way of committing suicide? Are they also the fastest? Would some people reconsider if they only had slower, less effective methods? Methods that left them too much time to fret over the decision they have made even though it is too late to turn back? Or, are some people just too determined? What does it say about a society to have such a high suicide rate? Especially among teens? Does it warrant rethinking some things? Is our society too cruel? At least to some people? People who are different? Or who seem different? What does it mean to be “different”? Really, who is not different? Would we be more humane if we recognized the incredible variation in our species and just accepted difference as the norm? Or, are there aspects of our society that make life really hard for some people? Maybe the economic situations some low income people are born into and struggle to escape? Do people commit suicide because of economic challenges? There was a large increase in suicides amongst struggling Indian farmers recently. So, maybe?
Is it safe to assume that incidents in which one kid accidentally shoots another while playing with a gun would end? Seems so. Maybe there would be a consequent increase in accidental stabbings? Maybe not. Kids seem to already have rather easy access to knives of all sorts? Or, do accidental stabbings happen as often already and we just don’t hear about it on the news because it isn’t salacious enough?
Would so many people be walking around holding so much trauma? We obviously traumatize each other in a variety of different ways. Not just with guns. So, are we just serial traumatizers? Will we find other means if one method becomes unavailable? Are we that dark of a species? Is it part of our evolutionary psychology? What survival advantage would our penchant for traumatizing each other confer? Or, maybe it is part of our sociocultural DNA? Something we pass down through enculturation? Or just by traumatizing each successive generation? Is that part of what generational trauma is? It gets written into our epigenetics by our own experiences of trauma? And we pass it along? Is there a way we could make ourselves and our societies more humane? Would one change the other?
Is our world worse off with guns?
I don’t know.