Ask HN: Why stop at banning Nuclear Weapons? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Why stop at banning Nuclear Weapons?

6 pointsjohnnyApplePRNG19 comments

Just watching Canadian Bacon right now and it got me thinking...

Excluding hunting being a human right and a piece of our history...

Why do we as a human race allow for the production of any weapons whatsoever?

What benefit is there to owning or using a weapon?

We are talking about banning automatic weapons in America recently which is a step in the right direction imho.

But why stop there?

If we collectively prohibited all countries worldwide from producing weapons like tanks, rocket launchers, etc...

There would be no need for any country to own or acquire similar defences.

View on HN

>> What benefit is there to owning or using a weapon?

At a minimum, weapons provide deterrance so that people who would harm other people think twice and hopefully do not take harmful actions.

We give weapons to the country's police and military so they can enforce the laws and protect from foreign invasions.

>> If we collectively prohibited all countries worldwide from producing weapons like tanks, rocket launchers, etc...

>> There would be no need for any country to own or acquire similar defences.

If all people were kind-hearted angels we would not need laws, but we live in reality where human nature, scarcity of resources, and aggression come into play.

This is a rather academic question (which is ok). But we have to understand that at the same time it is far removed from the realities of human society and the modus-operandi how state and inter-state relationships function, and how subjects respond to the applied "force-field". There is another option to solving the question, let everyone have a gun (assured mutual-annihilation on local and state scale). Of cause, while several philosophers argued for this point, it remains in the same stratospheric realm as "no guns for anyone". However, I would submit an opinion that a third option exists, creating a global village (no states), then there is no need for inter-state violence. This, I hope in some very distant future will happen, similar to a single living body made of various organs, a global civilization will emerge, having local culture and information exchange, as well as a global means of communication (single universal language and protocols). I suppose, this is also somewhere in the stratosphere.

>However, I would submit an opinion that a third option exists, creating a global village (no states), then there is no need for inter-state violence. This, I hope in some very distant future will happen, similar to a single living body made of various organs, a global civilization will emerge, having local culture and information exchange, as well as a global means of communication (single universal language and protocols). I suppose, this is also somewhere in the stratosphere.

As well as something that's already been tried over the past 30 years just as you've described: the World Wide Web.

> There would be no need for any country to own or acquire similar defences.

That is incredibly naive.

All countries must lean towards maximum ability to hold on to power. In certain cases that might mean abstaining from certain weapons to get favorable trade agreements from other countries. But that is just a deference to the more powerful country which needs those weapons to enforce their global trading position.

> If we collectively prohibited all countries worldwide from producing weapons like tanks, rocket launchers, etc...

> There would be no need for any country to own or acquire similar defences.

If one country decides NOT to get rid of all its weapons how do you enforce your "prohibition"? Even classes of weapons that everyone agrees should be banned are retained because they are useful in extremis, eg, land mines.

Point taken.

You could enforce the prohibition through trade sanctions.

But if that country was already starving/hungry that would only exacerbate the situation.

And yes some kind of strategic reserve of defence weapons would be required by all countries.

Many people hate their state and would gladly do anything to hurt it. And weapons - military grade - are trivial to build at home even for beginner machinists.

> What benefit is there to owning or using a weapon?

That's a good question.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-r...

Just looking at this table, I'd say: None whatsoever.

> If we collectively prohibited all countries worldwide from producing weapons like tanks, rocket launchers, etc...

There is an important difference between PRIVATE gun ownership and the military. Problem is, yes, ideally we would live in a violence free utopia, but if only ONE country doesn't agree to this, then pretty much everyone else has to equip an army as well.

> Just looking at this table, I'd say: None whatsoever.

Just looking at that table, I'd say it has nothing to do with benefits whatsoever.

Lower gun violence is a benefit.

Nonexistent GV would be better of course, and one of the steps to achieve that, is to have as few privatly owned guns as possible.

Lower violence is a benefit.

Guns are only one variable and generally have nothing to do with the underlying socioeconomic causes of violence. We see this with state level homicide data - some states with high firearm ownership also have lower homicide rates than states with lower firearm ownership and more stringent restrictions.

"Nonexistent GV would be better of course, and one of the steps to achieve that..."

Do you have proof of that? My understanding is that gun violence exists everywhere to one degree or another. You can take various steps to reduce it, but it has never been eliminated.

> Guns are only one variable

So? It's one variable that can be changed.

Hmm that is remarkable - the table says the USA has 120.5 firearms per 100 citizens, the highest, of any country, and #2 on the list is Serbia with 37.82! So, the USA has more than 3 times as many firearms per citizen as any other country on earth, if that table is to be believed. (I don't know how incomplete the list is.)

And that global map is..interesting too - with the exception of Canada and Cuba, the Americas are really homicide central, and to a surprising degree.

> Why do we as a human race allow for the production of any weapons whatsoever?

The only thing every human shares is here in a list of universals:

https://condor.depaul.edu/~mfiddler/hyphen/humunivers.htm

Nowhere in that list is 'cohesive world wide political power'. No one could get 10 random people selected from around the world (let alone 10 friends) to agree on where to eat even if it was their treat. Heck they wouldn't likely speak the same language.

Might as well think everyone could stop having sex for two weeks so Gonorrhea can die out forever.

Your proposal is naive.

I fear your model of human behaviour is currently getting you into trouble in other aspects of your life.

How do you stop others from producing weapons though? Let's say you get USA, China, Russia, Brazil, Israel, etc to agree to destroy all weapons. Get rid of guns, mines, and so on. How do you keep a terrorist cell in Pakistan with a bunch of tanks from conquering India?

But what's interesting is that the Geneva Convention has made practically every kind of warfare a war crime. And it seems to have worked (besides the terrorism bit).

We can probably stand to get rid of the more war-crimish weapons, like fire bombs and land mines. I think planes and carriers are such a large cost, that they've been labeled white elephants. But the last time we had a major war, the US managed to send planes all over the Pacific and rescue a lot of people from torture and rape.

If you had a button you could press which would magically make all weapons on earth disappear, what will you have achieved? You would have just transformed the power structure and taken the might away from those with physical weapons, and delivered this might to those with big muscles and the ability to coordinate with others like them to give you a good beating.

But all that aside, I talk about magic buttons because such a law would be impossible to enforce, and certainly not globally.

"We are talking about banning automatic weapons in America recently"

I haven't heard that at all. Do you have a source?

"If we collectively prohibited all countries worldwide from producing weapons like tanks, rocket launchers, etc...

There would be no need for any country to own or acquire similar defences."

That's only true if there's trust and enforcement.

Being armed to the teeth / mutually assured destruction is the stable nash equilibrium state.

It's not globally optimal (as banning weapons would be), but it is the state where parties are not incentivized to cheat/lie.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com