CPI security screeches its alarm as a man, dressed in night, bursts through the full length window at the front of the house. His body black against the night, a shadow, he pauses for a moment as he is spotlighted by the half-moon of early October. Middle Eastern brown eyes glinting, with the 9 millimeter handgun pulsing intermittently, adrenaline filled and imminent, a thick hand flicks on a flashlight. At eye level it moves professionally, an extension of his very own vision, as he flits through the territory of the unfamiliar house like a hornet, deranged, wanting for something but not knowing yet what that will be. And he would get it, whatever it was. Deceptively, down the long, narrow corridor of the hallway he drips, like the wet mold of the aging house, he creeps, cautiously, but without anxiety. His left hand firmly grips the pistol, his right squeezing it to the flashlight almost as a single weapon. The squeak of bedroom slippers softly penetrates his heightened senses amidst the awoken and blaring darkness. The intruder halts. He was not alone. Bedroom slippers and flannel pants on, the wood cut man, grabs the 22. in his drawer, with flexed arms and heightened senses he opens the door with his gun. It clicks into place. He tiptoes into the hallway and gunfire erupts; rushed shots flying from the perpetrator. The muscular man spins in behind the door frame, firing a series of hopeless amateurish shots which explode into the walls in the home of his childhood. Drowning breaths ventilate him as he makes himself a statue, in the midst of frenzied gunfire and Arabic gibberish. The hornet moves in, slinking down the enduring walls. Two feet away and he is noted, his presence met with a desperate spin from the protection of the doorframe. Two barrels on two foreheads lay, warm from firing, but evoking, in the impaling words of Fever 1973, the cold and ‘yellow scent of death’. Two pairs of brown eyes meet, neither innocent, though neither entirely guilty, both, scared. Each sees themself in the eyes of their opponent, forced to bear cause for the casualties so near and so close. Looking into their eyes, passion is eliminated, each person stands shakily wielding the irrevocable power of death in their hands, and knowing the effect of this tragedy, they wait. Silent, deathlike seconds rumble by. No shot is fired. Death having been evaded, fears raged, shock intoxicated, and lives changed, but no shot is fired. The power of death in two capable hands extinguished by selfishness, brought on by efficiency, and no shot is fired. Idle threats and maxed out advancement; still, no shot is fired.
In a world of consumerism, invention has met its worst adversary to date: ease. The path of automatic weapons crawls slowly towards innovation, just as cell phones which constantly ‘one-up’ the last just so much as to market – but not so far as to make the next model difficult to create. This is clearly seen in the new “Buy Back” program from Best Buy, which helps alleviate the burden of obsolete technologies. The difference in the iPhone 4 and the iPhone 3 is a few megapixels in a camera and some fancy volume buttons. Modern innovation improves ever so slightly, but doesn’t change. Invention moves along on the edges of its asymptotic function, making no drastic gains, but rather lurching along almost uniformly like a hoard of zombies to a dull and boring infinity. Benefitting however, is the equilibrium which is created among automatic and semi-automatic weapons, where cheap weapons are minimally different than their shiny newer brothers. Thus, we sit drooling, mouths agape and full of popcorn and watch scenes like the one described above, as they play out, often to the same boring ending of stalemate. Where then is justice left, if not abandoned by men so weak and spineless that they consider their own life so much of a treasure that justice rides in the backseat? Justice must supersede pacifism. Men must answer in a manner worthy of their crime. Peace will only be achieved by perfection. Grudges are the label of ignored injustices, and not peace. Men fear death more than they long to achieve justice just as the homeowner in the story above. Gang violence exists because injustice is constant and grudges fester in their hearts. To invert Cicero’s argument, ‘A just war is better than an unjust peace’. The “Just War Theory” and its offshoots provide evidence to the fact that just war exists, and thus it employs the logical corollary that just wars can be fought and that just wars produce a justice more valuable than a corrupted peace. One of the most important writers in response to the “Just War Theory”, Michael Walzer, promoted a new argument in relation to war, relating devastating weapons such as nuclear warheads alter war so much that our morality becomes inevitably confused—and hence just war theories—become redundant. Thus, this serves to foundation my argument that a world possessing weapons of such mass destruction inhibits justice, and that nuclear warfare brings the weak and the strong to the same playing field, and that; therefore, if we should go back to a the blade and the arrow, this inhibiting of justice would invariably diminish.
In the words of Lawrence Freedman, in his book The Evolution of Nuclear Warfare, “The Russians charged the Chinese with a lack of realism about the effects of nuclear war, pointing out that ‘the atom bomb does not adhere to class principle’. Peking’s unfailing optimism on the inevitable outcome of the politically righteous was mocked: ‘It is absurd to suppose that a war of attrition will, as it were, favor the weak and harm the strong. In such a war, the weak will be exhausted before the strong.’…A bizarre anecdote from Khrushchev’s memoirs sums up the Soviet leader’s view on the relevance of People’s War in a nuclear age… Comrade Mao Tse-Tung, nowadays that sort of thinking is out of date. You can no longer calculate the alignment of forces on the basis of who has the most men. Back in the days where disputes were settled with fists or bayonets, it meant something who had the most men and the most bayonets on each side. Then when the machine gun appeared, the side with more troops no longer necessarily had the advantage. And now with the atomic bomb, the number of troops makes practically no difference in the alignment of real power and the outcome of a war. The more troops on a side the more bomb fodder.’”
In a world where scores of nuclear warheads gird the earth like a laser security system, and simply the government stands between us and the destruction of our world, we can do nothing but wait. Justice is put on a shelf because fear cloaks us all. It is my opinion and that of a handful of other worried Americans that politics have gotten so hidden from the public eye that wars are not near what we perceive them to be and that often wars and potential wars degrade into nuclear level threat matches, but who has acted on such idle threats. Only 2 of such weapons have been used (this being the American Government’s bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki) and having been given the opportunity to analyze the destructive power of this weapon for more than 70 years now, and living in a world where everyone who’s anyone has one, still no shot is fired. Now, I am obliged to promote that—if we were, as a community of people in this sensitive world, to reject these weapons, keep them of course, locked up just in case, but to disarm the world of all of its bullet firing demolition machines, and in the hands of every man give a sword and a spear, in order to allow for progress.
One might say that if we keep them—even locked up—that we would be in no different situation than we are at present, but to clarify what I mean by locked up, I mean to say that an organization be created comprised of members of each nuclear capable country completely dissociated from the government that would be in control of simply monitoring the weapons in the case that a country creates more, or refuses to hand some over and later threatens another nation; then and only then, will they be given the authority to unlock the nuclear weapons to protect the threatened nation. This type of Non-Governmental Organization is necessary so that there are no more variables in this equation of worldwide justice.
We have outstretched our growth capacity in weapons technology to a standstill of , but it is a time for justice—war must go on, therefore it is necessarily vital to the preservation of justice and to the freedom and rights of the individuals of the world that we technologically regress in order to morally progress. Though this solution seems impractical, it is possible if each government stood up in the strength it possesses to legislate the ridding of all automatic and bullet firing weapons and introduce to the economy and to the masses arms of steel and iron. You might say take offense to such a display of governmental power, and, as a proponent of liberty and of small government I would certainly agree, but in order to keep the balance between government and people in check the government must use its power over those not willing to give up there firearms so that the second amendment right to bear arms can be changed to suit the blade and not the explosive. The path to total fire arm disarmament begins with you, one man at a time ‘til the whole world recognizes this need and each man takes steps, so that as a community of this world we move forward in justice, unbounded by the stalemates of equalizing fire-arms.
If such a feat as this would happen the results would be infinitely successful. The effects would include, but are not even limited to things such as an increase in innovation, a return to a sort of utopian pseudo-stasis, the renaissance of justice, educational tools producing strong minds of both men and women, training that would produce a sort of be fit or be in danger society, and the employment spikes for blacksmiths, armorers, miners, trainers, and the elimination of such present, strong international dependencies. We live in a free market chained by debt and by eliminating a majority of expensive technology, long and drawn out wars, and specialized training, we can alleviate some of the economic and international burdens pressed so firmly upon us.
These things would serve, invariably, to bring the world into a Spartan state for progress; the epitome of justice. The world would draw freely from this elixir of iron and steel, and transform, by the power of its simplicity into the glory of justice, where mercy means something, where training is necessary, where the world stands together to pursue righteousness knowing the sharpened point at the end of their consequential stick, where all men take freely from this bastion of iron, and the world moves forward again, in a new direction, knowing our past and devoted to conquering it. Where everyone bears the arm of justice, responsibility is serious, grace is graceful, chivalry is stable and universal, and the world walks justly and humbly;
There I, long to be.
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